To stress one's own love of peace is always the
close concern of those who have instigated war.
But he who wants peace should speak of war. He
should speak of the past one ... and, above all,
he should speak of the coming one.
A remarkable consensus appears to have emerged on
the Left: that in the context of the war on
terror the distinction between war and peace has
been destabilized. Alain Badiou suggests that the
category of 'war' has become so obscured that
ancient capitals can be bombed without serving
notice to anyone of the fact that war has been
declared. 'As such, the continuity of war is
slowly established, whereas in the past declaring
war would, to the contrary, have expressed the
present of a discontinuity. Already, this
continuity has rendered war and peace
indistinguishable.' 'In the end', notes Badiou,
'these American wars ... are not really
distinguishable from the continuity of "peace".'
Antonio Negri and Eric Alliez likewise comment
that 'peace appears to be merely the continuation
of war by other means', adding that because
peace, 'otherwise known as global war ... is a
permanent state of exception', war now 'presents
itself as peace-keeping' and has thereby reversed
their classical relationship. Their reference to
a concept made popular following Agamben's State
of Exception is far from unusual in this new
consensus. 'We no longer have wars in the old
sense of a regulated conflict between sovereign
states', notes Zizek. Instead, what remains are
either âstruggles between groups of Homo sacer
... which violate the rules of universal human
rights, do not count as wars proper, and call for
"humanitarian pacifist" intervention by Western
powers', or 'direct attacks on the USA or other
representatives of the new global order, in which
case, again, we do not have wars proper, merely
"unlawful combatants" criminally resisting the
forces of universal order. Hence 'the old
Orwellian motto "War is Peace" finally becomes reality.'
<http://www.radicalphilosophy.com/default.asp?channel_id=2369&editorial_id=28991>Link
--
Posted By johannes to
<http://www.monochrom.at/english/2010/03/war-as-peace-peace-as-pacification.htm>monochrom
at 3/19/2010 07:48:00 PM
