Réflexions sur la guerre postmoderne. À propos de l'Irak

This article, completed in May 2003, already foresaw quite accurately the mess in which the United States is becoming ever more deeply entangled in both Iraq and Afghanistan. It was inevitable that the frantic efforts to achieve total control (under cover of bringing democracy and fighting terrorism), with ever fewer scruples, would come up against some problems along the way.
The difficulties that the Americans are encountering arise from the ever-widening gap between the noble aims which they proclaimed (at least for the benefit of the media) and the means employed. Even the most innocent observer is led to question the true motives of a power that, in the name of “restoring democracy”, offers staggering sums of money to anyone who will help to rid it of its enemies -if necessary by killing them, as we have seen recently in the case of some of the former rulers of Iraq.
“Has democracy flowered in the lands churned up by post-modern wars?”, wonders Michel Pinton. “Not so far. Seven years of international efforts in Bosnia, four years in Kosovo, two in Afghanistan, have still yielded nothing.” Indeed it is the setbacks in wars waged by the US, the sole superpower, that generate its own future enemies. Furthermore, “it would be risky to suppose that all post-modern wars will be as easy for America to win as the ones just over”.