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The age of meta-war: the distancing effects of techno-weaponry and a sanitised global media are altering the structural basis of modern warfare.

Article Excerpt
There are a number of dimensions to the Second Gulf War that makes it stunningly unique. Never before has an invading military force been greeted by such sustained cultural-political opposition before the war had begun, including outsiders travelling into or staying in the zone of conflict as human shields. Without melodrama or undue emphasis, one Australian clergyman said that he would not be going into an air-raid shelter because the vast majority of Iraqi civilians would not have that luxury.

Never before has a territorial invasion of a sovereign state been rationalised in terms of the necessity of war on a non-state-based, non-territorial network of enemies that have no documented connection to that state. Afghanistan set the stage for such a development, but then the rhetoric began with the rationale of apprehending a terrorist rather than effecting regime change. This time the rhetoric has turned to the possible proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

Never before have such strange bedfellows found themselves gathered together to defend a pre-emptive strike. Jose Ramos Horta, Nobel Prize winner in 1996, effectively sided with his old b'te noir Henry Kissinger, when he argued that `if the anti-war movement dissuades the US and its allies from going to war with Iraq, it will have contributed to the peace of the dead'.

And never before has the will to global power been expressed through such blatantly contradictory language in the speeches and writing of the expeditionary leaders.

On the one hand, we have heard the rhetoric of unstinting patience in the face of an evil threat, of...

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