The Permanent War Machine and the Rise of Deathwashing.

• Author: Fitz, Don

The collapse of the Soviet Union and explosion of the computer age have propelled the world into the era of the Permanent War Machine. Since the 1970s, the US has sought to overcome the "Vietnam Syndrome"--the unwillingness of people to march mindlessly to war. This Syndrome was exacerbated by a vacuum of enemies after the Soviet Union was gone.

A few years later computer technology profoundly impacted military reality. Just as research makes software obsolete within months, microchips spawned an incredibly rapid turnover in war technology. Redesigned weapons systems cannot be assumed to work because an abstract simulation says they will. They require real homes to destroy and actual human flesh to burn. A new war must happen every few years.

As this millennium closes, the Permanent War Machine is characterized by its continual creation of new images of Evil against which breakthroughs in killing technologies can be tested.

Many parts of Yugoslavia saw massive suffering, much of it due to Serb brutality. But there is a difference between a bloody civil war and ethnic extermination. Those who believed what came from the lips of Bill Clinton and trusted what they saw on TV news stories were convinced that Slobodan Milosevic initiated the worst "genocide" in Europe since the Nazi era. Even many who understand how the media "manufactures consent" believed the claim that war was necessary to. "stop the killing."

But as the weeks, went by, more and more questions arose. The press image of one-sided "genocide" by Serbia had to ignore many things besides the obvious fact that it was US bombing that forced the exodus of the overwhelming majority of ethnic Albanians who fled Kosovo. It had to ignore the many ethnic Albanians who remained in their villages without being bothered by Serb forces. It had to ignore Serbian soldiers' allowing ethnic Albanians to return to their homes in May, 1999, before the treaty was signed. It had to ignore Albanians murdered by the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) for their willingness to work with Serbia. It had to ignore the ethnic Albanians who were armed by Serbs so they could protect themselves from the drug-running KLA. In short, the portrayal of a civil war as "genocide" had to ignore all evidence showing that Serbian brutality was focused on Albanians who fought against the Yugoslav state and not against all Albanians as an ethnic group.

Why then did the US have an undeclared war against Yugoslavia? The bombing did...