What's the Point? The Nerve Center

"I'm now going to show you a picture of the luckiest man in Iraq," said US General Norman Schwarzkopf in his iconic January 31, 1991 press briefing. The purpose of the briefing was to impress a globalizing public, increasingly cable TV-watching, that concerns raised about civilian casualties missed the point. Schwarzkopf was offering an un-mistaken, "actual," point. A point that was not understood and, in fact, the point of Operation Desert Storm. It was not, for Schwarzkopf and the US military leadership, revenge. That would run counter to modern norms of civilization. It wasn't to violently demonstrate outrage regarding the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait -- again, not civilized (and, anyway, while there was plenty of surprise and indignation over the violation of Kuwait's international standing as a sovereign state, there was much less international public interest in Kuwait as an occupied place). 

The point, of which Schwarzkopf was at pains to remind viewers and at pains to show success achieving, is articulated in a statement by then Joint Chief of Staff Chairman Colin Powell: to go after the "nerve center," the "brains," the "command and control," the "communication" of Iraqi government. In his briefing, Schwarzkopf unpacks this as a 5-part list of Campaign objectives that targets Iraqi state government leadership, air force hubs, and aircraft to attain Coalition "supremacy" at least of the "Kuwaiti theater of operation" but also beyond. By going after these objectives, the plan was to replace Iraqi state forces with Coalition supremacy -- Coalition brains, Coalition nerves, Coalition command and control. Schwarzkopf's point was that Operation Desert Storm was a substitution operation of executive control.

Powell's, Schwarzkopf's, and the US government's point involved modeling Iraq and Kuwait as geographic terrains, each with a layer of sky on top of it, a layer of a thickness sufficient to include the highest flying Coalition aircraft (about 13 km) and the deepest oil reserves (about 2 km). This terrain and sky, according to the US military thought of the time, was veined with various conduits (power plants, telecommunications facilities, roads, electric and other supply lines, aircraft ), all of which could be targeted for the achievement of command and control, supremacy in the theater of operation. This achievement of command and control was given the moniker of liberation. Liberation meant that the population within the theater of operation no longer conducted activities that would be considered hostile by the US, and (a) held Saddam Hussein responsible for the crisis, (b) recognized that there was an international society that opposed Iraq's actions, and (c) in any case considered resisting the Coalition's overwhelming military might hopeless. 

That is, Powell, Schwarzkopf, and the US military modeled Iraq and Kuwait as spaces within the reach of the Iraqi government's veins of control over an almost infinitely malleable population. By gaining supremacy over the land and sky which constituted the theater of operation, Iraqi government control over Iraqi activities could be replaced with US control in the name of an international coalition. Once this happened, and as long as the population's suffering was not too spectacular [strikethrough because Gaza 2023-present shows that no Arab suffering is too great to be anything more than a venial offense,] activities within the Iraqi theater of operation would no longer pose a threat. That is, control over telecommunications, power, supply, and military infrastructures would be sufficient to diffuse Iraqi aggression and render the Iraqi population docile with respect to American interests. 

Schwarzkopf's use of the phrase "unduly" in his briefing illustrates what I want to say here. After he boasts that three quarters of Iraq's electricity generating capability has been destroyed or degraded, Schwarzkopf says the following: "I think I should point out right here that we never had any intention of destroying one hundred percent of all the Iraqi electrical power. Uh, because of our interest in making sure that civilians did not suffer unduly we felt that we had to leave some of the electrical power in effect and we've done that." In other words, destroying all of Iraq's electricity access would create suffering great enough that the population will not be liberated as defined by (a) - (c) above. What I mean is that the theater of operation was conceived as the plane of the terrain, a certain volume of sky, and a thin film of psychic life on that terrain that only mattered if the suffering reached was on the order of losing three quarters of the country's electricity. 

This brings me to the person Schwarzkopf describes as the luckiest man in Iraq. 

A vehicle crosses over a bridge. We know that the bridge will momentarily be destroyed. We know this because this is Norman Shwarzkopf's press conference, and because of the "AF" printed at the top of the image and the target at the center. We viewers feel our hearts quicken in anticipation of the blow up. Schwarzkopf guides our way. "Keep your eye on the crosshairs." The driver continues along the bridge, unlike us, not worthy of sharing Schwarzkopf's confidence and so not knowing how their life is about to change. "Right through the crosshairs," Schwartzkopf says, to the derisive laughter of the press. Then for the magical finale. "And now, in his rearview mirror!" The image turns from a granular representation of a bridge to an abstraction in black, grey, and white. A vertical, jagged, black strip framed by grey, against a white background. The bridge is eviscerated. The truck, in Hollywood fashion, seems to have only just made it across. There's no question in Schwarkopf's tone, nor in the excited responses of the journalists, about whether the truck driver's suffering might be undue. The driver is lucky, lucky to be able to keep driving, lucky that the US strategy means that truck driving will continue, only now under a different executive control. By inference, all Iraqis who survive are similarly lucky in that they, too, will continue after their nerve center has been replaced. This is liberation. 

Since last year, we might find such "lucky" people -- adults, children, infants -- in Gaza. The 10 year old whose family once managed to send him to Jordan for a day or two to receive his needed chemotherapy. The Gazan mother who knows how to source and process and sell foraged cheeseweed to fend off starvation. The infant who survives crippled by an Israeli soldier's bullet. These are candidates for Coalition Liberation. 

The writing is on the wall. There is ultimately no way to survive and be liberated. To be liberated is too be suspect. To be liberated is to be a twitch in a nervous system that must surely have a center. 

Much better to make it without liberation. Remain a suspicious candidate for liberation. Never allow oneself to be declared liberated for that is a death sentence.