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The last time I wrote something like this, we weren't at war. Our environment wasn't being overrun by a tyrannical administration headed by a puppet president whose only real job is to pretend that he thinks he's doing the right thing. I hadn't read all that I have now, and I hadn't sent a cousin off to Iraq to risk his life for something that doesn't actually affect anyone in this country. We weren't approaching the most important presidential election in America's history. We weren't in dire need of a change.
Today, I see that there is a severe cause for alarm. We've initiated an attack on a country that did nothing to us, based on false intelligence of weapons of mass destruction that likely didn't exist in that country for almost a decade. People in every corner of the planet have, many times over the last year, demonstrated their anger with the United States by the millions in simultaneous, global protests. We are, in simple terms, pissing off the world. The world only takes this kind of crap for so long.
Of course, the war itself isn't the actual problem. It's not a pretty situation, but it's far from being something that will cause widespread devastation. Instead, what I think this war represents is the result of the very thing that's been haunting civilization since its inception.
That thing is civilization itself.
Civilization, which is something that's only existed as we know it for about 8,000 to 10,000 years, is dependent on agriculture and hierarchical authority to exist. In any civilization, from Mesopotamia to ancient Egypt and from the Roman Empire to the United States of modern day, you will see that this is the case. Governments headed by a single person or a small group of people in a top-down fashion, fed on agriculture, usually created and expanded through warfare and domination, changed through violent revolution by a group of people who simply build it back up to almost the exact same system. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
Of course, today we don't come out and say that we're going to war over resources or ideological differences. We cite United Nations guidelines, mass graves and weapons of mass destruction, national threats, connections to terrorists, and the like. You'll rarely anymore see a nation-state say “we want your land, so we're going to take it,” or “We don't like your religious beliefs, so we're going to enslave your people and convert you.” No, today that is considered barbaric and simply wrong in the eyes of the public. At least, that's what we tell ourselves.
But is there really any difference between today's wars and the wars of old? Only on the surface. Today, it's necessary to equate or connect your so-called enemy with terrorists in order to gain support for an attack. This becomes very obvious when we see who is being attacked by governments today: Basque separatists in France, Chechens in Russia, Papuan separatists in the Polynesian Islands, Al-Queda, Kashmir, Taiwan, Tibet, Cyprus… there's really no need to continue, because the list goes on pretty long.
Of course, I'm not saying that these people have never committed any terrorist acts, or that terrorists among them haven't ever committed violent acts in the name of separation. In fact, Al-Queda is obviously mostly a terrorist group, and many of the Chechens are terrorists as well. However, there are civilian supporters – many of them – involved with all of these groups. Many of these supporters never instigate or call for any violence at all. Mostly, these people just want to separate from the societies they've been alienated from.
What follows when separatists make their demands clear is a typical response from a social entity – it revolts against the separation, and violence begins. Just think about it, what is the phrase so often used by President Bush and his administration to describe the terrorists?
"Enemies of Civilization"
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