Enoch Powell and the Making of Postcolonial Britain
Enoch Powell and the Making of Postcolonial Britain
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伊诺克·鲍威尔与后殖民英国的形成
DOI：
10.1177/0306396814531711
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发表时间：
2014
期刊：
影响因子：
2.6
通讯作者：
Mike Higgs
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Mike Higgs
尽管斯卡希尔本人并没有提出这样的观点，但他认为，这是美国在越南战败后，在上世纪七八十年代冷战期间所采取的秘密行动战略的回归。具有讽刺意味的是，该战略引发的国家恐怖主义催生了暴力网络，并在9/11袭击中达到高潮。《肮脏的战争》没有深入研究这段早期的历史；例如，它对美国干预索马里的描述始于上世纪90年代，但并未涵盖美国在此前10年对穆罕默德•西亚德•巴雷（Mohamed Siad Barre）政权的支持，这种支持导致了该国随后的崩溃。但这本书的含义是，同样的循环又开始了。在结语中，我们想起了唐纳德·拉姆斯菲尔德（Donald Rumsfeld）的著名问题：“我们每天抓获、杀害、威慑和劝阻的恐怖分子，是否比伊斯兰学校和激进神职人员招募、训练和部署的针对我们的恐怖分子还要多？”斯卡希尔的主要论点是，通过自己的行动，美国正在“帮助培育新一代敌人”，这些敌人的数量增长速度快于从杀戮名单上被消灭的速度。在过去的十年里，这种“反冲”的论点在批评美国军队的过程中一直很常见，但斯卡希尔的报道提供了丰富的新材料，说明反恐战争产生了它应该打击的敌人。斯卡希尔渴望记录奥巴马战争的人类代价，并让受害者发出自己的声音，这在一个“嵌入式”战地记者和伪装成记者的华盛顿内部人士的时代显得尤为突出。所有在2008年投票给奥巴马的人都应该读一下《肮脏的战争》，他们希望反恐战争能够结束；它将是实现这一目标的持续战斗中的重要武器。
Although Scahill does not make the argument himself, what he has catalogued is a return to the covert action strategy the US pursued in the cold war of the 1970s and 1980s, following defeat in Vietnam. Ironically, the state terrorism the strategy engendered produced the networks of violence that culminated in the 9/11 attacks. Dirty Wars does not delve into this earlier history; its account of US intervention in Somalia, for example, begins in the 1990s and does not cover the US sponsorship of the Mohamed Siad Barre regime in the previous decade that contributed to the subsequent collapse of the country. But the implication of the book is that the same cycle is once again in train. In an epilogue, we are reminded of Donald Rumsfeld’s famous question: ‘Are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas and the radical clerics are recruiting, training and deploying against us?’ Scahill’s key argument is that, through its own actions, the US is ‘helping to breed a new generation of enemies’ who grow in number faster than they can be eliminated from the kill lists. Such ‘blowback’ arguments have been common to critiques of the US military over the last decade but Scahill’s reporting provides a wealth of new material on the ways the war on terror produces the very enemies it is supposed to be countering. Scahill’s desire to document the human costs of Obama’s wars and allow their victims a voice stands out all the more in an age of ‘embedded’ war reporters and Washington insiders masquerading as journalists. Dirty Wars ought to be read by all those who voted for Obama in 2008 in the hope that the war on terror would be ended; and it will be an essential weapon in the ongoing battle to achieve that end.