In Pursuit of Light War in Libya: Kairotic Justifications of War That Just Happened

Abstract

This essay examines President Barack Obama’s March 28, 2011 address on the war in Libya to theorize a shift in twenty-first-century war rhetoric in which violence is insulated from critique through the numbing of public sensation. In contrast to traditional persuasive appeals aimed at securing collective participation and approval for war, Obama’s oratory is characteristic of “light war,” a mode of conflict that flows more freely by placing few demands on thought, feeling, and attention. I argue that Obama’s rhetoric limits the potential for audiences to sense the material consequences of war through a set of kairotic justifications in which violence is considered “just” in the dual sense that it just ended, and that it is just war, or merely a banal and quotidian version of conflict. After unpacking the anesthetizing features of Obama’s discourse, I conclude by addressing the prospects of resistance given the compressed interval for public thought and feeling to interrupt violent practices.