Ah, peace. Who is it good for?

Ah, peace. Who is it good for?

‘”In Afghanistan, Americans have all the wrist watches but Afghans have all the time.” The enemy will attempt to control the clock with the strategic intent of winning by not losing. He will use the clock to wear down American resolve. Management of the clock will allow him to use patience as a means to offset American superiority in killing power.’ So writes Maj. Gen. Robert H. Scales (Ret.) who is looking to historian Alan Beyerchen’s touting of touchy-feely soldiering as the next great advance in the theory of war fighting.

Israeli soldiers engaged in urban battle no longer conceive of the city as the site of engagement but rather a medium of warfare. They are leading the way in the development of a new kind of approach to fighting in urban areas where most battles in the coming decades will be fought. The IDF in Nablus in 2002, as is increasingly the case today, aimed to use ‘none of the city’s streets, roads, alleys or courtyards, or any of the external doors, internal stairwells and windows, but moved horizontally through walls and vertically through holes blasted in ceilings and floors. This form of movement, described by the military as ‘infestation’, seeks to redefine inside as outside, and domestic interiors as thoroughfares.’ So says architect Eyal Weizman who sees in ‘walking through walls’ tactics the coming together of post-structuralist thought and operational theory. Cutting edge military thinkers, many in Israel, are apparently eager to challenge their institution’s linear thinking, centralized planning and fixed concepts with thinking, and practice, that is consciously post structuralist and draws heavily on Foucault. At last it seems critical theorists just might earn themselves some Pentagon dollars.

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