[Nettime-bold] Re: <nettime> what's in a mission?

[Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>]

This name has been eliminated already in deference to Islam.

Alan

On Fri, 21 Sep 2001, Pit Schultz wrote:

> operation infinite justice
>
> somebody over here said immediatly: "bad ad agency..". *operation desert storm*
> had some kind of glory, a territorial reference and an intense temporality.
> today's mission title carries a new quality, one which is "beyond the art of
> war" and "beyond imagination" carrying a strange mix of biblical revenge and
> flashy totality.
>
> - isn't infinity a claim a worldly government should leave to the religious
>    institutions and their leaders? even if we "want to 'hunt'em' down" it
>    shouldn't take forever. the *infinite* fight with the evil is a task for
>    church represenatives. in our time of sensitive cultural differences
>    insulting the religion of "the enemy" looks like longing for a medieval
>    crusade but not like professional militarism. it looks like a mirror of
>    fanatics.
>
> - infinity is not a particular lucky goal to aim at in an economic context.
>    the promise of an *infinite goal* in an 'open market' with small margins
>    and tight business plans will simply confuse investors who just
>    came out of the end of the "long boom" which lasted too shortly. people
>    on the other side have to spend their money and not keep it for the future.
>    so the desire to consume now becomes the first duty of a patriot. to
>    generate consumer confidence is the true territory to fight for and needs
>    completly new forms of warfare. investing into transports, low wage work
>    and high-tech weapon industry alone will hardly change this situation. it
>    needs a psychological element which promises more worldly satisfaction than
>    "infinite justice" which simply sounds like "peaceful death".
>
> - as "justice" can only exist in reference to an opposite, e.g. "injustice",
>    the concept of "infinite justice" carries a suicidal tendency.
>    once the goal will be fully achieved and injustice is defeated
>    the concept vanishes. if it is not there anymore it is
>    indistinguishable with its former opposite.
>
> - which kind of justice? is there really only *one* in the world? justice
>    according to which law, culture, country? to god's law? which god?
>    old testament? koran? pre-christian? justice according to which court
>    or criminal evidence? justice of the stronger one? law of the war?
>    this simply sounds like confusion and a lot of 'collateral damage'.
>
> - if it is not a god in which place infinity is fought for,
>    it could be just a lobby group or "luzifer". for a mythical conclusion
>    similar to this, the composer k.h. stockhausen is witchhunted at the moment
>    by the german cultural bureaucracy. there is a need for alternative
>    narratives in order to prevent a deadly redundancy experienced after
>    the shocking events. a democracy which is 90% in favour of revenge
>    must be in a state of a trauma or hypnosis.
>
> - *infinite justice* is not a military campaign but a neverending analysis,
>    it tries to merge with a conservative magic spell and remains a title
>    for a cheap western movie, it spreads open an omnipresent panopticon
>    of planetary hegemony and has to rely heavily on the 'intelligence'
>    of all kinds of allies, it comes with work ethics which reminds
>    to the mythos of sysiphos but doesn't come with unlimited resources.
>
> - infinite justice in time, from the past to the future reveils an absurd
>    sense of the own roots of ethics and power in history, one of an
>    absolute justice not even the pope could claim for. what kind of
>    advisors wrote this program?
>
> - the only healthy wish and hopelessly hopeful option of a
>    mission under such a title might be a childish one. the one of a war as
>    an organized swindle, a demonstration of power, a treaty of tricksters,
>    the militarization of disneyland, a gigantic media opera in the style
>    of a 'rogue spear' computer game, to gain consumer confidence, with
>    digital blood and extensive computer fx establishing a distance between
>    fiction and facts but keeping poeple alive, limiting the number of
>    'innocent' deaths. for the ritualisation of this new type of warfare
>    there is no cultural consensus yet - it has to be created.
>
> WHY? will *we* finish the job? will young american soldiers
> discover that they are guided by a remote controled cyborg? how to
> exit this loop? the only way to stop this deadly program might be failure.
> an alternative: change the title (and doctrine) together with the
> christian fundamentalist advisors...
>
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