Ig Nobels

[rich]

did u read the Goldhagen interview in Der Spiegel this week?

Part 4: 'International Law on the Issue of Mass Slaughter Is Utterly Bankrupt'

Goldhagen: Does it? Any regime that has been declared to be
undertaking eliminationist assaults should be suspended immediately
from all international institutions. It should be declared that the
leaders of these countries, the top political leadership and all high
level subordinates, are outlaws and are subject to being killed.

SPIEGEL: You think murder is the answer?

Goldhagen: The perpetrators conceive of it as a war. They're making
war on an identifiable part of humanity, which is like making war on
humanity as a whole. And if they are making war, the rules of war
apply. We should encourage those who can to kill them. This may sound
radical, but it is a far more effective, less-costly and, believe or
not, likely solution than sending in a UN or some other rapid reaction
force.
______
one really wants to agree with Goldhagen about the disinterested and
ineffective way we deal with perpetrators of war crimes (including a
lack of self-awareness of countries in the west) but is the answer
outright murder? surely, we're not talking about just Hitler, Stalin,
Pol Pot and the other luminaries of evil but also Bush, Putin, Tony
Blair and not who Goldhagen is pbly mostly talking about--dictators in
Liberia, Guinea and others in the "third world"

in a sense, can the international community differentiate the crimes
of that crackpot capt in Guinea (mass rape of women publicly,
murdering of legitimate political dissent) and those of say Donald
Rumsfeld. my view is it will always be so and the likes of Kissinger,
Putin, and Bush will get a pass.

rich

On Sat, Oct 10, 2009 at 4:41 AM, Thomas Eckhardt
<thomas.eckhardt at uni-bonn.de> wrote:
> Page schrieb:
>
>> However, I fully agree: we (including those of us in Canada) need more
>> hot-headed people.
>
> And, of course, including those of us in Germany.
>
> Thomas
>
>