Cutting edge, the latest in war technology: aerial assault on Libya. Today in 2011, the operation against Libyan land positions includes the Italian aircraft carrier Giuseppe Garibaldi. In 1911, Italian zeppelins, also known as dirigibles, blimps and airships, began the assault from above with the support of fixed wing biplanes. One hundred years of bombs and missiles coming out of the sky.
(Incidentally, the contemporary Giuseppe Garibaldi could only be so designated in the late 1980s due to an outlawing of such Italian weaponry after the downfall of Mussolini's fascist regime in the 1940s. That is, the Italians are good to go again now, free to send jets and choppers from flight decks into war zones just as they sent zeppelins and biplanes into action one hundred years ago).
In 1911, zeppelins and biplanes. Today, mobile robots in Japan, pilotless Predator drones firing Hellfire missiles in Pakistan, Tomahawk cruise missiles raining down on Libyan positions. Exactly the same as in 1911, yet even more Satanic in ingenuity.
(William Blake, "And did those feet in ancient time" 1804-1808:
And was Jerusalem builded here,
Among these dark Satanic Mills?
Bring me my Bow of burning gold;
Bring me my Arrows of desire:
Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold!
Bring me my Chariot of fire!).
In taking the longer view, it becomes very apparent that in North Africa, the Balkans and the Middle East, for much of the last century and even beyond that, war and revolution has hovered over the decaying remnants of the Ottoman Empire -- dogs of war fighting over various tasty scraps of territory, waterways, petroleum reserves and other resources. The Italo-Turkish War of 1911-1912 was only one of scores of such violent convulsions. Today's news highlights only the "present" side of a continuum that is -- in the parlance of our day -- "moving forward." The vanishing point or "endgame" of the current upheavals may exist only in our imaginations, ungrounded in the historical record.
Today's Rune: Defense.
2 comments:
I am so tired of being at war. There have been very few years in the last century where we were not either in a war or supplying troops, weapons, advisers. Why?
The death of the cold war seems to have fanned the flames of numerous small hot wars. To be expected I guess.
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