Targets of Opportunity: On the Militarization of Thinking

ISBN: 0823224767

Author: Weber, Samuel

Condition: New

The title of this book echoes a phrase used by the Washington Post to describethe American attempt to kill Saddam Hussein at the start of the war againstIraq. Its theme is the notion of targeting (skopos) as the name of an intentionalstructure in which the subject tries to confirm its invulnerability by aiming todestroy a target. At the center of the first chapter is Odysseuss killing of the suitors;the second concerns Carl Schmitts Roman Catholicism and Political Form; thethird and fourth treat Freuds Thoughts for the Times on War and Death andThe Man Moses and Monotheistic Religion. Weber then traces the emergenceof an alternative to targeting, first within military and strategic thinking itself(Network Centered Warfare), and then in Walter Benjamins readings ofCapitalism as Religion and Two Poems of Friedrich Hlderlin.