In 1991, throughout the turmoil of the Gulf War, French philosopher Jaun Baudrillard published a collection of essays in the Guardian and Libération under the title ‘The Gulf War Did Not Take Place’. He did not imply that the war did not actually take place, but that everything that was said about it was an illusion. The events leading up to the war looked like a perfectly manufactured scene from Hollywood – they were not real, but a promotion. All information on the war was promoted to point to one direction, which in effect made everything look dubious. Saddam Hussein, in fact, was a fake enemy. At one point, he is perfectly pampered and strengthened by the West during the Iran-Iraq war, receiving generous amounts of economic and military aid, and at another point, he is subjugated and suppressed. It was not the West v.s. Iraq, but the West in conflict with itself, as Jaun Baudrillard points out. Western hegemony is in crisis, and so the only way to sustain it is to perpetually create an irrational, mad and fabricated enemy that is ‘overtaken’ by the great powers. At the end of…
