a "just war"?

[calbert at hslboxmaster.com]

Arne:

> We certainly wouldn't be happy about it. We would condemn it in every
> international forum we could find. We wouldn't - and couldn't - bomb
> another country in retaliation. It would be like San Marino declaring
> war on Italy.

Why not "couldn't and wouldn't"? The order is suggestive. 

The analogy is not the hijacking of an airliner, btw, with its discreet 
toll, it is the firebombing of Kristiania on a summer afternoon, or the 
Royal Ballet on opening night.........
 
> Perhaps the world would be a better place if there were no great
> powers, but only a lot of small countries. 
> 
> Perhaps it would be worse. I don't really know.

Now THAT is "Pynchonian"......

> I am glad to hear that you have condemned US atrocities in Central
> America all along.

Not only that, but I NEVER asked, of the Reagan administration - 
"why they hate the sandinistas so"....that is not meant entirely 
sarcastically.......

 I know a lot of Americans who condemn the bombing
> in Afghanistan right now.

I'm not a fan of the policy or its authors, but I have to say that an 
objective assessment would conclude that it has been "relatively" 
appropriate and humane........none of the DIRECT participants have 
evolved from a martial code which observes the principle of 
"quarter", our involvement is likely an ameliorating factor in the 
conflict.......

> But it is very depressing reading the official line, which seems to be
> based on the underlying assumption that there are some rules for the
> US and other rules for the rest of the world.

No-one ever sat down and determined how to deal with terrorists 
who deliberately target civilians. It is a pretty recent phenomenon. I 
hope that one of the outcomes of the current situation is the 
realization that even a "stable" democracy like ours can respond in 
a hyperbolic and aberrant fashion (my focus here is the 
compromise of civil rights domestically), and that developing a 
global mechanism to address this problem is of critical 
importance... 

> Even people abroad who consider themselves friends of America don't
> buy that.

Sentient "American's" don't either........Most of us are somewhere 
between John Wayne and Jonathan Livingston Seagull......



love,
cfa