mdpm99
03-31-2003, 06:02 AM
Greetings to all:
Two things to share today. The first is a poem by Maya Angelou. the second, below, is an interesting article. Crazy days. Hard to find perspective.
smile.gif
d
Each new hour
Holds new chances
For new beginnings...
The horizon leans forward
Offering you space
To place new steps of change...
-Maya Angelou
>
>
> > Slouching Toward Baghdad
> > by Mike Davis
> > ZNet
> > February 28, 2003
> >
> > Imperial Washington, like Berlin in the late 1930s, has become a
> > psychedelic capital where one megalomaniacal hallucination succeeds
> > another. Thus, in addition to creating a new geopolitical order in
> > the Middle East, we are now told by the Pentagon's deepest thinkers
> > that the invasion of Iraq will also inaugurate "the most important
> > 'revolution in military affairs' (or RMA) in two hundred years."
> >
> > According to Admiral William Owen, a chief theorist of the
> > revolution, the first Gulf War was "not a new kind of war, but the
> > last of the old ones." Likewise, the air wars in Kosovo and
> > Afghanistan were only pale previews of the postmodern blitzkrieg that
> > will be unleashed against the Baathist regime. Instead of old-
> > fashioned sequential battles, we are promised nonlinear "shock and
> > awe."
> >
> > Although the news media will undoubtedly focus on the sci-fi gadgetry
> > involved - thermobaric bombs, microwave weapons, unmanned aerial
> > vehicles (UAVs), PackBot robots, Stryker fighting vehicles, and so on
> > - the truly radical innovations (or so the war wonks claim) will be
> > in the organization and, indeed, the very concept of the war.
> >
> > In the bizarre argot of the Pentagon's Office of Force Transformation
> > (the nerve center of the revolution), a new kind of "warfighting
> > ecosystem" known as "network centric warfare" (or NCW) is slouching
> > toward Baghdad to be born. Promoted by military futurists as a
> > "minimalist" form of warfare that spares lives by replacing attrition
> > with precision, NCW may in fact be the inevitable road to nuclear war.
> >
> > FROM DESERT STORM TO WAL-MART
> >
> > Military "revolutions" based on new technology, of course, have come
> > and gone since air-power fanatics like Giulio Douhet, Billy Mitchell,
> > and Hugh Trenchard first proclaimed the obsolescence of traditional
> > armies and battleship navies in the early 1920s. This time, however,
> > the superweapon isn't a long-distance bomber or nightmare H-bomb but
> > the ordinary PC and its ability, via the Internet, to generate
> > virtual organization in the "battlespace" as well as the marketplace.
> >
> > Like all good revolutionaries, the Pentagon advocates of RMA/ NCW are
> > responding to the rot and crisis of an ancien regime. Although Gulf
> > War I was publicly celebrated as a flawless victory of technology and
> > alliance politics, the real story was vicious infighting among
> > American commanders and potentially disastrous breakdowns in
> > decision-making. Proponents of high- tech warfare, like the 'smart
> > bomb' attacks on Baghdad's infrastructure, clashed bitterly with
> > heavy-metal traditionalists, while frustrated battlefield CEO Norman
> > Schwarzkopf threw stupefying tantrums.
> >
> > The battles continued back in the Pentagon where the revolutionaries
> > -- mostly geekish colonels bunkered in a series of black-box think
> > tanks -- found a powerful protector in Andrew Marshall, the venerable
> > head of research and technology assessment. In 1993, Marshall - a
> > guru to both Dick Cheney and leading Democrats - provided the
> > incoming Clinton administration with a working paper that warned that
> > Cold War weapons "platforms" like Nimitz-class aircraft carriers and
> > heavy tank battle groups were becoming obsolete in face of precision
> > weapons and cruise missiles.
> >
> > Marshall instead proselytized for cheaper, quicker, smarter weapons
> > that took full advantage of American leadership in information
> > technology. He warned, however, that "by perfecting these precision
> > weapons, America is forcing its enemies to rely on terrorist
> > activities that are difficult to target." He cast doubt on the
> > ability of the Pentagon's fossilized command hierarchies to adapt to
> > the challenges of so-called "asymmetric warfare."
> >
> > The revolutionaries went even further, preaching that the potentials
> > of 21st century war-making technology were being squandered within
> > 19th century military bureaucracies. The new military forces of
> > production were straining to break out of their archaic relations of
> > production. They viciously compared the Pentagon to one of the "old
> > economy" corporations -- "hardwired, dumb and top-heavy" -- that were
> > being driven into extinction in the contemporary "new economy"
> > marketplace.
> >
> > Their alternative? Wal-Mart, the Arkansas-based retail leviathan. It
> > may seem odd, to say the least, to nominate a chain store that
> > peddles cornflakes, jeans and motor oil as the model for a leaner,
> > meaner Pentagon, but Marshall's think-tankers were only following in
> > the footsteps of management theorists who had already beatified
> > Wal-Mart as the essence of a "self-synchronized distributed network
> > with real-time transactional awareness." Translated, this means that
> > the stores' cash registers automatically transmit sales data to
> > Wal-Mart's suppliers and that inventory is managed through
> > 'horizontal' networks rather than through a traditional head-office
> > hierarchy.
> >
> > "We're trying to do the equivalent in the military," wrote the
> > authors of Network Centric Warfare: developing and leveraging
> > information superiority, the 1998 manifesto of the RMA/NCW camp that
> > footnotes Wal-Mart annual reports in its bibliography. In
> > "battlespace," mobile military actors (ranging from computer hackers
> > to stealth bomber pilots) would be the counterparts of Wal-Mart's
> > intelligent salespoints.
> >
> > Instead of depending on hardcopy orders and ponderous chains of
> > commands, they would establish "virtual collaborations" (regardless
> > of service branch) to concentrate overpowering violence on precisely
> > delineated targets. Command structures would be "flattened" to a
> > handful of generals, assisted by computerized decision-making aides,
> > in egalitarian dialogue with their "shooters.'"
> >
> > The iconic image, of course, is the Special Forces op in Pathan drag
> > using his laptop to summon air strikes on a Taliban position that
> > another op is highlighting with his laser designator. To NCW gurus,
> > however, this is still fairly primitive Gunga Din stuff. They would
> > prefer to "swarm" the enemy terrain with locust-like myriads of
> > miniaturized robot sensors and tiny flying video cams whose
> > information would be fused together in a single panopticon picture
> > shared by ordinary grunts in their fighting vehicles as well as by
> > four-star generals in their Qatar or Florida command posts.
> >
> > Inversely, as American "battlespace awareness" is exponentially
> > increased by networked sensors, it becomes ever more important to
> > blind opponents by precision air strikes on their equivalent (but
> > outdated) "command and control" infrastructures. This necessarily
> > means a ruthless takeout of civilian telecommunications, power grids,
> > and highway nodes: all the better, in the Pentagon view, to allow
> > American psy-op units to propagandize, or, if necessary, terrorize
> > the population.
> >
> > THE PENTAGON'S WHIRLING DERVISHES
> >
> > Critics of RMA/NCW have compared it to a millennial cult, analogous
> > to bible-thumping fundamentalism or, for that matter, to Al Queda.
> > Indeed, reading ecstatic descriptions of how "Metcalfe's Law"
> > guarantees increases of "network power proportional to the square of
> > the number of nodes,'" one wonders what the wonks are smoking in
> > their Pentagon basement offices. (Marshall, incidentally, advocates
> > using behavior-modifying drugs to create Terminator-like
> > 'bioengineered soldiers.')
> >
> > Their most outrageous claim is that Clausewitz's famous "fog of war"
> > -- the chaos and contingency of the battlefield -- can be dispelled
> > by enough sensors, networks, and smart weapons. Thus vice-admiral
> > Arthur Cebrowski, the Pentagon director for "force transformation,"
> > hallucinates that "in only a few years, if the the technological
> > capabilities of America's enemies remain only what they are today,
> > the US military could effectively achieve total "battlespace
> > knowledge."
> >
> > Donald Rumsfeld, like Dick Cheney (but unlike Colin Powell), is a
> > notorious addict of RNA/NCW fantasies (already enshrined as official
> > doctrine by the Clinton administration in 1998). By opening the
> > floodgates to a huge military budget (almost equal to the rest of the
> > world's military spending combined), 9.11 allowed Rumsfeld to go
> > ahead with the revolution while buying off the reactionaries with
> > funding for their baroque weapons systems, including three competing
> > versions of a new tactical fighter. The cost of the compromise -
> > which most Democrats have also endorsed - will be paid for by
> > slashing federal spending on education, healthcare, and local
> > government.
> >
> > A second Iraq war, in the eyes of the RNA/NCW zealots, is the
> > inevitable theater for demonstrating to the rest of the world that
> > America's military superiority is now unprecedented and unduplicable.
> > Haunted by the 1993 catastrophe in Mogadishu, when poorly armed
> > Somali militia defeated the Pentagon's most elite troops, the war
> > wonks have to show that networked technology can now prevail in
> > labyrinthine street warfare. To this end, they are counting on the
> > combination of battlefield omniscience, smart bombs, and new weapons
> > like microwave pulses and nausea gases to drive Baghdadis out of
> > their homes and bunkers. The use of "non-lethal" (sic) weapons
> > against civilian populations, especially in light of the horror of
> > what happened during the Moscow hostage crisis last October, is a war
> > crime waiting to happen.
> >
> > But what if the RNA/NCW's Second Coming of Warfare doesn't arrive as
> > punctually promised? What happens if the Iraqis or future enemies
> > find ways to foil the swarming sensors, the night- visioned Special
> > Forces, the little stair-climbing robots, the missile-armed drones?
> > Indeed, what if some North Korean cyberwar squad (or, for that
> > matter, a fifteen-year-old hacker in Des Moines) manages to crash the
> > Pentagon's "system of systems" behind its battlespace panopticon?
> >
> > If the American war-fighting networks begin to unravel (as partially
> > occurred in February 1991), the new paradigm - with its "just in
> > time" logistics and its small "battlefield footprint" - leaves little
> > backup in terms of traditional military reserves. This is one reason
> > why the Rumsfeld Pentagon takes every opportunity to rattle its
> > nuclear saber.
> >
> > Just as precision munitions have resurrected all the mad omnipotent
> > visions of yesterday's strategic bombers, RNA/NCW is giving new life
> > to monstrous fantasies of functionally integrating tactical nukes
> > into the electronic battlespace. The United States, it should never
> > be forgotten, fought the Cold War with the permanent threat of "first
> > use" of nuclear weapons against a Soviet conventional attack. Now the
> > threshold has been lowered to Iraqi gas attacks, North Korean missile
> > launches, or, even, retaliation for future terrorist attacks on
> > American city.
> >
> > For all the geekspeak about networks and ecosystems, and millenarian
> > boasting about minimal, robotic warfare, the United States is
> > becoming a terror state pure and simple: a 21st century Assyria with
> > laptops and modems.
> >
> > Mike Davis is the author of City of Quartz, Ecology of Fear, and most
> > recently, Dead Cities, among other works. He now lives in San Diego.
> >
> > [This article first appeared on http://www.tomdispatch.com, a weblog
> > of the Nation Institute, which offers a steady flow of alternate
> > sources, news and opinion from Tom Engelhardt, long time editor in
> > publishing and author of The End of Victory Culture.]
> >
> > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Two things to share today. The first is a poem by Maya Angelou. the second, below, is an interesting article. Crazy days. Hard to find perspective.
smile.gif
d
Each new hour
Holds new chances
For new beginnings...
The horizon leans forward
Offering you space
To place new steps of change...
-Maya Angelou
>
>
> > Slouching Toward Baghdad
> > by Mike Davis
> > ZNet
> > February 28, 2003
> >
> > Imperial Washington, like Berlin in the late 1930s, has become a
> > psychedelic capital where one megalomaniacal hallucination succeeds
> > another. Thus, in addition to creating a new geopolitical order in
> > the Middle East, we are now told by the Pentagon's deepest thinkers
> > that the invasion of Iraq will also inaugurate "the most important
> > 'revolution in military affairs' (or RMA) in two hundred years."
> >
> > According to Admiral William Owen, a chief theorist of the
> > revolution, the first Gulf War was "not a new kind of war, but the
> > last of the old ones." Likewise, the air wars in Kosovo and
> > Afghanistan were only pale previews of the postmodern blitzkrieg that
> > will be unleashed against the Baathist regime. Instead of old-
> > fashioned sequential battles, we are promised nonlinear "shock and
> > awe."
> >
> > Although the news media will undoubtedly focus on the sci-fi gadgetry
> > involved - thermobaric bombs, microwave weapons, unmanned aerial
> > vehicles (UAVs), PackBot robots, Stryker fighting vehicles, and so on
> > - the truly radical innovations (or so the war wonks claim) will be
> > in the organization and, indeed, the very concept of the war.
> >
> > In the bizarre argot of the Pentagon's Office of Force Transformation
> > (the nerve center of the revolution), a new kind of "warfighting
> > ecosystem" known as "network centric warfare" (or NCW) is slouching
> > toward Baghdad to be born. Promoted by military futurists as a
> > "minimalist" form of warfare that spares lives by replacing attrition
> > with precision, NCW may in fact be the inevitable road to nuclear war.
> >
> > FROM DESERT STORM TO WAL-MART
> >
> > Military "revolutions" based on new technology, of course, have come
> > and gone since air-power fanatics like Giulio Douhet, Billy Mitchell,
> > and Hugh Trenchard first proclaimed the obsolescence of traditional
> > armies and battleship navies in the early 1920s. This time, however,
> > the superweapon isn't a long-distance bomber or nightmare H-bomb but
> > the ordinary PC and its ability, via the Internet, to generate
> > virtual organization in the "battlespace" as well as the marketplace.
> >
> > Like all good revolutionaries, the Pentagon advocates of RMA/ NCW are
> > responding to the rot and crisis of an ancien regime. Although Gulf
> > War I was publicly celebrated as a flawless victory of technology and
> > alliance politics, the real story was vicious infighting among
> > American commanders and potentially disastrous breakdowns in
> > decision-making. Proponents of high- tech warfare, like the 'smart
> > bomb' attacks on Baghdad's infrastructure, clashed bitterly with
> > heavy-metal traditionalists, while frustrated battlefield CEO Norman
> > Schwarzkopf threw stupefying tantrums.
> >
> > The battles continued back in the Pentagon where the revolutionaries
> > -- mostly geekish colonels bunkered in a series of black-box think
> > tanks -- found a powerful protector in Andrew Marshall, the venerable
> > head of research and technology assessment. In 1993, Marshall - a
> > guru to both Dick Cheney and leading Democrats - provided the
> > incoming Clinton administration with a working paper that warned that
> > Cold War weapons "platforms" like Nimitz-class aircraft carriers and
> > heavy tank battle groups were becoming obsolete in face of precision
> > weapons and cruise missiles.
> >
> > Marshall instead proselytized for cheaper, quicker, smarter weapons
> > that took full advantage of American leadership in information
> > technology. He warned, however, that "by perfecting these precision
> > weapons, America is forcing its enemies to rely on terrorist
> > activities that are difficult to target." He cast doubt on the
> > ability of the Pentagon's fossilized command hierarchies to adapt to
> > the challenges of so-called "asymmetric warfare."
> >
> > The revolutionaries went even further, preaching that the potentials
> > of 21st century war-making technology were being squandered within
> > 19th century military bureaucracies. The new military forces of
> > production were straining to break out of their archaic relations of
> > production. They viciously compared the Pentagon to one of the "old
> > economy" corporations -- "hardwired, dumb and top-heavy" -- that were
> > being driven into extinction in the contemporary "new economy"
> > marketplace.
> >
> > Their alternative? Wal-Mart, the Arkansas-based retail leviathan. It
> > may seem odd, to say the least, to nominate a chain store that
> > peddles cornflakes, jeans and motor oil as the model for a leaner,
> > meaner Pentagon, but Marshall's think-tankers were only following in
> > the footsteps of management theorists who had already beatified
> > Wal-Mart as the essence of a "self-synchronized distributed network
> > with real-time transactional awareness." Translated, this means that
> > the stores' cash registers automatically transmit sales data to
> > Wal-Mart's suppliers and that inventory is managed through
> > 'horizontal' networks rather than through a traditional head-office
> > hierarchy.
> >
> > "We're trying to do the equivalent in the military," wrote the
> > authors of Network Centric Warfare: developing and leveraging
> > information superiority, the 1998 manifesto of the RMA/NCW camp that
> > footnotes Wal-Mart annual reports in its bibliography. In
> > "battlespace," mobile military actors (ranging from computer hackers
> > to stealth bomber pilots) would be the counterparts of Wal-Mart's
> > intelligent salespoints.
> >
> > Instead of depending on hardcopy orders and ponderous chains of
> > commands, they would establish "virtual collaborations" (regardless
> > of service branch) to concentrate overpowering violence on precisely
> > delineated targets. Command structures would be "flattened" to a
> > handful of generals, assisted by computerized decision-making aides,
> > in egalitarian dialogue with their "shooters.'"
> >
> > The iconic image, of course, is the Special Forces op in Pathan drag
> > using his laptop to summon air strikes on a Taliban position that
> > another op is highlighting with his laser designator. To NCW gurus,
> > however, this is still fairly primitive Gunga Din stuff. They would
> > prefer to "swarm" the enemy terrain with locust-like myriads of
> > miniaturized robot sensors and tiny flying video cams whose
> > information would be fused together in a single panopticon picture
> > shared by ordinary grunts in their fighting vehicles as well as by
> > four-star generals in their Qatar or Florida command posts.
> >
> > Inversely, as American "battlespace awareness" is exponentially
> > increased by networked sensors, it becomes ever more important to
> > blind opponents by precision air strikes on their equivalent (but
> > outdated) "command and control" infrastructures. This necessarily
> > means a ruthless takeout of civilian telecommunications, power grids,
> > and highway nodes: all the better, in the Pentagon view, to allow
> > American psy-op units to propagandize, or, if necessary, terrorize
> > the population.
> >
> > THE PENTAGON'S WHIRLING DERVISHES
> >
> > Critics of RMA/NCW have compared it to a millennial cult, analogous
> > to bible-thumping fundamentalism or, for that matter, to Al Queda.
> > Indeed, reading ecstatic descriptions of how "Metcalfe's Law"
> > guarantees increases of "network power proportional to the square of
> > the number of nodes,'" one wonders what the wonks are smoking in
> > their Pentagon basement offices. (Marshall, incidentally, advocates
> > using behavior-modifying drugs to create Terminator-like
> > 'bioengineered soldiers.')
> >
> > Their most outrageous claim is that Clausewitz's famous "fog of war"
> > -- the chaos and contingency of the battlefield -- can be dispelled
> > by enough sensors, networks, and smart weapons. Thus vice-admiral
> > Arthur Cebrowski, the Pentagon director for "force transformation,"
> > hallucinates that "in only a few years, if the the technological
> > capabilities of America's enemies remain only what they are today,
> > the US military could effectively achieve total "battlespace
> > knowledge."
> >
> > Donald Rumsfeld, like Dick Cheney (but unlike Colin Powell), is a
> > notorious addict of RNA/NCW fantasies (already enshrined as official
> > doctrine by the Clinton administration in 1998). By opening the
> > floodgates to a huge military budget (almost equal to the rest of the
> > world's military spending combined), 9.11 allowed Rumsfeld to go
> > ahead with the revolution while buying off the reactionaries with
> > funding for their baroque weapons systems, including three competing
> > versions of a new tactical fighter. The cost of the compromise -
> > which most Democrats have also endorsed - will be paid for by
> > slashing federal spending on education, healthcare, and local
> > government.
> >
> > A second Iraq war, in the eyes of the RNA/NCW zealots, is the
> > inevitable theater for demonstrating to the rest of the world that
> > America's military superiority is now unprecedented and unduplicable.
> > Haunted by the 1993 catastrophe in Mogadishu, when poorly armed
> > Somali militia defeated the Pentagon's most elite troops, the war
> > wonks have to show that networked technology can now prevail in
> > labyrinthine street warfare. To this end, they are counting on the
> > combination of battlefield omniscience, smart bombs, and new weapons
> > like microwave pulses and nausea gases to drive Baghdadis out of
> > their homes and bunkers. The use of "non-lethal" (sic) weapons
> > against civilian populations, especially in light of the horror of
> > what happened during the Moscow hostage crisis last October, is a war
> > crime waiting to happen.
> >
> > But what if the RNA/NCW's Second Coming of Warfare doesn't arrive as
> > punctually promised? What happens if the Iraqis or future enemies
> > find ways to foil the swarming sensors, the night- visioned Special
> > Forces, the little stair-climbing robots, the missile-armed drones?
> > Indeed, what if some North Korean cyberwar squad (or, for that
> > matter, a fifteen-year-old hacker in Des Moines) manages to crash the
> > Pentagon's "system of systems" behind its battlespace panopticon?
> >
> > If the American war-fighting networks begin to unravel (as partially
> > occurred in February 1991), the new paradigm - with its "just in
> > time" logistics and its small "battlefield footprint" - leaves little
> > backup in terms of traditional military reserves. This is one reason
> > why the Rumsfeld Pentagon takes every opportunity to rattle its
> > nuclear saber.
> >
> > Just as precision munitions have resurrected all the mad omnipotent
> > visions of yesterday's strategic bombers, RNA/NCW is giving new life
> > to monstrous fantasies of functionally integrating tactical nukes
> > into the electronic battlespace. The United States, it should never
> > be forgotten, fought the Cold War with the permanent threat of "first
> > use" of nuclear weapons against a Soviet conventional attack. Now the
> > threshold has been lowered to Iraqi gas attacks, North Korean missile
> > launches, or, even, retaliation for future terrorist attacks on
> > American city.
> >
> > For all the geekspeak about networks and ecosystems, and millenarian
> > boasting about minimal, robotic warfare, the United States is
> > becoming a terror state pure and simple: a 21st century Assyria with
> > laptops and modems.
> >
> > Mike Davis is the author of City of Quartz, Ecology of Fear, and most
> > recently, Dead Cities, among other works. He now lives in San Diego.
> >
> > [This article first appeared on http://www.tomdispatch.com, a weblog
> > of the Nation Institute, which offers a steady flow of alternate
> > sources, news and opinion from Tom Engelhardt, long time editor in
> > publishing and author of The End of Victory Culture.]
> >
> > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]