the post-911 Situation, Vietnam & Pynchon

[barbara100 at jps.net]

Quail said:
Again, war is horrible, and I feel sick that this is happening, but I
think the alternatives will only lead to even more American dead.

Can I ask you just one question?  It's all I'm really interested in tonight
as I read this (anybody feel free to answer though).  Which is a more
sickening outcome? Our 6000 +  losses, or the loss of their 6 or 7 million
who risk starvation this winter in Afghanistan.  I heard it on the radio
today.  From a Frenchman, a UN appointee of some kind, who says he's going
to New York in ten days to give his report to the UN on the status of the
food situation in Afghanistan.  He said 7 million are currently displaced
and starving.  And he emphatically said as long as the bombs drop,  nothing
can be done to move food to the people.  Catastrophe, catastrophe,
catastrophe--he said it three times in his cute French accent.  I'm sure
they won't all die, but let's say 5 or 10  or 20 percent do.  How many's
that?  Is that a more sickening outcome to you than our already 6000+?
Could you ever really convince yourself this is a 'just' war?

"Later in the Zone, with his guilt become a sensual thing, prickling at his
eyes and membranes like an allergy, it would seem to Pokler that he could
not, even by that day in Weissmanns's office, have been ignorant of the
truth.  That he had known the truth with his senses, but allowed all the
evidence to be misfiled where it wouldn't upset him.  Known everything, but
refrained from the only act that could have redeemed him.  He should have
throttled Weissmann where he sat, corrugations of skinny throat and Adam's
apple sliding under Pokler's palms, thick eyeglasses sliding off as the weak
little eyes go blearing helplessly after their final darkener...
Pokler helped with his own blindness. [ ]"   (GR 499)

but allowed all the evidence to be misfiled where it wouldn't upset him
but allowed all the evidence to be misfiled where it wouldn't upset him
but allowed all the evidence to be misfiled where it wouldn't upset him

Barbara

----- Original Message -----
From: The Great Quail <quail at libyrinth.com>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Thursday, October 18, 2001 5:44 PM
Subject: Re: the post-911 Situation, Vietnam & Pynchon


> Doug writes,
>
> >Are they really?  The U.S. fought in Vietnam in part to "contain"
Communism
> >within a broader strategy of seeking to eliminate or contain Communism;
the
> >U.S. fights in Afghanistan for similar reasons, substitute "terrorism"
for
> >"Communism".
>
> See, that's the substitution that you feel comfortable making, and I
> do not. I find it specious. I feel as if you use Vietman as a general
> template rather than a specific situation. If time flowed in reverse,
> would you feel as comfortable substituting Naziism for Communism?
> Where would you take a stand that violence is acceptable? (I mean
> that sincerely.) Just because the US has an antagonism against a
> people, it does not mean you can interchange the circumstances with
> other people with whom we have had antagonisms.
>