After the Gulf War

Abstract

This article examines the Persian Gulf War from the perspective of the peace movement. It reflects on the powerlessness of the peace movement to deter the war. It submits that this failure occurred because the nature of violence has changed in the United States and that the peace movement has not understood the change. The article proposes that the best way to understand the changed nature of the practice of violence in the United States is to consider violence as an addiction and the American culture as a system addicted to violence. The major features of such a system are delineated, with special attention paid to the role of the scapegoat in the addictive system. In regard to the latter, the article holds that the traditional depersonalization of Arabs and Muslims in U.S. society prepared Americans to regard the Iraqis and Saddam Hussein as scapegoats who were to blame for the war and whose destruction liberated the United States from the curse of Vietnam. The addiction model assumes that the system will consistently return to its obsessive practice of violence. Thus the article closes by considering how the addictive paradigm might help the peace movement in its attitudes and strategies in its future struggles against a system committed to violence.