Tag Archives: War

In AfPak, Iraq and elsewhere: If you break it, you buy it

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Since the two GBU-38 500lb bombs struck the fuel tankers in Kunduz province, Afghanistan and engulfed by-standing civilians in a giant fireball on September 4, 2009, what have we really learned?

I fear that amid all the self-righteous blameshifting and  frantic second-guessing of the attack, which was launched from an American fighter jet, but ordered by the German Oberst Klein, we haven’t learned nearly enough.

We haven’t learned nearly enough about this mayhem of a failed state and the chaos that even the well-intentioned regime changes or peacemaking bring.

We haven’t learned nearly enough about the nightmares, that result all too often, when the high and mighty West comes to the rescue.

Tank Graffiti, via Flickr, originally uploaded by Luodanli

Tank Graffiti, via Flickr, originally uploaded by Luodanli

ISAF, MNF-I Go Home? – not so fast.

This isn’t a simple question of surging or withdrawing: from this nightmare, there is no waking up.

We need to learn a lesson, of what happens when we disrupt and exploit divided, traditional societies, equip them with technology and weaponry far outmatching their level of development. From this responsibility, there is no escaping.

It’s a simple lesson, we all accept before entering a store: if you break it, you buy it.

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Failure in Iraq: It’s Hobbes First, Then Jefferson/Madison

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On May 1st, 2003 when then President George W. Bush, declared the end of major combat operations and the mission Iraqi Freedom to be “accomplished” aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier, much of the failure and dying in Iraq still lay ahead.

Mission Accomplished Banner on USS Abraham Lincoln

Mission Accomplished Banner on the USS Abraham Lincoln

The invasion, starting on March 19, 2003, had been a remarkable military success, on schedule and with comparatively few casualties (139 US troops and approximately 7,500 civilians before May 1, 2003 according to CNN and Iraq Body Count estimates, respectively).

In the insurgency that followed (and has recently slightly abated), more than 4,000 US troops and 60,000 Iraqi civilians were killed (ibid.). To this date, seven years after “major hostilities” ended, the country is still plagued by sectarian violence and crime, marred by economic hardship and destruction and paralyzed by deeply divided politics and dysfunctional government. The vision and partial casus belli of the “Coalition of the Willing”, to turn Iraq into a role model liberal democracy for the Middle East, has not materialized. Instead, the suffering and dying continues.

What happened?

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Analysing the melodramatic narrative of “Pearl Harbor”

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In this semester’s transdisciplinary University Studies Course (USC) on “War and Culture” war movies were among the most frequently analyzed cultural texts. The class was held by communication scientist Prof. Dr. Clemens Schwender and historian Prof. Dr. Brendan Dooley at Jacobs University Bremen.

Ever since my participation in the summer university program Deutsche SchülerAkademie, where I attended a cultural studies class in 2002, the scientific exploration of popular texts, such as movies has been one of my key interests.

Social scientific research on popular texts, it appears to me, is curiously scarce, in contrast to a wide and methodologically well developed body of mass communication research, focusing largely on news media.

I have consequently decided to write my course assignment on the 2001 Disney pictures movie “Pearl Harbor”.

pearl-harbor

While I have discussed some of the methodological complications of empirical research on popular texts, the essay remains a largely critical, even journalistic exploration of the movie only hinting at a framework for a more systematic inquiry.

Working on the topic has further incited my interest in the analysis of popular texts. I am hoping to learn much more about possibilities for well-developed empirical research in popular culture and about the perspectives of the cultural studies in my graduate studies. An attempt to integrate these two things – the cultural studies perspective and sound empirical tests – is something I could imagine to be a very rewarding and fruitful enterprise.

Please find below the complete essay available for download.

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