Last Days in the Kennels for The Dogs of War

by Theron Dash

Caesar's spirit, ranging for revenge,
With Ate by his side come hot from hell,
Shall in these confines with a monarch's voice
Cry 'Havoc', and let slip the dogs of war.
Julius Caesar III, 1
- William Shakespeare


In yet another example of accidental intelligence, the Bushies managed to make the war they haven't launched yet into boring old news. The American attention span having already been exhausted by the heavy fever in the fall, it's as if it all happened already and we're on to the next thing. But it hasn't happened; this is the last lull before what could be the perfect storm. And it's coming.

Come the Ides of March, the dogs of war will be frothing at the mouth all over the Gulf region and the Middle East, and who knows where else. There are too many weapons, too much anger and ambition, and warfare feeds on itself, the frenzy trumps judgment and overrides other considerations. When the biggest bully on the planet is talking the talk and bombing the bombs, everybody gets permission to cry havoc---which in Shakespeare's time meant to fight until you've destroyed everyone and everything.

There will be valiant headlines, and there will be excitedly portentous news voices and endless speedfreak telexpert chatter, and once it's over, if it ever is, we'll find out what really happened in a few months or a decade or pretty much never.

At first we'll get the pretty stuff---the war is hell if hell is a good slasher movie stuff---but some collateral damage will seep in. There's a story today about American military pilots in Afghanistan being pressured to take amphetamines, making them a bit trigger happy when they mistook Canadians for al Qaeda, or maybe for zombies from the stratosphere. An Air Force spokesperson referred to the "Go pills" as a "fatigue management tool." That speed makes folks meaner than a junkyard dog, as the saying goes, is pretty much common knowledge, and doubtless hasn't escaped the notice of the dogs of war.

We're already hearing the fears of veterans of the first Bushie Gulf War that this time, like that time, all the nice smart bombs acting just like video games on TV will distract from the massive equipment failures and shoddiness, like gas masks that don't work, that harmed the unknown soldiers of that desert storm. Then there's the Gulf War Syndrome, until recently classified as a mental illness suffered by low class recruits and news directors during sweeps periods. Now it turns out that all those people really did get awfully sick, probably from chemical exposure. Whether all the energy and money expended on denying the problem existed hampered efforts to solve it for the next batch of cannon & chemical fodder is something we'll just have to wait and see, if we ever find out at all.

Soldiers have been killed, maimed and sickened in all modern wars because of shoddiness by suppliers and by the screwups of the military machine, the ambitions of politicians and generals and other careerists. Maybe you won't read that in the latest gauzy nostalgia about the Greatest Generation, but look at some closer to contemporary and closer to the ground accounts of World War II and it's there in abundance. Soldiers come home cynical not only because of all the carnage they've witnessed. There are veterans who never saw combat at all whose memories are bitter, and who also don't like to remember or talk about it.

One of AmericanSamizat's international correspondents sent along a report from the Guardian that also quotes a Newsweek story, concerning America's 82nd Airborne division in Afghanistan. After coming under heavy unanticipated fire and suffering losses probably because some of their Afghan allies betrayed them, the 82nd went on a scorched earth rampage through villages. One military observer bypassed Vietnam to go back to the Mexican war for a comparable wave of destruction. As far as I know, not much has been made of this on U.S. media. But then, it's more fun to take pictures on an aircraft carrier.

This war is particularly inflammatory because the bar has been set so low on why it's going to be fought. The official reasons, that is. Now anybody who thinks somebody else is evil, or is afraid somebody else will get bigger and better weapons, or is preparing weapons that might someday threaten them, even if they are preparing them with such intense secrecy that foreigners trained to detect them can't find much of a trace so far, well--that's good enough to start a war that will costs millions of dollars and many lives, though a lot of those will belong to people who won't be counted in death any better than they counted in life.

But of course everybody in the world knows the real reason, and so twenty-first century enlightened America endorses one of the chief motives for war of the 10 thousand years of so-called civilization: greed. Great to see we've come so far.

Once it gets going, war is a disease epidemic. People who think of themselves as normal do incredibly awful things for what seems like rational reasons. They put themselves, or are put into situations where they will kill anyone and destroy anything that seems to threaten their lives or the lives of their buddies, and pretty soon anything that threatens their military careers or their honorable discharge. Meanwhile, people who find themselves surrounded by war will fight back, and some will attack anybody they have a grudge against-or have had a grudge against in the last five thousand years---regardless. Permission has been granted by the dogs of war, and the international arms industry---including the good old USA's---have supplied them with the teeth and the jaws and the claws.

Why is it that every generation has to learn all this for themselves?

The Big Dogs Won't Hunt

Some things on the Homefront are apt to be predictable---the increase in latitude for government intrusions and the increase in intolerance for dissent, the viciousness with which dissenters are attacked and peace advocates are insulted for being wusses or (worse) liberal-humanists---but other aspects could be different. Modern industrialized war used to stimulate the domestic economy, but it's not clear that will happen this time, even if the fighting spreads and is prolonged. Postmodern war might have the same effect as other prosperous postmodern economic engines: it might make an obscene amount of money for very few, and subtract from most everybody else.

Catching bits and pieces of end of the year economic news over the holiday left a nagging impression that the world economy is in much more precarious condition than the daily surprise ups and downs news of the media would indicate (all those chirpy anchors who are surprised by everything, but in a good chirpy way).

In the U.S., governor after governor began the year talking about budget shortfalls. How the states got into so much debt after half a decade of boom is amazing, especially since the Bushies weren't in charge of all of them. State and local government is a major economic force in many places, particularly the most vulnerable. And it is there---in programs for the poor, sick, undereducated, elderly and rural---that corporate big city fat cat lobbyist-conscious pols are going to go for their cuts. In terms of the economy the effectiveness of these cuts will all be cosmetic and psychological, if you believe that big business has anything sophisticated enough to be called a psyche. But in terms of people's lives, the local economies and the economy in general, the effects will be 100% bad.

We're also beginning to see just how weakened many megacorporations were by the stock market crashes (that everybody who plays Lotto knew were coming but apparently investors have their own version of war fever) and their stupid investments and greedy takeovers. With not so much available cash, with debts for stock and ownership in worthless companies accompanied by their own debt, they are becoming increasingly demanding. They're demanding you had over your money to them. Just don't ask for much in return. In fact, in certain industries, you'd better not ask for anything.

The computer industry leads the way in the consumer field. They may be tapdancing now, but the customer still isn't getting much of a break. They've "upgradeable" a joke. Buy a new machine every few months or forget it. And software? Hey-Microsoft has a profit margin of 85% on Windows and 78% for Office. That's the cost of business.

But even Microsoft can't hold a candle to the insurance industry. They demand 100% profit, minus costs for envelopes and stamps (all deductible, though). If you dare to make a claim, they are highly insulted. They up your premium or they inform you that you no longer will enjoy the privilege of sending them your money and getting nothing in return. You'll have to burn it in your own fireplace.

Too bad it isn't that easy. Make a claim on your car insurance, or even if somebody else makes a claims on theirs for damage in accident that was their fault but you were involved---it don't matter, your car insurance premium goes up. But if you want to drive a car, you are required to carry insurance.

Homeowners in California and I assume elsewhere find that if they make an ordinary claim they risk losing their home insurance, and thanks to computer databases, they are likely to be refused by every other insurance carrier in the galaxy. (Maybe they'll be taken on as a "high risk," and honored with tripled premiums or worse). If nobody will insure their house, they can't even sell it. This is pretty serious. For the vast majority of Americans with any equity, it's almost all in their homes. It's their material wealth, their economic stability. Unless of course they lose their jobs for a long time, then it won't matter.

At least one of these insurance companies (State Farm) says it can't insure homes in California because it loses money here. Turns out that State Farm lost a bundle on the stock market and on acquisitions. Somebody has to pay for those mistakes, and it ain't going to be the folks who made them. Call it the fortunes of war.