trundling this minor point back on topic, i hope

[John Carvill]

A-and, here we are on the p-list debating death camps vs labour camps.
Yet some are willing to bestow their approbation on a modern-day
apologist for a genocidal Dictator who put people in camps where they
were staved, tortured, raped, terrorised and killed.



-----Original Message-----
From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On
Behalf Of Cometman
Sent: 27 October 2005 01:17
To: pynchon-l at waste.org
Subject: Re: trundling this minor point back on topic, i hope

From: "John Carvill" <JCarvill at algsoftware.com>
-There is something 'unbalanced here': it's Harold Pinter.
-Milosevic was a Head of State, a State which pursued a policy of
-Genocide. Milosevic is a War Criminal. Pinter seeks to defend 
-Milosevic.

Hitchens on Kissinger, for me, sheds a light useful to reflect on
Pinter's comment.  (Hitchens on approval of America's role in Iraq I
haven't read, but probably ought to...) - anyway, the genocidal
treatment in Southeast Asia of civilians by US forces is a matter of
public record.  NATO (or, rather SEATO) made no move to try these
offenses, as far as I can recall.  

Telford Taylor's excellent "Nuremberg and Vietnam" (review here:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/10475 ) summarizes the history of war
crimes law and his view (he was US chief counsel at Nuremberg) accords
with Hitchens's.

NATO is a military alliance, not a law-dispensing entity. Its role is
obviously partisan and its inclination to treat a defeated enemy fairly
is at best questionable, although it is certainly treating Milosevich
much more fairly than the civilians it killed during the bombing, and
more fairly than he treated his countrymen during his authority.

The International Court of Justice, for instance, is interested in
atrocities committed by the nations who call themselves "good" (the
elect) as well as in those committed by nations called "bad" (the
preterite) by the first group.  Any move towards acceptance of a
non-military legal war crimes authority not associated with a nation or
faction, would, I suggest, be a huge step toward a peaceful world.  

It's a step that might at first seem unreasonable to decision-makers
used to approving slaughter of innocents. (For instance, the
Kirkpatrick remark on the thousands of Iraqi children dying due to
sanctions: "the price, we think, is worth it?"
What kind of grammar is that anyway? "the price is worth it")  The
price of having someplace where the death tolls are honestly counted
(who killed more: NATO or Milosevich?  Who killed more civilians: the
9-11 thugs or the Coalition in Iraq?), and the atrocities of all
combatants are addressed, the price, I think, would be worth it.  That
place isn't likely to be NATO, is what I think that Pinter is saying.

Several mainstream US churches gave to the Angela Davis defense fund,
back in the 60s, not because they were in agreement with her cause, but
because they believed she should have a fair trial.  My heart and mind
agree with them on that point, and with Pinter on Milosevich.    

The place where all comers do have a fair trial is the kind heart and
the critically-thinking mind.  Like Joyce's Stephen hammering away on
the uncreated conscience of his race, I like to think of Pynchon -
writing on graph paper - charting the curves of a new formula of how to
perceive our life.




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