Violence as Language: An Interpretation of Exchanges Between Americans and Arabs

Headlines appearing in this morning’s newspapers accounted recent events whose details are all too familiar: Death in the Middle East. To suggest that Zarqawi’s death would not diminish the vigor and audacity of the insurgency’s engagement of coalition forces, al Qaeda felt it necessary to substantiate thought with action. Label this action not as merely an isolated atrocity, but as al Qaeda’s line in the 3+ year old turn-based communication between two panels of intercultural discussion. Just us our killing Zarqawi was our previous line to al Qaeda, our responsive action to their recent bombing (still yet to come, but predictably another volley of bombs and bullets that will cost an indeterminable number of civilians’ lives) will be our next line in these ongoing “talks”. I feel my interpretation of these events as communication is apt and reasonable because it captures, if not in an abstract sense, the entirety of interactions between the parties involved.

Although the persistence of these atrocities is undeniable, defined “necessary for the cause of freedom” from the perspective of the war’s supporters (whatever that means), any concerned citizen with a desire for resolution ought to wonder if the combat-based dialogue ever indeed “progresses”. The violence in Iraq seems to occur and recur in cycles -and due to the absence of any diplomatic efforts at attaining peace, it is the only hope of achieving resolve- but if you consider that each cycle is identical in its form, function, and objective as the cycle that preceded it, there truly is no reason to believe the dialogue/violence will ever cease. Why would it? Why will two groups of individuals, two groups who never speak but continually kill one another, suddenly stop? There must be some measure of variation between the isolated conversational evolutions (roadside bombs answered by laser guided bombs; assaulting convoys answered by assaulting civilians) otherwise there is no reason to believe they will ever reach a mutual end; the pattern is not linear -approaching a conclusion, it is circular -approaching itself.

The media focus a great deal of attention to the death of Zarqawi and ask what impact his death will have on the state of affairs in Iraq (they no longer have the stomach to reuse the worn out line “it brings us a step closer to conclusion”) and the answer, as clearly offered by al Qaeda, is probably the same as if you’d posed the question dropping Zarqawi’s name and replacing it with Salvador Guerrero (last American killed in O.I.F.): none. The loss of a single man does not affect the legitimacy nor the nobility, and therefore, not the perpetuation of related activity, of the cause for which he died -not Zarqawi’s death, not Guerrero’s either. The only means by which the ongoing pattern of bloody exchanges between the U.S. and Arab combatants can ever hope reach an end is if they are approaching one through dialogue, whether that dialogue is peaceful (as prescribed by international law) or violent (as demanded necessary but never rationalized by the current administration).