Remember when the cheney/bush administration was prepping us to attack Afghanistan? (Didn’t take much, did it?) Remember who we were going after? (Clue: it wasn’t the Afghan people.) Remember how our blood enemies were Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar?

Think about Iraq and who we were told we were going after … Saddam Hussein. And every time the US government wants to go after Iran, it’s Ahmadinejad or the Revolutionary Guard. Our now ongoing pissing contest with Venezuela … it’s about Chavez.

Wars are sold on personifications of “the other side”. The war loving industries realize none of us are going to throw on body armor, jump into tanks or drop bombs from airplanes just to kill John and Jane Doe from another nation.

A big bad boogey man has to be created … a personal enemy that can be so reviled no evil is too bad to befall them. Then, and only then, will the great United States rise to the level of killing John and Jane Doe and their kids.

CNN, in reporting on the recent suicide bombing against a CIA military post in Afghanistan, brought this whole concept down to it’s most (in)human level:

A U.S. intelligence official on Thursday vowed that the United States would avenge the attack.

“This attack will be avenged through successful, aggressive counterterrorism operations,” the intelligence official vowed.

(Source: 2 killed in Afghanistan bombing were security contractors, CNN, 12/32/09)

This is how wars are really fought. Not by the grandstanders such as cheney or obama, but by those who’ve been convinced there’s a personal side to this … something that can bring out such anger that mass destruction and misery and death can be justified as the appropriate means to an end … retribution.

In the CIA’s case we’re supposed to accept that people who die ostensibly protecting the civilians around them  are now going to be subject to more war from the US and allies because those who were ostensibly there to protect the civilians were harmed or killed in the process. Think about our domestic police. If you or I were gunned down, do you think we’d get the same response that a gunned down police officer would receive? Hell, our lives are literally at risk simply because police perceive a possible threat from us! Sounds like driving too close to a US military convoy in Iraq, doesn’t it? It’s no accident we have a war on drugs and crime and such.

Violence perpetrated by governments on their own behalf has always been of the type that wants no response. When a United States or Iranian police officer beats you with a baton just because you were engaging in non-violent demonstration, don’t respond … that’s assaulting a law enforcement individual.

And with acknowledged war as opposed to domestic government enforcement (although the lines are blurring by the day) the level of violence increases in both the response and speed of response.

But first we need to have those reviled enemies. Don’t have a properly reviled figurehead? Hell, bin Laden hasn’t been pursued simply because he really isn’t needed … all the war lovers need is those billions or anti-western, Islamic radicals who are out to destroy Christianity.

Forget the idea that if 2 billion Muslims really wanted to do us in, they’d be doing a much better job of it … we’ve got the frame for personification of “the other side”, and “the other side” is evil enough to justify any means to the end of … ?????????.

And you know what? To the Afghani or Iraqi people who never attacked the United States this is personal … up close personal in a way very few of us in the United States have been exposed to. Every child murdered by a war machine, every family slaughtered by a 500lb bomb, every parent gunned down because of how they drove when near the invaders is personal. We make it so with our fictional personifications.

Here we are now how many years later? Still fighting the wars that were started to get Mullah Omar, Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.

At least it’s working out for the war lovers.