So, it has come to this: the US lobbing down BLU-82 "daisy cutter" bombs on Afghanistan. They used these vile bombs, reportedly "the largest conventional weapon in the world", in Vietnam and during the Gulf War. Now Afghanistan shudders under the force of bombing's last rung below nuclear weapons. As big as a Volkswagen Beetle but much heavier - 15,000lbs (almost seven tons!) - these daisy cutters blast away everything for almost half a mile from the point of impact without leaving a crater.
Within their half to two-thirds of a mile-wide diameter, they, of course, don't leave a "cratur" - human, animal or insect - alive either. These "fuel-air" monstrosities generate temperatures of around 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Initially the blast uses up all nearby oxygen, vaporising or melting everything. When the atmospheric oxygen does finally rush back in, about 15 minutes later, every organic compound ignites spontaneously, creating another, albeit smaller explosion, contained within the 1,000-foot-high mushroom cloud. Charming, eh? Witnessing the mushroom cloud of a daisy cutter during the Gulf War, a group of British SAS soldiers were sure the Americans had dropped a nuclear bomb. An American witness, Col Mike Samuel, Norman Schwarzkopf's special operations commander during that "war", cabled a message back to the US Special Operations Command headquarters in Florida: "We're not sure how you say 'Jesus Christ!' in Iraqi." Like the military "defences" for nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the BLU-82 is considered as effective a "psychological" as a physical weapon.
Just seeing the physical devastation caused by one of these mega-bombs couldn't but leave a huge psychological crater.
Even in a country as pulverised by war as Afghanistan, areas of a half or two-thirds of a mile burnt and blasted by a single bomb, mark a ferocity of aggression that is at once awesome and dispiriting. In their willingness to deploy ferocious weapons, the Americans are historically no different from other peoples at war, but their mastery of, dependence on and relationship with technology is greater than those of any other people.
"The great American vice is not materialism but a lack of respect for matter," wrote W.H. Auden in 1963. "In the United States, wealth was also \as in Europe acquired by stealing, but the real exploited victim was not a human being but Mother Earth and her creatures, who were ruthlessly plundered. It is true that the Indians were expropriated or exterminated, but this was not, as it had always been in Europe, a matter of the conqueror seizing the wealth of the conquered, for the Indian had never realised the potential riches of his country."
Whether or not it is reasonable to distinguish between materialism and a lack of respect for matter (is the fulfilling of the first not dependent on the existence of the second?), it is undeniably true that the US consumes a hugely disproportionate amount of the Earth's resources. It's not that those of us in Western Europe can afford to be sanctimonious about this - after all, we too rape the world's resources to maintain our material standard of living. But Europe did not snub Mother Earth with the contempt of George Bush's US when the Kyoto treaty was being discussed.
Perhaps the current conflict will come to be seen not primarily as one between Islam and the secular West, but as the latest phase in the struggle for control of oil. Certainly, the Gulf War of a decade ago is widely and rightly accepted as such - and oil is the blood of machinery and technology.
You need oil, for example, to power a warplane carrying a daisy cutter before you can lob the vile thing down to obliterate a chunk of the unfortunate Earth.
Likewise, engine oil in numerous states, thousands of gallons of it refined as intense-energy aviation fuel, was central to the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon. Those orange and black explosions, which transfixed the world and murderously toppled the twin towers, had their origins in oil wells, presumably oil wells in the Gulf region. Our dependence on oil is acknowledged and often remarked upon, but the extent of our economic, political, social and, as a result, even cultural subordination to oil has alarming implications.
Of course, the oil companies spin the story to their own benefit. In a market system ideologically sustained by PR, advertising and all manner of disingenuous claims, the oil companies are not alone in this. But consider the Shell Oil Company Foundation, for instance. It argues that, in contributing $20 million every year to US non-profit organisations involved in health, culture and the arts, education and the environment, it is "making a difference in the communities where Shell people work and live".
That "Shell people" phrase has implications too. "Shell employees" suggests a reasonable relationship in which workers sell their labour for agreed rates, but "Shell people" sounds altogether more appropriating.
Anyway, the Shell Oil Company Foundation's website lists its services and the application procedure for organisations seeking funds. Fair enough, but it also includes a grandparent's testimonial about a new Shell-built wing in a children's hospital.
"For those who have never visited Children's Hospital [in New Orleans], the waiting rooms are usually filled with children seeking medical care, children who have severe mental and physical handicaps. When I took a walk down the hall near the waiting room, I noticed a plaque hung on the wall," the grandparent says.
"Words cannot express the feeling of pride I, as a Shell employee, felt upon reading that the funding necessary to build that hospital wing was donated by the Shell Foundation. It felt good knowing that Cameron [the grandson] and all of the special children who have to go to Children's Hospital can get the help they need because they can count on the generosity of Shell."
Well, what can you say? No doubt, anybody with a sick child would be grateful to any outfit which provided funds to help with treatment. But why, in the wealthiest country ever, should sick children need or even be encouraged to "count on the generosity of Shell"? Can that really be a civilised way to organise healthcare in a society in which other, better-placed "Shell people" can routinely spend thousands of dollars in buying unnecessary cosmetic surgery. Talk about oily PR.
For years, we've heard debates - sensible and idiotic - about cleaner energy. Indeed, even the oil companies, Shell among them, advertise their concern for Mother Earth. In Ireland now, you can see Shell petrol tankers painted to resemble a bright blue sky, with a few puffy, ultra-white clouds.
It is a picture of freshness and pure air - the polar opposite of what burning petrol, even slightly less polluting petrol, actually does to the air. But our laws and culture permit such a gross misrepresentation of oil and we are supposed to accept it.
Making the packaging so contrary to the reality is as absurd as one of those trucks that suck up the contents of septic tanks being rigged up to resemble a giant perfume bottle. Yet the oil industry - perhaps partly because, given our dependence on it, we want it to be cleaner, gentler and less ruthless than we know it to be - is able to pull such a stunt. In that sense, oil's power is such that we willingly deny its reality. Mind you, technology could make the world a safer place if it developed efficient, alternative energy sources.
As it is, however, we are told that the world is being made safer by lobbing down seven-ton monster bombs on the fighters of a very nasty regime in Afghanistan. Maybe so, but it's hard to believe that. Perhaps alternative energy sources are not practical or maybe the oil lobby, capable of selling petrol as some kind of air purifier, has distorted the truth about realistic possibilities. It has, after all, got the track record. Anyway, one reality that is not in doubt is that the reshaping of oil's image pollutes the mental landscape just as oil itself pollutes the physical one.
Meanwhile, the "daisy cutters", named with typical cynicism, scorch Mother Earth and technology is refined to maximise their destructive power. Those being lobbed down on Afghanistan are "third-generation" versions, their explosive ingredients ensuring hotter and longer-lasting results.
It's hard to believe that technological research couldn't be better employed developing alternatives to the oil which bubbles beneath the publicly stated reasons for the ongoing conflict. Oil propaganda, for all its slickness, is as crude as that when you examine it. It's going to become increasingly explosive too.