In “conventional” military doctrine, the aim of war is said to be to annihilate the will of the enemy by resorting to overwhelming fire-power. The enemy appears as the hideous Lernean Hydra overpowered by the much stronger Hercules. However, frequently in “counter-insurgency” wars, the so called “insurgents” manage to turn this image of enmity. When it is the case, the Western force appears as the infamous Goliath that, against all odds, will be brought down by David. The symbolic economies of violence mobilized on both sides, and the estheticized representations of self and enemy that flow from it, are hence likely to thwart any attempt at finding a common “idiom of military force” in these conflicts. It is the complexity of these interactions and the resulting circulation of contradictory “faces of enmity” that we want here to explore. Ultimately, what happens when David confronts Hercules?
