The recent revelation by Wikileaks of voluminous ugly details of America’s miserable “war” in Afghanistan will provide yet another demonstration of one of our great national illusions: that America is a peace-loving nation that attacks other countries only with the greatest reluctance and seeks peace whenever possible. I predict that the Wikileaks Afghanistan documents will have no impact whatsoever on the course of the war, and that the only political consequences will be the further harassment of whistle-blowers and more moves to criminalize free speech.
For modern Americans, the purpose of war is war. It is the extreme violence we inflict on others that is the end goal of a belligerent and angry nation. The coupling of this violence with rational goals, political, economic, or strategic, has long since vanished, and we are increasingly exposed as the world’s greatest collection of violence junkies. That is why, perversely, the more shocking and ugly the revelations about the Afghan war become, the less likely they are to end that so-called war.
Afghanistan has become a theme park of deadly high-tech force for America. Thrilling GI Combat stories from Afghanistan serve a steady supply of blood and guts to violence-hungry America, and this is well understood by Obama’s mob control technicians. It is simply inconceivable for Obama to give up this war. To do so would be to rob angry America of its last remaining outlet for large scale state-sponsored killing.
