Precision Targets: GPS and the Militarization of Everyday Life is a collaborative multi-media piece created by Caren Kaplan, Erik Loyer, and Ezra Clayton Daniels. Through a series of vignettes, it explores the ways that dual use technologies like GPS are used in military and civilian spheres and how these technologies increasingly blur the distinction between these spheres. As she argues:
the circulation of GPS between military and civilian use is instructive if we want to understand better the ways in which government and business cooperate not only to make war but to create consumers. Most importantly, in this way, people who have no particular interest in military projects or nationalism may find themselves through their use of technology in everyday life participating in the culture of war: through ways of seeing, forms of entertainment, and modes of communication.
The argument is provocative and compelling. And what I particularly like is that Kaplan is able to demonstrate a nuance put forward by David Campbell and Michael J. Shapiro more broadly with respect to visual cultures. That is, rather than getting stuck in an 'either-or' understanding of technologies like GPS, it is important to understand how they underpin contemporary military practices while potentially offering a means of critically engaging with them.
Moreover, the format is engaging and accessible to an extent that traditional methods of presenting arguments are not. Thus, Precision Targets is also a catalyst for people like myself to think about how we go about presenting our research and the sorts of platforms that might convey our messages better than traditional publishing outlets.
'Barcelona Rebels Against Tourist Invasion' by Giles Tremlett at guardian.co.uk
'The Art of War: Deleuze, Guattari, Debord, and the Israeli Defence Force' by Eyal Weizman at mutemagazine
'Report of the Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary, and Arbitrary Killings: Special Report on Targeted Killings' by Philip Alston at the United Nations Human Rights Council
'Ten Things that Terrify Right-Wingers' by Joshua Holland at truthout.org
'Is NATO to Blame for Russia's Afghan Heroin Problem' by Simon Shuster at time.com
As mentioned on GamePolitics.com, earlier this week, the UK's Channel 4 put together an interesting report on the use of Predator drones by the US Army. Many of the key issues are identified and discussed:
the legality of drone strikes
the appropriateness of the recourse to technological solutions for political problems
how (military) technologies become gendered and tied to conceptions of honor
the problem of proliferation (if you think this is far fetched, check out the DIY Drone community who build kit for recreational/non-military purposes)
But what is perhaps most fascinating is the claim that drones are changing military culture and tactical doctrine to the point where they are now referred to as 'Army crack'.
Given that drones are a dual-use technology that also allow for the overt and covert use of force, what might it mean for understandings of modern warfare--or the popular identification of war itself--if the US military is indeed 'addicted' to the use of drones? Moreover, what happens to our spatial understanding of war-fighting when combat can be initiated and completed by individuals situated thousands of miles away from the theater of operation? Will actions traditionally considered to be acts of war become recoded as something else? What will be the political consequences of such a recoding?
These are but some of the questions that continue to motivate my project on assassination and targeted killing...
Many thanks to my colleague Martin Coward for alerting me to this story.
There is an interesting interview over at Democracy Now! with Josh Stieber, a former member of Bravo Company 2-16, the unit whose actions are documented in the Wikileaks Collateral Murder video. In addition to providing tactical context , he confirms a point that I made in my previous post on this incident: it is broader political, cultural, strategic, and legal structures that make horrible events like this possible.
Thus, if we find what we see in the video shocking, outrageous, shameful, and morally reprehensible, it is not sufficient to pathologize the soldiers or argue that proper procedures were not followed. Rather, we need to focus on the political imperatives, military culture, forms of training, and strategic objectives that allow, enable, encourage, and condone these kinds of killings.
In 2009, as a part of its season of violence, BB2 aired a documentary called Fighting Passions in which five former British military personnel who had killed in the line of duty discussed their views on combat. Many of the points raised by Josh Steiber echoed through their individual testimonies. Similarly, Joanna Burke'sAn Intimate History of Killing: Face to Face Killing in 20th Century Warfare also sheds light on how killing in war and acts of collateral murder come to be normalized.
Warning: The images and the language in the videos are upsetting. Viewer discretion is advised.
The video released by Wikileaks earlier this week that provides graphic coverage of a 2007 US helicopter attack in Iraq that killed 12 people--including two Reuters journalists--and injured two children, has sparked debate and discussion around the world. Some have focused on what the prominence of an organization like Wikileaks might mean for existing--and increasingly antiquated--media outlets. Others have noted the uncomfortable familiarity that these images have, given that similar depictions and experiences that demand the erasure of social distinctions are often at the heart of contemporary war gaming. And for some, the release of this video provides another opportunity to mourn the loss of an outstanding photo-journalist.
Unsurprisingly, given the horrendous consequences of the attack and the sadistic pleasure with which it was undertaken, the bulk of the attention has focused on whether the actions of the Apache pilots in the video were counter to the American rules of engagement (ROE) and/or to international humanitarian law (or what are commonly known as the laws of war). And in many ways, this incident is fast becoming a Rorschach test for where one sits on the political spectrum.
For members of what WIlliam Connolly has dubbed the Evangelical-Capitalist Resonance Machine--the sort of people who can excuse Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, or drone killings without blinking an eye--this video is nothing more than footage of the 'dogs of war' doing what they've been trained to do.
For many others around the world, there is a shared sentiment that what the video depicts is nothing less than a war crime. And this is the position taken by Wikileaks and its affiliate Collateral Murder who have provided an excellent archive of additional background information including the ROE at that time, pictures of various weapons systems in question, pictures of photographic equipment, and an update on the two children who were horrifically injured in the attack--and whose father was killed while attempting to save Namir Noor-Eldeen.
For me though, the debate over legality and the notion that a recourse to existing legal frameworks is the best avenue to address the issues raised is frustrating. To put it bluntly, the recourse to existing law is a misapplication of effort towards the wrong issue. The very idea that the law can unequivocally determine the injustice rendered in an incident like this rests upon false assumptions about what ROEs and the laws of war secure and how they go about doing so.
The real issue for me raised here is that ROEs and the laws of war are not primarily in place to protect civilians--though in certain situations they may do so. Rather, they are designed to protect state military forces by offering a suite of procedural mechanisms that if applied with an appearance of good faith, position them outside the scope of legal liability--at least so long as they win the conflict in which they are engaged.
When one looks at the actual text of the ROEs and the relevant laws of war as codified in the Hague and Geneva Conventions, one clearly sees the latitude given for massive losses of civilian life so long as procedures based on reasonable 'calculations' that themselves are based on information 'reasonably' available to commanders and soldiers at the time are followed. And you can hear this playing out in the video.
The pilots have been trained very well. They do an excellent job of providing a running commentary of their interpretation of events. By detailing what they claim to be seeing, their actions are positioned well within the bounds of the ROE and even the laws of war. They identify the people as armed insurgents. They identify actions undertaken by these 'insurgents' as a prelude to hostile engagement. They even develop an on-the-fly narrative for understanding the appearance of the van.
And given the situation in Iraq at the time, the limits of the technology that they are using, and the potential threat to their own lives, one would be hard pressed to prove in a military or international criminal court that any of these assumptions were unreasonable, though we now know most of them to be entirely untrue.
My argument--in part then--is that the belief that ROEs and the laws of war are the solution to the problem,
that somehow if only armed forces would abide by them all the time, that tragedies
like this one would be avoided, is completely misplaced. ROEs and the
laws of war are a part of the problem.
They legitimate the killing of civilians through the incorporation of simple procedural mechanisms as much as they protect civilians from arbitrary slaughter. Unfortunately, the Evangelical-Capitalist Resonance Machine is closer to getting this right than other political forces. War is horrible, brutal, and tragic. It is defined by its senseless butchery. It is to paraphrase Giorgio Agamben, the designation and dissolution of bare life on a massive scale.
What this video shows then is what the practices of modern warfare look like and their unthinkable consequences even when embedded within the constraints of international humanitarian law. The picture is grim and disturbing and becomes even more so once one realizes that this is likely but one incident amongst thousands of others that have transpired since the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. This is part of what makes this footage so unsettling.
However, if those with good intentions can redirect their efforts, there are some potential avenues to initiate real change that come forward from this incident now being in the public domain.
First, this footage does an excellent job of undermining the focus that the Evangelical-Capitalist Resonance Machine and tabloid geopolitics has placed on 'how' we fight wars as evidenced by the media obsession-- since Gulf War I--with military technology, an obsession that has served to depoliticize why we are actually fighting in the minds of many political constituencies.
The Wikileaks video very graphically challenges the notion of 'clean' warfare, surgical strikes, and targeted killing brought about by the development of smart weapons, precision guided munitions, and surveillance technologies that are supposed to have virtually eliminated the possibility that civilians might be killed in military operations. Thus, the 'how' of war may once again be re-politicized within Western publics for the first time since Vietnam.
Second, once the tactics of fighting become politicized, it is not long before the reasons why we must fight are unable to elide scrutiny. This scrutiny will hopefully not just be limited to the final stages of Iraq or the continuing mission in Afghanistan but will serve to incite the voices of 'never again' the next time that military force sold on the premise of being a quick fix to complex and protracted political problems.
Third, while some have interpreted the cover-up and misdirection orchestrated by the US military with respect to this incident as an admission of legal wrong-doing, I am inclined to perceive it as something similar but qualitatively different: shame. And the presence of shame--even if unarticulated--is an admission that what transpired is
ultimately unjust.
The actions undertaken in this attack may just have been legally permissible--and I'm sure that there is a legion of military lawyers and former generals on call to tell everyone just how legal it was--but this does not hide the fact that opening fire on these people, waiting in anticipation for a mortally wounded human being to do something that enables you to finish them off, and then killing the individuals who tried to help him, is still callous, brutal, dishonorable, and unnecessary. It was completely, and unequivocally, shameful.
When ROEs and the laws of war at best provide a procedural form of justice--which if you or a loved one has been injured or killed because of a military operation, is no justice at all--we are left with the hope that in the end, at least the perpetrators might feel ashamed of what they have done. And in the absence of effective structures of accountability, the expression of shame and regret is sometimes all that can be offered.
Perhaps then, the legacy of the Wikileaks video might be that it catalyzes expressions of shame by the perpetrators of these acts and by Western publics who have allowed these horrors to happen. And it may be that expressions of shame and regret offer the potential to enable the slow processes of healing and reconciliation that rests in the hands of those who have been grievously wronged by the standard operating procedures of the war on terror.
Update: Over at martincoward.net, an excellent analysis of Collateral Murder by my colleague Martin Coward raises some very important issues and offers some constructive criticism of points raised here.
As information about Operation Moshtarak in Afghanistan--a coalition offensive purportedly against a key Taliban stronghold of 80,000 residents called Marjah--becomes available from web muckrakers like BagnewsNotes and Truthout, I can't help but think of the following passage from Jean Baudrillard's essay on Simulacra and Simulations:
The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth--it is the truth
which conceals that there is none. The simulacrum is true...
...Abstraction today is no longer that of the map, the double, the mirror
or the concept. Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential
being or a substance. It is the generation by models of a real without
origin or reality: a hyperreal. The territory no longer precedes the map,
nor survives it. Henceforth, it is the map that precedes the territory
- precession of simulacra - it is the map that engenders the territory
and if we were to revive the fable today, it would be the territory whose
shreds are slowly rotting across the map. It is the real, and not the map,
whose vestiges subsist here and there, in the deserts which are no longer
those of the Empire, but our own. The desert of the real itself.
In many ways, we can see Afghanistan as a governing assemblage of simulacra: democracy, humanitarianism, human rights, community capacity building, reconstruction, and the war on terror. Unfortunately, the bodies of the dead, maimed, sick, and injured--from all sides--remind us that the desert of the real is also a very brutal place.
Photo credit: Paolo Alfieri (his flickr-stream of Afghan landscapes is pretty stunning)
