Domestic Left #12
The main thing I remember about the 2003 Gulf War is the emails.
At times, they came two or three times a day. They were very long and detailed. They purported to be English translations of leaked Russian military intelligence. I have no idea how true this was, but if it was a hoax, it was a hoax that someone put a hell of a lot of effort into, for no clear payoff.
I had not asked for these emails; they were forwarded to me by a trade unionist from Quebec, whose personal email list I had found myself on a year or two before. Before the invasion started, he would just send one or two articles a week, things of general interest to left-leaning trade unionists. As the war approached, he forwarded things like the articles declaring that after the antiwar demonstrations held around the world on February 15 there were now two superpowers — the U.S. and global opinion.
The emails attributed to Russian military intelligence did not share that power analysis.
They were mostly straight reports of troop movements and engagements. If memory serves, they speculated a bit about U.S. military strategy, and how it was misguided and repeatedly foiled in small ways — but they betrayed no alignment with either side. They did not discuss the impact on civilians. They read a bit like a younger brother carefully observing an older brother whom he both admires and fears.
They were morbidly compelling in a way that the anti-war emails I received daily alongside them were not. In a strange way, they were also a better antidote to the cheerleading of the U.S. corporate media (which always becomes state media in times of war). They detailed, not the moral horrors of war, but its complete chaos and unpredictability. You got to fill in the moral horror yourself.
The flat tone and dispassionate description was a bit like the numbing bite of Sichuan peppercorn. Its role in Sichuan cuisine (as I understand it) is to numb your mouth’s initial response to the heat of chili peppers, creating a slower but ultimately more intense burn. As I sat at my customer service job and read these emails in between calls, they provoked no immediate emotional reactions, just an increasingly resigned numbness, paired with a slowly intensifying despair. Then I would go home and drink until bedtime.
After about a month, the emails stopped coming. I don’t know if that’s because the Russians plugged the leak (or the huckster tired of the hoax), or because my comrade in Quebec just stopped forwarding them, or because of the way that invasions turn into occupations, occupations turn into mere foreign policy issues, and eventually everyone just moves on, except the invaded.