I am not completely satisfied with my last post. I’m afraid I wasn’t clear enough. I wanted to express my appreciation of Obama’s speech on Afghanistan, while highlighting what I see to be the limitations of his foreign policy. I wanted to show how, judged realistically, Obama’s speech on the Afghanistan drawdown was a significant advance, but also wanted to show why I think he did not go far enough. It’s about principles, not numbers.

Obama presented a vision of change in the direction of American foreign policy, although he didn’t fundamentally question the premise of America as a superpower with global responsibilities. I appreciate and support the vision, but question the premise. I also worry about the identification of defense of country and national security with military capability and response. But, I don’t expect the President of the United States to publicly challenge this identification. He is commander-in-chief and a politician who must ultimately make sense to the majority of the American people, while I can happily call myself a pragmatic pacifist, with all the contradictions that involves.  The speech struck me as being successful because Obama linked short terms goals with long term ends, i.e. withdrawing from an unpopular war while diminishing the power of Al Qaeda and giving Afghans a decent chance at determining their own just future, with changing the direction of American foreign policy.

I want a change of direction more radical than the President, but I still can’t be against all wars. Although I realize that non-violent action often gets things done more effectively and decisively than violent action, I believe that sometimes violence, including military force, is necessary. I understand, even support, the military action in Libya, but I also realize that the use of force in such situations is an indication of weakness. The most effective way to remove dictators with a democratic result is through non-violent action. But sometimes this is not possible, and thus, although democracy in Tunisia and Egypt is far from assured, it is much less likely in Syria, Libya and Yemen, not only because of the violence of the despots, but also because of the violent nature of the resistance. Political means have a way of defining their ends.

I find myself in an odd situation, the military interventions during my life time that have been most controversial from the beginning, in the former Yugoslavia and now in Libya, have been the ones I have favored. The ones that have been at least initially most popular, Iraq, Afghanistan, the Gulf War and Vietnam, have been the ones I have found most problematic. I am more comfortable with international intervention when human rights and life are endangered, than calculated unilateral ideologically driven action, fighting against abstractions, be it international communism or the global jihad.

The other posts this week reflect on the question of war and peace as well. Corey is more or less of my generation. When he went to Vietnam, I went to college and made a decision to avoid military involvement at all costs. I tried to be a pacifist, but couldn’t persuade myself. But because I strongly objected to that war, I refused involvement. I was ready to go to Canada, but in the end, because of the accident of the draft lottery, it didn’t come to that. Many years later, I read, along with Michael, the stories about how poorly Vietnam vets were received upon their return, but I don’t remember anyone I knew responding to veterans in that way or ever seeing evidence of that sort of thing. I spent a lot of time with Vietnam vets in the summer of 1976 and 1977. I taught a course at the University of Chicago to future ROTC instructors, all Army captains and majors. We got along and compared my anti-war experience with their military experience. There were no reports of civilian antagonism to them. Perhaps they didn’t tell me, but I think just as likely is that the rumors of abuse were just that, rumors (as Gary Alan Fine knows is often the case).

To be sure, there was no celebratory homecoming. Yet, there also was no victory or even a definitive ending of the war to commemorate. Haltingly, Americans worked to come to terms with the experience of the war, as Corey recounts. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the Moving Wall, Chicago’s Welcoming Home Parade, and much more, were commemorative acts that worked to put an end to the war and to remember it in a variety of different ways, from a variety of different viewpoints. I am rather convinced that this is the way it will be with military action in our times. There will be those who want to romantically celebrate heroes, but such romance will be elusive in wars that don’t have clear beginning and endings, or clear meanings. There will be political romantics, as Vince Carducci’s demonstrates in his review of Hitch 22, but I am convinced that they are becoming more marginal on the political scene. I think this is a good thing. Christopher Hitchens has been an entertaining clown when it comes to his support in Iraq, while the politics of such figures as Carl Schmitt and Martin Heidegger were significantly more serious, and disastrous.

As is his custom, Gary Alan Fine is again provocative in his latest post. He presents a number of important observations. Rumor and atrocity feed war. The truthfulness of atrocity is often unknown and unknowable. In the specific case of the alleged rape of Iman Al-Obeidi , the way she claimed to be raped and tortured leads Fine to wonder. Telling the difference between claims of atrocity and atrocity in the time of war is difficult. And sharply in his conclusion: “if you give generals authority to fight, they find wars that have no need to be fought.” The replies to his post confirm its major theoretical point. There is a fog of war when it comes to atrocities, and this can be, and often is, manipulated.

But I would amend his conclusion. My amendment: “give generals the authority to fight wars, and they will fight.” The need or absence of need for war is a political question, to be decided through political leadership and in political debate. Obama has attempted to lead in his speech, and we have the responsibility to critically respond and to critically appraise truth claims.

Remember Iman al-Obeidi? March 26^th was a routine day in the Libyan War. NATO was bombing Libyan military installations and, for its part, the Libyan military was attacking rebel fighters. Most of the world understood that Muammar Qaddafi was no democrat nor was he a threat to global peace. Once again, as in Iraq, the West was attacking a secular Arab dictator in the name of preventing the spread of world jihad. But by late March, the thrill was gone. The allied attacks had become, frankly, mundane. Another day, another ton of ordinance.

And then rushing in from the Arab streets, Iman al-Obeidi appeared. Al-Obeidi appeared at Tripoli’s Rixos Hotel, a gathering place for foreign journalists, and began screaming that she had been raped and tortured by Libyan soldiers. She grabbed the attention of the world, and became something of a cover girl for CNN.

I emphasize that I lack independent knowledge of whether her story, horrific as it is, is true or false. If I were a real commentator – rather than one who plays one on the Internet – my lack of knowledge could be a hurdle. But, then, as I think of it, none of the foreign journalists, even those who sponsored her story, has much more knowledge than I. How would one know? The correspondents at the Rixos have the drama of her presence, but others are as blind as I am.

The history of war is a history both of atrocity and of atrocity stories. The latter, all too common, are used to gin up public support for battle, creating an intense and potent hatred for a demonic foe. They create an enemy so vile that the deaths of our own soldiers are justified. The separation of true and false proves difficult to ascertain, even when the atrocity stories falsely accuse actual bad guys. It wasn’t so long ago – the first Gulf War actually – that Americans were told the grisly and chilling account of Saddam’s troops unplugging the isolettes of premature babies in Kuwait City. We later learned that it never happened. The story was propaganda through and through, the heady work of masters of the tall tale. Even the Nazis were falsely accused by their enemies – no Jewish soap or lampshades – although there were enough actual dismal atrocities to make the rounds.

So when I watched Ms. Al-Obeidi rush into the journalist scrum, I felt the glorious frisson of doubt. A tingling of suspicion. I noticed that as she was screaming, she was seated. Typically those who are emotionally unconstrained – hysterical – will stand and shout, but not Ms. Al-Obeidi who was seated as if she had ordered a glass of mint tea. But perhaps skepticism has the best of me. I have been accused of an overabundance of incredulity. It comes with the territory for those who examine hearsay. Like so many dramatic rumors, as I describe in The Global Grapevine, the story seemed too good to be false. It was just the kind of story that deserves our doubt. As rumor scholars starting with Gordon Allport and Tamotsu Shibutani emphasize, rumors emerge from a nexus of importance, ambiguity, and the absence of critical ability. It appears that Ms. Al-Obeidi is a Libyan law school graduate, a sophisticated young woman, who alleged that she was attacked and serially raped by fifteen thuggish Libyan soldiers. Were this not sufficient to boil our blood, she claims that they also urinated and defecated on her, and she showed nasty bruises, scars, and scratches. The story if true suggests that these soldiers have much to answer for. Her account plays off the very real history of rape in times of war. But its piquant drama also allows one to wonder whether it was a performance designed to capture the world’s attention.

After her tale, she was hustled off by Libyan authorities, who claimed that she was mentally ill, a thief, or a prostitute. These security forces were surely the least effective advocates for their own virtue until Anthony Weiner tweeted himself to prominence. In time the Libyan government freed her, and she was interviewed by CNN, the Associated Press, and National Public Radio where she graphically described her torture. Eventually she landed in Tunisia, Qatar, back to rebel-controlled Libya, Romania, and finally on June 4^th, Hillary Clinton granted her asylum in the United States, where she has remained quiet.

I stop short of proclaiming that some black-op intelligence service stands behind her. If I learned this tomorrow, I would not be shocked, but today I have no evidence. What I do have evidence of is the fact that when nations go to war, they search for the worst crimes imaginable with which to demonize their enemies, a point that the great communications theorist Harold Lasswell emphasized. As Lasswell pointed out, “Not bombs nor bread, but words, pictures, songs, parades, and many similar devices are the typical means of making propaganda.” It is all in the image. The history of military conflicts is replete with atrocity stories. Nations create a practical epistemology to permit them to do what they wish, bringing along their citizens. Defecating on a bright, young rape victim – the rare Arab professional woman – seems to be such a claim to heat the soul of revenge and to justify mounting attacks.

It is said that if you give a boy a hammer everything becomes a nail. If you give a scholar of falsehoods an atrocity, it becomes a rumor. But, in truth, nails and rumors are real. And if you give generals authority to fight, they find wars that have no need to be fought.