JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. This content downloaded from 130.237.29.138 on Thu, 31 Dec 2015 04:09:10 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions War in the Mode of Information Mark Poster everal aspects of the representation of the U.S.-Iraq War arrest my attention. These are (1) the role of environmental issues,the concern for historic and cultural monuments, (3) the presence of coalition media personnel in Iraq subsequent to the outbreak of hostilities, and (4) the "real-time" transmission of images and sound from the theater of operations, transforming the battlefield into a theater. I believe these phenomena are without precedent in war and therefore deserve special consideration.The oil spill in the Persian Gulf was presented by the Bush administration as a deliberate sabotage of nature by Saddam Hussein. Rather than an accident of the shipping industry or a hazard of petroleum technology, this spill was attributed to the maniacal intentions of a despot. Suddenly a new criterion was imposed on the conduct of war: the preservation of the environment. War, considered the ultimate state of the polis at least since Plato, the true test of the moral fiber of the community, has become, by dint of U.S. administration spokesmen, a limited action, one carried out with constraints imposed by "higher" considerations, such as the environment. When the U.S. Air Force destroyed one-third of the forests of Vietnam by defoliants, napalm, and assorted chemi-

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org..

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