Brilliantly, sadly observed

[Steven Koteff]

I say 'you both' in par. 2, but really everyone on here is saying totally
compelling shit.

On Sat, Nov 28, 2015 at 4:10 PM, Steven Koteff <steviekoteff at gmail.com>
wrote:

> 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
>>
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20151128/1729db81/attachment.html>