Customer Reviews

Gulf War Did Not Take Place

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4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Provacativively titled book either impresses or deeply angers people, I read this years ago and retained only a few points of interest.

Yes, the war happened, as in bombs were dropped, people died, buildings were destroyed, many suffered, etc. But it differed markedly from previous wars in that it was mainly an event to be manipulated by different sides in the media. Therefore, it did not take place the way previous wars had, in that the suffering and even a uniform understanding did not penetrate the population at home who watched the events on CNN.

Unfortunately, all of this business about the 'realness' of the war, and the simulacra, and the hyper-reality we're now mired in, is written in a frustrating and unnecessarily bloated style that makes even this slim work a slight chore at times. Can certainly be expressed in a simpler way, therefore appearing less profound, but then it wouldn't be the work of French postmodern philosopher. Interesting 'take' on a modern war, with points that would only resonate more in the years since, it's hit-or-miss for most readers of current events (more for the philosophy crowd).

This book basically describes how the first Iraq war differed from traditional wars of the past. It is not for everyone, Baudrillard has the unfortunate position of being too loose with ideas to be taken very seriously by 'real' academics while at the same time writing in a style that is not easily accessible to a popular audience. His thesis is that the 'war' was primarily a media event that was useful in different ways to both sides of the conflict. He does not dispute that violence and suffering took place, but suggests that the event was not a war as was defined in the past by Clausewitz. Any review that states he is trying to 'hide' the essential suffering of those at the ground of the event is just wrong. There is nothing in the book that questions or calls into doubt the experiences of soldiers or civilians; at the same time it does not dwell upon them.

This text describes and defines the relations between the dominant states (USA Western Europe), the media and the wars they choose to have.

Wonderful read and learn

Served as my intro to Baudrillard's work and a brilliant entrance at that.

Insightful as always, cutting, pulling no punches as he presents the interface for what it is.

Some of the poetry is lost going from French to English, but in the absense of the one pick up the other.

A brilliant response to the mediated non-event of the Gulf War - a must read for anyone with lingering illusions on the nature of war in the unipolar post-Cold War world in which media war has eclipsed war itself and Clauswitz's definition fails to find resonance

Yeah, so there was a lot of tv coverage of the Gulf War. Yeah, so some people confuse the tv coverage with what actually went on to the point where the real war is irrelevant. Yeah, so there is a level on which there is a war for public opinion, a purely media war. Beaudrillard says all of this in the tortured language of continental philosophy. Since I love continental philosophy, I appreciate the points he makes about images and simulacra. But he offers not the slightest recognition of the fact that the war DID take place, people, animals, and buildings were destroyed, money and years of work erased, longlasting suffering and illness a legacy among all countries involved . And for that reason, this book made me VERY angry.

No one can lack commonsense as much as an intellectual, especially a leftist one, and perhaps most of all a renowned French professor of sociology. To show his brilliance, Baudrillard takes a perfectly obvious fact and devotes a book to proving it wrong. In saying that the Kuwait war "did not take place," he means that the fighting was so lopsided, it did not constitute a war. Brushing aside American fears of heavy casualties, he deems that the war "was won in advance." It was, in his view, "a shameful and pointless hoax, a programmed and melodramatic version of what was the drama of war." From the American point of view, he claims, "no accidents occurred in this war, everything unfolded according to a programmatic order." In all, the events of early 1991 stood in relation to war as computer erotics do to actual sex.

Baudrillard's exceedingly slight essay (a compilation of three articles published in the newspaper Libération) ceaselessly hammers away at these themes. He stands midway between the United States and Iraq, faulting each of these main actors about equally. For him, it is all aesthetics and ideology; the deeply important human, economic, and strategic issues raised by the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait disappear under the weight of his relentless abstraction. Thus unconnected from reality, Baudrillard mangles everything from the French president's name to the number of traffic fatalities in the United States. The result is a book of profound error and transcendent stupidity, the most inane ever reviewed in these pages.

Middle East Quarterly, March 1996

Reading this turned my head to much. That means it's good.

My! And yes of course he must be right! It never ceases to amaze me how 'self aggrandized' intellectuals can sit back (in the relative safety of their ivory towers) and tell themselves 'stories' generated from their own imaginations, conclusions or biases. Unfortunately they often portray these self conjured stories or opinions as reality. Equally amusing is that there are always those (safely out of harms way as well) who are quick to conclude that the opinions of someone with 'credentials' are indeed actual fact, and that of course, the U.S. Government in particular, is corrupt. After all, we all need a good `hate target' to satisfy our own needs of self righteousness. So we might as well pick the biggest target we can find, right? As someone who has been involved in the global intelligence equation for a number of years, I would conclude that any rational human being capable of thought, would agree that "All Governments" on this planet are corrupt . . . without exception. That corruption would be most readily recognized as self-serving agendas of leaders, want-to-be's, and in many cases the religious power mongers, and even the people, for power, wealth, control, fame, notoriety, etc. etc.. (Sound anything like real life?) Any way, I still applaud the writer in his ability to make a few bucks on his `fantasy' work, and it is very well written.

After i read it, i became more aware that things that we took for granted, are just false interpretations, like the dead officers on gulf war. Their dead are in fact just an ilussion to their family. Great tittle. But i would prefer "This book does not exist" or "This book is a mistake", ...