The Gulf War Did Not Take Place

The Gulf War Did Not Take Place is a book by Jean Baudrillard. Contrary to the provocative title, the author does believe that the Gulf War actually took place. His point in the book is that the style of warfare used in the Gulf War was so far removed from previous standards of warfare that it existed more as images on radar and TV screens than as actual hand-to-hand combat, that most of the decisions in the war were based on perceived intelligence coming from maps and images and news, than from actual seen-with-the-eye intelligence.

Military officials have confirmed that the USA did not truely consider Iraq to be a threat before the latter's invasion of Kuwait, and thus had almost no agents or contacts on the ground. Almost every bit of intelligence America recieved leading up to the war was from the aerial photographs, and from asking leaders of nearby nations.

One of the points that Baudrillard tried to make with this book is that what's considered real is now simply images of what's real, and although that might be an obvious statement to make, many people absolutely believe what they see on their screens. This point also works in with another of Baudrillard claims that the war was so heavily edited when it was shown on television, that what Americans saw wasn't even close the real war. He arrived at this conclusion after talking with many soldiers about what really happened on the ground.

All this finally comes back to the title of the book, which we now see as his claim that the "Gulf War" as presented on TV was not what actually took place.

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