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The outbreak of a new war becomes its own reality television show. The media rarely or ever questions the participant’s strategy, objective, or consequences. The same military generals whose foresight and judgment were proven wrong on Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, Somalia, Iraq, and Afghanistan speak in the same cheerleading tones, and the media plays the dupe as long as the ratings remain high.
After $3 trillion and 7,000 American lives already wasted in the name of defeating shadows, and with a region set alight due to our earlier military interference, one would expect the voice of the anti-war movement to be omnipotent. Other than the courageous but ultimately futile protestations of a few brave CodePink women, the voices of dissent are silenced for no one really wants an interruption to their favorite new show.
After nearly a decade of sitting idly in the wardrobe, war is suddenly fashionable again. The brutal televised murders of Western journalists have sanctified the cause. “It is the first death which infects everyone with a feeling of being threatened. It is impossible to overrate the part played by the first dead man in the kindling of wars. Rulers who want to unleash war know very well that they must procure or invent a first victim,” wrote novelist Elias Cannetti about the origins of the WWII.
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