ABSTRACT
One way of addressing CPOF from here would be to look at the different kinds of battlespaces enacted by 1st Cavalry while using the system, and then, drawing on Mol’s notion of ontological politics, to formulate arguments favouring the enaction of particular kinds of battlespace over other, more harmful, enactions of the battlespace. This is an important task, and one which opens possibilities for more nuanced interventions in the debate about US military behaviour in Iraq than those that have dominated critical studies to date. However, the rest of this chapter adopts a different approach, addressing that which is most novel about CPOF – the greater scope it allows for the coexistence of alternative enactions within the TOC. Law suggests that ‘the insistence on singularity is productive,’ allowing things to be done generally even if there is no general thing (Law 2004a: 66). Perhaps the 1st Cavalry’s insistence on multiplicity was equally productive, allowing things to be done at a level or in a way not previously possible. The following section addresses the usual role military command plays in controlling multiplicity, alongside the novel demands placed on command in the context of Iraq. The rest of the chapter then asks how CPOF enabled 1st Cavalry to utilize the multiplicity of the battlespace without diffusing its efforts so much that they no longer responded to a recognizable military imperative at all.
