<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=windows-1252"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;"><div class="Center">
<div id="Outline">
<img src="http://www.counterpunch.org/images/flag-print.gif"></div><div id="Outline">Weekend Edition November 21-23, 2014
<div class="subheadlinestyle">Head Games</div>
<div class="article-title">The First Un-War</div>
<div class="mainauthorstyle">by JEFFREY ST. CLAIR </div>
<div id="main-text"><p>Picture the circumstances. You’re
evaporating politically, less and less remains of you every week. The
nation itself is quivering with anxiety, freaking out over each new
virus or decapitation posted on Instagram. The economy, six years after
the crash, continues to be catatonic: half the GDP generated by
liquidation sales, the other half driven by enterprises that require
HazMat suits. There’s scant hope of finding an exit from that gnawing
vortex, not with the gang running the Hill these days.</p><p>Some of your closest allies have jumped ship, and shanked you in the
back on the way out the door with bitchy tell-all memoirs that excoriate
you for not heeding their advice. The rest of the inner circle seems to
have lost faith: faith in the office, faith that anything will get
better, faith in you.</p><p>Yes, put yourself in Obama’s chair, right there in the cockpit of the
Oval Office, under these tremulous circumstances. What would you do
when you’re flatlining and there’s no quick fix, no patch, no system
upgrade that will reboot the program? What is to be done? You unlock
that secret drawer and pull out the old playbook, the binding worn by
numerous desperate hands before your own, you pencil in some
innovations, a few of your signature moves and then let rip by declaring
a new war.</p><p>Well, not exactly “declaring” war. That would be problematic. <em>Hmm.</em>
There is that sweeping Authorization for Use of Military Force cooked
up by Bush’s crack team of lawyers back in 2001, the one that sanctioned
unilateral war across the Middle East from Afghanistan to Somalia to
Iraq. Of course, you once denounced that very document as “constitutional over-reach” but who will hold those naïve opinions against you now?<a href="http://store.counterpunch.org/product-category/books/"><img class="alignright wp-image-71798 size-full" src="http://www.counterpunch.org/wp-content/dropzone/2014/09/trayvons.jpg" alt="trayvons" height="271" width="175"></a></p><p>In any event, this won’t be a war like Bush’s. In fact, it won’t be a “war” at all. It will be history’s first <em>un-war,</em>
a military action of higher moral purpose, designed not for acquisition
of land or resources or as a punitive measure or as a settling of old
scores. These carefully calibrated missile and drone strikes will be
entirely benign, computer-targeted only at the forces of darkness, to
keep them from defiling the bodies of the innocent. These bombs are
meant to protect not destroy, each one carrying a Humanitarian Exemption
for any troublesome collateral damage.</p><p>But what’s the pretext? How can military intervention be sold to a
war-weary nation that knows next to nothing about ISIS? When 9 out of 10
members of your own cabinet couldn’t name the leader of the new
Caliphate. Fear is good. Yes, fear is the ticket. Turn the creeping
national anxiety to your own advantage. Use the very anonymity of ISIS
to hype the spook factor.</p><p>Bush labored too hard to market the Iraq war. He had to resort to
far-fetched claims about Saddam palling around with Bin Laden or
stockpiling an arsenal of chemical weapons and suitcase nukes. Bush had
to stretch credibility to the snapping point.</p><p>But you’re smarter. There’s no reason to invoke mysterious subplots
like the Nigerian yellowcake of Cheney’s apocalyptic fantasies. You know
that the intimate fears are the ones that haunt us most. The suburban
disquietude that plays out in so many movies on the Lifetime channel:
the fear of intruders, of being a captive, of being held by violent
thugs with no capacity for empathy, of being bound and gagged and
decapitated with a scimitar. Those are the sinister scenarios that
strike right at the gut and trouble our sleep.</p><p>Let the media sell the war for you. Ratcheting the fear index is the
press’s new métier. They will portray ISIS as a kind of zombie army,
capable of engaging in acts of unrivalled depravity. They will even
provide the visuals, the terrifying optics of black flags, beheadings
and gun-toting masked teenagers roaring into remote desert towns like
Marlon Brando’s gang in <em>The Wild Ones.</em></p><p>There’s no one to oppose you. Even Red State America recoils at the
bellowing of the boots-on-the-ground right, represented by the
increasingly psychotic ravings of John McCain. And the anti-war Left
collapsed faster than the Iraqi army. The field is yours to take.</p><p>The deep advantage of the un-war is that it’s largely a hidden
operation, where most of the dirty work plays out in the shadow realm of
hunter-killer squads, mercenaries and private contractors. Your hands
remain clean. The un-war is a low-risk affair that yields spectacular
profits for those with the sense to maintain healthy positions in
Pentagon ponzi schemes.</p><p>The un-war is a conflict without a deflating parade of American body
bags, where the lethal risk will only materialize years, perhaps
decades, later, in a time-released form of blowback—probably, it must be
said, finally exploding in some mall in the heartland. But who will
ever recall the spark that lit that distant fuse?</p><p>The problem is: you’re Barack Obama. Despite his impressive body
count (and, yes, the Pentagon is in the body count business again),
Obama just can’t seem to acquire any cred as the stone-cold killer he
is. Perhaps it’s the halo of righteousness he coolly assumes about the
sanctity of each operation. Obama’s piety is his tell, his giveaway, his
consciousness of guilt. No one really wants their Commander-in-Chief,
their Drone Czar, to consult the homilies of Aquinas before each
killshot.</p><p>So Obama made all the right moves, but still continues to
dissolve before our eyes. He launched his un-war, but was un-done by the
karmic vagaries of politics. <em>Namaste.</em></p><p><em><strong>Jeffrey St. Clair</strong> is editor of CounterPunch. His new book is <i><a href="http://store.counterpunch.org/product/killing-trayvons/">Killing Trayvons: an Anthology of American Violence</a></i> (with JoAnn Wypijewski and Kevin Alexander Gray). He can be reached at: <a href="mailto:sitka@comcast.net">sitka@comcast.net</a>.</em></p><div> <br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div> <br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div>
</div>
</div>
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div></body></html>