Brilliantly, sadly observed

[Steven Koteff]

I really appreciate all the time you guys have put into sustaining this
conversation. It is an important conversation (christ I sound like a
pundit), and would be way too easy to just not have.

I know what follows is not really about anything specific to what you guys
are saying. It's just that you guys both seem to be arguing very well for
two voices that compete so perfectly inside my head that I end up not
having much of an idea what to really think about things.

The notion of just war (or just war tactics) is really uncomfortable
because it forces us to make short term decisions that are justified by
long term consequences--when in fact the consequences are hypothetical (and
so fallacious), and can't be known.

Most people on here, I imagine, would (*generally speaking*) support
efforts toward peace so long as it is possible, yet also enjoy security
(physical, national, moral), and would probably leave some gray area in
their moral landscape to account for the possibility of taking military
action when it is a) unavoidable and b) in the best interest of the
world/people at large.

Right?

I think the question of how to categorize the U.S.'s military endeavors
(terrorism or not) is difficult because making objective moral decisions in
general is impossible, and it is not made any more possible when the stakes
are this high, and when such uncomfortable consequences will eventually
arise no matter how a country conducts itself, and when the process (and
its consequences) is (/are) so far from transparent.

There is no way to really know the global/moral calculus run by the people
in power. How can we make educated moral decisions regarding whether
military actions are justified or not when we don't know what the
consequences will be, nor what the desired consequences even are? Do we
have an idea of what Obama's expectations or hopes for the Middle East
really are, if he could have it turn out exactly how he wanted? I don't
think so. And anyway his goals are likely very different from the goals of
the previous presidents who shaped the situation (and, thus, decisions made
by presidents following them).

Is it possible that Obama (et al) believes, in his (their) heart, that he
has inherited a war that has served only to perpetuate an already
metastatic tumor on the body of human civilization, and that everything he
is doing is actually the most efficient and humanest avenue toward
long-term peace, and toward the maximum possible well-being of the greatest
number of people? I guess so. Does the answer to that question have some
bearing on whether or not the US's actions should be called terrorism? I
think yes but I don't know the answer to that. Not really.

The really hard thing about war, and nationalism, and global politics in
the 21st century, as someone who has the privilege/burden of some larger
amount of awareness of a phenomenon like the Middle East, and of one's own
moral implication in it, and ALSO--all you Pynchon-dudes--of recognizing
the impossibility of any real knowledge of another individual's intentions
(let alone the intentions of some entity as nebulous as a state--can a
state really have intentions, and can a citizen who had no direct voice in
its decisions be held accountable for them, etc.), or of consequences, or
of anything really... the really hard thing (for me) is that at some level
you have to just buy in. You have to accept that your own ability to
understand what would be best for the world long term is so deficient in
the scope of the infinite complexities of the situation that it's closer to
zero than to anything at all. And that you have to just sort of blindly
submit yourself to the fallacy of some system of morality and
evaluation--be it the cause of the West, or the US, or not.

I generally just opt out of that by not really identifying with any system
of belief or community of people. I suspect that's true of all of you. But
then in situations like this I realize that if I dissociate from the US
enough to point fingers at it, then maybe I actually end up pointing
fingers at myself anyway. Which doesn't feel right (*I *did not seek to
destabilize the Middle East any more than I sought to do anything else in
the name of anyone, the US, ISIS), but then again, it's not like I'm out
here trying to get the country to act any better (in a coffee shop, letting
the internet get between me and the shit I want to write).






On Sat, Nov 28, 2015 at 2:39 PM, Thomas Eckhardt <
thomas.eckhardt at uni-bonn.de> wrote:

>
> Am 28.11.2015 um 17:12 schrieb ish mailian:
>
>> We, the US, did not give birth to ISIS.
>>
>
> How do you define "give birth"? ISIS would not exist without the Iraq War.
> I should think that this is not controversial.
>
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>
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