Cities As Strategic Sites Place Annihila PDF
Cities As Strategic Sites Place Annihila PDF
Introduction
34 Srep)u!7I (rraham
"
c,ru,s as Slral£l[1C Sile"
35
over every urban bomb blast in Japan and Gennany in an effort to improve
Architectures of A.nnihilation: The "War Ideology
the "efficiency" of the ciry killing and urban "dehousing" (Vanderbilt
of the Plan"
2002). To predict the effects of incendiary and "A"-bombs on Japanes;
cities, a "Japanese village" was also constructed - again in Nevada . This
In our firSt vignette, as we have just noted, civilian urban planning, devel~ was comple[e with all sons of realistic Japanese-sryle buildings, contents,
opment, modernizarion, and resu-ucruring often acrually involve levels of and infrastructures (VanderbiIL, 2002j Goodman, 2000).
devastation of ciries, ruination, and forced resettlement that match that 'TIlis work goes on and on. More recently, the US and Israeli militaries
which occurs in aU-out war. Even in supposedly democratic societies, have cooperated to construct and run a kind 'of shadow urban system of the
planned urban restrucruring often involves autocratic stare violence, mas complete urban ncigbourhood, replete with "mosques, hanging laundry
sive urban dcsrrucrion, the forced devastation of livelihoods, and even mass and even toe odd donkey meandering down dusty streets" (Marsden, 2003:
death. These are justified through heroic and mYThologizing discourses 2) . These have been used for joint military exercises co train the marines
emphasizing modernizarion, hygiene, or progress. Invariably, the desauc and soldiers who invaded Baghdad, Basra, Fallujah, and Jenin (Graham,
rion that follows is direcred against marginalized places and people that are rhis volume).
"
discursively constructed as backward, unclean, antiquated, or threatening It is also scarcely realized that demographers, statisticians, geographers,
co dle dominant order. In both authoritarian and democratic societies, architects, and planners have been central [0 Israel's efforts to deepen its
ideologies of urban planning have often acrually delzberalely invoked meta comrol over the three dimensional spaces of the Occupied Territories
phors of war and militarism to legitimize violenl acts of planned transform (Wei2man, this volume). Their analyses and prescriptions have helped to
ation (Sandercock, 1998). Anthony Vidler (2001: 38) calls mis "me war shape the annexing of Palestinian land, dle t.:onS(nlction of walls and
ideology of the plan ." ('buffer zones, " che mass bulldozing ol houses and olive groves, the demo
Thus, place annihilation can be thought of as a kind of hidden - and demization of Palestinian cities, the ethnic cleansing of selected areas, the
sometimes not so hidden - planning history. The planned devastation and construcrion of carefu.lly located Jewish settlements and access roads, and
killing of cities is a dark side of the discipline of urban planning that is rarely dle appropriation of water and airspace (Weizman, Graham, this volume) .
acknowledged, Jet alone analyzed. It is rarely realized, for example, that me
analytical and st3risacal methods so often used in post-World War II
civilian planning have also been used - sometimes by me same demo "P1a.nning" and Occupation as War on
graphic, economic, and planning "experrs" - to spatially organize the the Colonized City
apartheid regime in South Africa, maximize me "efficiency" of the system
atic fire-bombing of Gennan and Japanese cities, organize me house One of the achievements of me great wave of nlOdemiza[ion that began in the
by-house demolition of Warsaw in 1945, set up the giant urban-regional lace eighteenth cenrury was to incorporale urblcide inw the process of urban
process of the Holocaust, or starve many Easter European cities and developmem .. . Ies victims, along wim the ir neighborhoods and (Owns,
regions into submission in the mid-1940s. The laccer work even involved vanisl\ without a trace . (Bennan, 1996: 181)
the founder of Cenrral Place Theory, that seminaJ economic geographer
Walter Christaller - star of any traditional school human geography course. In our second illustration, many strategies of occupation and colonization
Following the lnvasion easrward in 1941, he was employed by me Nazis to have also been based explicitly on me planned destruction and devastalion
rethink the economic geography of an "Aryaruzed" Eastern Europe - a of cities. Of course, colonization is essentially about the subordination,
process direcdy linked to the planned starvation and forced migration of annihilarion, or exploieation of one people's culrure, life world, and places
millions of people (see Aly and Heim, 2002; Rossler, 1989j Cole, 2003). by another. Urban "plallDing" in many colonized cities, thus, often
Meanwhile, mock German and Japanese housing units, complete wid1 amounts to link bm the planned devastation and bulldozing of indigenous
authentic roofing materials, fumiture, interior decorations, and clothing, cities to underpin the strategic and social control of the occupiers or sealers
were erected in Nevada [0 allow me design and chemical makeup of (Said, 2003; Yeoh, 1996; yiftachel, 1995) . Here the "orderly" imprintS
incendiaries that would later bum Dresden and Tokyo to be carefully ofWestem-sryle urban planning and property law have long been lI!~ ed as a
customized for their intended targets on a city by cilY basis (Davis, 2002: form of urban warfare (B1omley, 2003). At firsr, this was done co quell
65-84). Thousands of operation scientists and urban statisticians pored local insurgencies in non-Western, colonized cities. Later, such militari7.~d
Suphe1l Graham
Cities <l$ Strougu; Sites 37
36
sives to the refugee camp in Jenin and completely leveled a whole quarter of Plate 1.1 Operation Anchor: the use of explosives by British forces
to carve boulevards through the Palestinia n Casbah in Jaffa in 1936, to
Cili~s aJ Strategic Sites
38 Stephen &a.lwm 39
the town. This was an act of collective punishment for the continuing
resistance ro the British occupation of Palestine (eorera, 2002) . ! f
~~~~ ~~~
A.s plate 1.1 shows, the old Palestinian Casbah in Jaffa was similarly
heavily remodeled by explosives in the same year during what the British
called Operation Anchor. ) This was an attempt by the British occupiers [0
reduce their vulnerability to snipers in the closely built s£rects of the old
settlement by forcing an anchor-shaped set of broad boulevard s through
me Casbah (Missewirz and Weizman, 2003). Military discourses which
construct cities and built-up areas as threats (0 order and control remain
at the hean of srrategic discourse about cities in our post-Cold War world
(l.,~
(Graham, Marvin, Weizman, Hills, this volume) .
~//
';/
Modernism. and Urban War I: Aerial Living as Response
to Aerial War ~ J • / /
The airplane indicts the ciry! (Le Corbusier, 1935: 100) f7r' u . f {;-.;f;/:;;t/...... o.U"~.
Our third illustration cencers on the first of two dee p connections mar run
between modernist urbanism and aerial bombing. For Le Corbusier's
famous obsession with loosely spaced modem towers sec in parkland
most famously elaborated in his Ville Radieuse or "Radiant City" - was
nor jusr a celebration of light, air, and the modem house as a " machine for
living." It was also a reanion to a widespread obsession in 1930s Europe
with the need to completely replan ciries so that they presented the smallest
possible targers to the massed ranks of heavy bombers then being fielded by
the major powers. Corbusier's towers - variants of which had hardened
"anti-aircraft" bombproof roofs - were also designed [0 lift residents above
expected gas anacks (Markou, 2002) (see plate 1.2). Plate 1.2 Le Corbusier's L933 Ville Radieusc designs for apanment blocks
Le Corbusier celebrated the modemism of the aircraft machine and irs and ciries, which minimized the risks of aerial bombing and gas attack. These
vertical desnuctive power. "Wha[ a gift to be able to SO~l death with bombs are contrasted with the supposed vulnerabilities oftradi.rional, dense, urban
upon sleeping towns," he wrote (1935: 8-9). His response to the "sinisrer sueerscapes (see plate 5.1). Source: Le Corbusier (1933 : 60-1).
apotheosis" of death and destructio(l heralded by aerial warfare was rhe
total demoliejon of the old city, and irs replacement by a modern utopia
specifically designed to be "capable of emerging victorious from the air
The threat of arrack from me air dem ands urbaLl chllnges. Grear cities
war" (1935: 60-1). sprawling open [Q the sky, theiJ: congested areas at the mercy of bombs
Post-91l1 - an evenr which seemed ro underline the extreme vulnerabiLity hunJing down oue of space, are invirations to deslnu.:lion. They are pnlcticaHy
of skyscrapers - il seems painfully ironic that the dreams of that arch lIldefensible as now consliruted, and it is now becoming clear war the best
celebrator of skyscrapers were, in fact, panly inrended [0 reduce the city's means of defending them is by the construction, on the one hand , of great
exposure to aerial annihilation. The famous modernist architectUral theor vertical concentrations which offer a minimum surface to the bomber and, on
ist Siegfried Gideon - who was strongly influenced by Le Corbusier's views the ower hand, by (he laying out of extensive, free, open spaces. (Gideon,
- argued in 194 L thar: 194 L: 543)
40 S'<phen Graham
1 Cilies as Stra,egU; Sir.es 41
'ill l·~m
(l{~
I SO THAT W E.,CA N REBUILD
IHE.M WI TH A NE W PLAN
'!l~~ DESIG N ED FORTHE SWifT
~~'J.~7 /~f-<A~ ~/t
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J, F LOW OF MODERN TRAFFIC
\ FOR THE PL AY OF LlGHT&AI R
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FoHowingWorid War II, as the scale and Scope of place annihilation became Place 1.3 Illustrations from Jolm Mansbridge's British World War II
clear, preservationists achieved some limited SUccess i.n rebuilding parts pamphlet Here Comes Tomorrow, celebrating both the modernism of aircraft
of some cities along old lines. Many mined buildings _ churches especially and the "new chance" their bombing offered British cities to rebuild along
-were also preserved as war memorials. The Briush war artist Kenneth Clark modernist lines. Source: Tiratsoo er al. (2002: 57) .
even argued "bomb damage irself is piCturesque" (Woodward, 200 J : 212).
Our fourth illustration, however, centers on the way in which devout
modernists saw the unimaginable devastation as an unparalleled oPPOrtun been so devasraced by me firestorm raids of 1943 - as a rest case j(1 the
iry to reconstruct enrire cities according [0 the principles of Le Corbusier complete "deurbanization" of German sociery. When me founder of
and oilier modernist arcbitect'S. As parr of the "brave new world" of ilie Bauhaus, Walter Gropius, returned from exile to Germany in 1947,
POStwar reconstruction) modernisr planners and archirects seemed in to advise on postwar reconstruction , he argued thar me urban devastation
many cases to be almost grareful thar the deadly work of the bombers had in Germany meant mat ir was "the best place to start breaking up cities
laid waste (0 urban landscapes of traditional, closely builr streets and into home towns and to establish small-scale communities, jn which the
buildings (Tirarsoo et al., 2002; Diefendorf, 1993). For example, one essential imponance of the individual could be realized" (cired in Kostof,
pamphler, published in the UK by John Mansbridge during World War 1992: 26L).
II, expressed grarirude (Q that modernist icon, ilie aeroplane (plate 1.3) . Thus, in a way, me total bombing of total war - an enormous act of
Not onJy had if "given liS a new vision," but the bombing also offered planned urban devastation in its own right - served as a massive accelerator
Brilain "a new chance by blasting away the centers of cities." TIl us, jr of modernist urban planning, architecrure, and urbanism. TIle tabula rasa
COntinued, modernist reconstruction would now be delivered ro sustain mat every devoted modernist craved suddenly became the norm rather th an
"the sv..rift flow of modem traffic for the play of tight and air" (firatsoo me exception, particularly in postwar Europe and Japan. As a result , [0 use
et al., 2002). the words of Ken Hewin (1983: 278), "the ghosts of the architects of urban
Meanwhile, in Germany, the dosing Slages of World War II saw Third bombing - (Guilo) Douhe(, (Billy) Mitchell, (Sir Hugh) Trenchard, (Fred
Reich planners preparing [0 torally disperse the city of Hamburg _ which had erick) Lindemann - and the praxis of airmen like ("Bomber") Harris and
(Curtis) LeMay, sull stalk the streets of our cities."
43
Cilles aj SlralC/Jic Sires
42 Sup/am Graham
were organized as epic horror cinema \vlm meliculous attention [Q (he mise
A GeopOlitics of Urban Decay and Cybernetic
en-scene. The hijacked planes were aimed precisely a{ me vulnerable border
Play: Urban Annjhilation, Entertainnlent, and
belWeen fantasy and realiry .. , Thousands of p eople: who turned on their
Military Strategy
televisions on 9/11 wen: convinced iliar the caraciysnl was jusr a broadcasc,
a hoax. They thought they were watching rushes from the latest Bruce Wulis
Which brings us, penultimarely, (0 the argumenr mac we neglect of place film .. . The "Attack on America," and ils sequels, "America Fights Back"
annihilation in urban social science has also left the connections berween and "America Freaks OU(," have continued 10 unspool as a SUCC';:SSlon of
loday's cities and the obsession with ruined, posr-apocalyptic urban land celluloid hallucinations, each of which can be rented fTom {he vid eu shop : The
S£ege, lildependellce Day, Execulive A ctWn, Olllbreak, The Sum of All Fears, and
scapes in conremporary popular culrure largely unexplored. This is Unporr
so on, (Davis, 2002: 5)
ant because cities are unmade and annihilared dIScursively as weU as throUgh
bombs, planes, missiles, bulldozers, plans, and rerrorist acts.
Indeed, the links between virtual, filmic, and reievisual represenr;'triom of
city killing and acrual urban war are becoming so blurred dlat they arc:
47
Chies as Srrar.cgic Sites
46 5lephen Graham
",.
video-game playmg adolescents (0 fight the same conflict" (Gray, 1997:
almost indislinguishable. On the one hand, ar least among US forces, the 190). As Henry Jenkins (2003) argues, "in a world being com apart by
military targeting of cities is, at least in part, being remodeled as a "joy stick international conflict, one thing is on everyone's mind as they flOish watch
war." This operates through "vi.n:ual" simulations, computerized killiog ing the nightly neWS: "Man, this would make a great game!'"
systems, and a growing distanciation of the operator from the sites of the To exploit this markel, the world's media conglomerates now coocen
killing and the killed. In me process, the realities of urban war - at least for uate vast resources on repeating vlrtUalized urban killiog for consumers .
some - sran [0 blur seamlessly with the wider cultures of sci-o, film, video On the very night that US bombers and missiles first rained their desu-uc
games, and popular entertainment (Thussu and Freedman, 2003). tion on Baghdad, Sony trademarked the phrase "shock and awe" with the
Take, for example, the unmalUled low-altitude "Predator" aircraft that idea of using il as title for a since-abandoned computer game.
are already being used for extra-judicial assassinacions of alleged terrorists Not (0 be out-done, the US Army, now the world's largest video game
(and whoever happens to be dose by) in the Yemen, Afghanistan, and Iraq, developer, spent $8 million in 2002 on producing America '5 Anny - a
"piloted" from a virrual realicy "cave" in a Florida airbase 8-10,000 miles deliberate aid to recruitment. This is a "Net based soldier-simulation
away. For the US military personnel doing the piloting, this "virtual" work game that was, by 2003, amongst the 5 most popular online video games
is aimost indistinguishable from a "shooc-'em-up" video game (except that in the world with 2 million registered users (Turse, 2003). Meanwhile, the
the people who die are real) . "At the end of the work day," one Predaror ArmY has also had a major role in Full Spectrum Warfare - an urban combat
operator recently boasted during Gulf War il, "you walk back into the rest training game produced in 2004 for lvlicrosofr's X-Box system m partner
of life in America" (quoted in Newman, 2003). ship with Paramount picnJres and Hollywood's lnstitute for Creative Tech
On me oilier hand, as war is increasingly consumed by a voyeuristic nologies (ICT) . Launched as a commercial urban warfare game, this offers
public, so digital technologies, in tum, bring the vicarious thrills of urban startlingly realistic virrual realicy renditions complete with demonic "rogue
war direct to the homes of duill-hungry consumers. In the 2003 Iraq war, states," "Lerrorist leaders," mythical Middle Eastern urban battle spaces
for example, US newspaper and media websi[es offered a wide range of ("Zekistan"), and stressful urban warfare simulations where those volun
vertical, satellite image-based maps of the cicy as little more than an array of teering to "fight for freedom" face devious, underhand barbarians who
targets, to be desuoyed from the air. As Derek Gregory describes: exploit the ciry for their own ends (Tursc, 2003). "The mission is ro
slaughter evil-doers, with something about 'libertY' ... going on in the back
The New York li.mes provided a daily salelUte map of Baghdad as a cicy of ground. , . Zekiscan conforms to uailer-park pdceptions in being some
largelS. On lhe web, USA Today's interactive map of "Downtown Baghdad" AfghanistanlIran/Iraq composite" (O'Hagan, 2004: 12).
invlted its users: "Gel a satellite-eye view of Baghdad. SUategic sites and To close the cycle even more di5curbingly, actual weapons syslemS - for
bombing cargets are marked, btl( you can click on any quadrant for a close example, the Dragon Runner remote-conuol urban warfare vehicle - are
up." The site also included images of targets "before» and "after" air strikes.
being designed to ntimic the controls of Sony PlaYSlations 50 that neW
The Washjngwn Post's imeracrives invited lhe viewer [0 "roll over me
numbers (Q see what r.argets were hit on which day; cUek (Q read more recruits can quickly make the transition from simulared to real combat.
about !.he targers. (Gregory, 2004b : 29) The result of all this is a "media culcure moroughly capable of preparing
children for armed combat" (furse, 2003). James Oer Oerian (2001)
coined the term "military_industrial-media-enlenairunent network" to
In a perverse rwist, co~orate media and entertainment industries
capture the deepening and increasingly insidious connections between the
increasingly provide both computer games and films which virrually simu
military, defense industries, popular culture, and electronic entertainment.
late recent urban wars to mass participants, and the virtual and physical
Here, huge software simulations are constrUcted (0 recreate any possible
simulations of cities t1Ut US forces use co hone their warfare skills for
urban warfare scenario, complete with vast forces, casualties, the gaze of
fighting in Kabul, Baghdad, or Freetown. The actual prosecution of wars
the media, and three-dimensional, reaHime participation by thousands.
is merging more and more with electronic entertainment industries . "The
Hollywood specialistS of computer generated films provide e),{rra "realism"
US military is preparing for wars thaI wiJl be fought III the same manner as
in these simUlations; their theme park designers, meanwhile, help in tht:
they are electronically represented, on real-time networks and by live feed
constrUCtion of the "real" urban warfare training cities that are ,Jotted
videos, on the PC and me TV actually and virtually" (Oer Denao, 2002: acrosS the world. Major "invasions" - such as the Urban Warrior exen:ise
61). The "military now mobilizes science fiction ",'titers and other futur in March 1999 _ are even undertaken on major US cities from air, land., and
ologists to plan for the wars of tomorrow just as they consciously recruit
49
Cities as SlraUgJL Sire.'
48 Sr.epli£TI GrahalJl
sea to further improve training both for foreign incursions and me concrol
--- ---
and consumption habi~s in the wealthy cides llf th~ global North impact on
security, terror, and urbanizing war elsewhere (Le Billoll, 2001). A power
of major domestic urban unresc. Civilians are employed in these exercises ful example of these importan1: but poorly researched connections is the
to play various parts (Willis, 2003). Such mock invasions have even been growing fashion for large four-wheel drive Sports Utility Vehicles (SUVs) in
proposed as local economic developmem initiatives for declining city cores.
Western - particularly US - cities.
Finally, we must also remember that the US milicary are deepening their Given the very high degree of influence of major US oil companies on the
connections with corporate news media, so that the "information warfare" Blish regime, there is growing evidence of direct connections becween the
side of their operations (i.e., propaganda) can be more successful. Just as increasingly profligate use of oil in sprawling US ciryscapes, the geopolitical
AI-Qaeda timed the second plane's impact on 9111 so mat the world's news remodeling of US defense forces, and the so-called war on terror mrough
media could beam it live [Q billions of astonished onlookers, so the "Shock which the US govemment is acbieving a high tevel of geopolitical control of
and Awe" strategy at the stan of me US bombing of Baghdad was a tile world's largest untapped oil reserves in and around (he Caspian Basin
carefully orchestrated media spectacle. ([he world's TV journalists were (K\eveman, 2003; see plate 1.4).9/11 pas rhus been ruthlessly e)""Ploited. In
lined up in a major horel, a short but safe disrance away from the carefully particutar, the anacks provided the "catastrOphic and catalyzing event" thar
selec[ed - and largely empry - buildings that were pinpointed for GPS was identified by the influential 2000 report Pro/eer for a New American
based desrrucrion.) As a psychologist comments, both evenrs were "meanr Cen.wry _ who's authors included Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz
to be righc before our eyes" (cited In Konstantin and Hornig, 2001: 126). _ as necessary to allow (he US to justify the invasion of Iraq wim any hope
Thus, bom formal and informal anacks against cities emerge as "rhizo
of legitimacy (Harvey, 2003a: 15).
maric," inrernationally nerworked operarions orchesrrated heavily with While the US strategy is not necessarily about directly controUing
global, media representation in mind (see Deleuze and Guatarri, 1987). Caspian Basin and Iraqi oil resourc.es per se, there is little doubt that "it is
Both AI-Qaeda and the US military are transnational organizations con about ensuring that whoever controls it buys and seUS it In US dollars
cerned both with symbolic effects and the real devast:Hion of local sites through the New York commodities market" thal lies a few hundred meters
(Zizek, 2003). "This war takes place in the invisible space of the terror from "ground zero'; in downtown Manhanao (Halevi and Varoufakis,
imaginary of the US (artacks on buildings and government, genn infection, 2003: 66). There is also little doubt that a key objective of the US attack
e[c.) and in tbe visibly impoverished landscape of Afghanistan" (Arerxaga, 00 Iraq was to install a uS-friendly oil producing regime there that would
2003 : 144). eventually displace the Saudis as the main "swing producer," so allowing
James Lukaszewiski, a US public relations counselor who advises the US me United States to regulate the international price of oil in place of OPEC
military, admits that the links between terrorist organizations and the global (Gregory, Z004b; Harvey, 2003a; Vidal, 2002: 19).
media can be equally insidious: Three key pointS are crucial here. First, sUVs were carefully fashioned
and marketed after the first Gulf War as quasi-militarized "urban assault
Media coverage and terrorism are soul mates - vinually inseparable. They luxury vehicles" (Ralllpton and Scaube(, 2003). C10taire Rapaille, a psy
feed off each other. They cogemer crearc a d:mce of de am - the one for chological consultant to major US sUV manufacrurers, reveals that his
politkal or ideological motives, me oilier for commercial success. Terrorist research suggestS that Americans want "aggressive cars" that can be
activiries are h.igh. profile, ratings-building events. The news media need to lhoughI of as "weapons" or "armored cars for the battlefield." To achieve
prolong these slories because chey build viewcC'3rup and readership. (Ciced in
market share and protitabiliry he argues that lhe design and marketing of
Rampwn and Staube(, 2003: 134)
such vehicles _ with theu names like "Stealth," "Defender," and "War
rior" _ needs to tap intO, and address, consumers' fears about me risks and
HomelandlGlobe: War, "Security," and the Global
dangers inherent in contemporary urban life (cited in Rampton and Stau
Geopolitics of Production and Consumption
ber, 2003: 138). Depictions of such vehicles in advertS thus (Um the
discourses of postmodern war intO discussions about urban everyday \i,tc-.
Every genera[ioll has a taboo and ours is rlli~: that me (esources upon which "Just try blending in!" yellS the UK ad for the Jeep Grand Cher()kC~
our lives have been built are running out. (Monbiot, 2003)
"Stealth Limited Edition," released in 2003.
Posl-9Ill, then, it is now clear that adv.;:rti-;ers have been deliberately
A fmal vignette on me lnseparabiliry of contemporary war, terror, and exploiting widespread fears of catasrrophic terrorism to further increase
urbanism centers on me ways in which the reconsrruction of landscapes
')u
SUphii1l Graham
C inej as Srrategic S iMj 51
sales of highly profitable SUVs. Rapaille himself has recently been urgmg
(he main auro manufacturers (0 address rbe fact rbat "the Homeland is ar Second, the SUV is being enrolled inco urPfin everyday life as a defem;ivc
war" by 2003:
Stauber) 139). to buyers' mose primitive emotions (Ramp ton and
appealing capsule or "portable civilization" - a Signifier of safety that, like the gated
communities inlO which they so often drive, is portrayed in advenisemenrs
. as being immune [Q (he risky and unpredictable '·:rban life "Outside"
(Ga mer, 2000) . Such vehicles seem to assuage (he fear that me urban
middle classes feel when moving - or queuing - in rraffic in their "home
land" ciry.
Subliminal processes of urban and cultural militariza60n ace going
on here. This was most powerfully illustrated by the U'ansformarion of
the US Army's "Humvee" assaulr vehicle inco the civilian "Hununer"
SUV just after the (1rs( Iraq war - an idea ma[ came from the Terminal()r
film star (and now California governor) Arnold Schwarzenegger
(who prompdy received the first one off (he production line) . During
the 2003 Iraq invasion, organizations of US Hummer drivers mobilized
publicity campaigns co project their vehicles as patriotic symbols. "When
I turn on the TV," gushed one owner, Sam Bersrein, "I see wall-co-wall
Hwnvees, and I'm proud. The [US soldiers are] not our (here in Audi
4x4s" (cired in Clark, 2004: 12) . Andrew Garner wrircs thar:
For the middle classes, ilie SUV is interprered culrurally as srrong and invin
cible, yet civilized , In me case of the middle-class alienation from the inner
ciry, the SUV is an urban assault vehicle . The driver is transfomled inro a
trooper, combacing ~n increas ingly dangerous world . This sense of securiry
felt when driviog the SUV conanues when ir is not bemg driven. The SUV's
symbols of strength, power, command, and securiry become an important
part of the self-sign . . . With me identification of enemies wirhin our borders,
this vehicle has become a way of protecting memberS of me middle class from
any mreat to their lifesryle . (Garner, 2000: 6)
Third, the facr that SUVs accoum for over 25 percent of US car sales has
very real impacrs on the global geopolitics of oil. With their consumption
rares of double or triple that of normal cars) this highJy lucrative sector
clearly adds directly to the power or the neoconservarive and ex-oil execu
tive "hawks" in che Bush regime. This is especially so as they have oper
auonalized their perperual war on rerror in ways thar are helping the USA
to secure access (0 the huge, low-priced oil reserves that ir needs [Q fuel irs
ever-growing \evel of consumprion. (Tn 2003 this stood ar 25 .5 percent of
global oil consumption (0 sustain a country widl less than 5 percenr of the
world's population.)
Plate 1.4 Salirical World War II-style POSler by Micah Ian Wrighr Stress Clearly, men, the profligare oil consumprion and milirarized design of
ing the links becween SUVs, We Unired Stares' proOigare oil consumprion, SUVs "rakes on additional significance in the light of the role mar depend
and che artacks by US forces in the Middle Easr after 2002 as pan: of me ency on foreign oil has played in shaping US relations with countries in the
war on [error. Source: Wright (2003: 96).
l'vliddle East" (Rampron and Srauber, 2003 : 139) .
5'"
Cit;", as St.rategic Sues
52 S tephen Graha"l
AND TERRORISM
on single places '0 iorge-sca1e comparison< across East and West, North and South. The ..,ties is expl icitly
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