Re: [Leica] Terror

[Johnny Deadman <john@pinkheadedbug.com>]

on 9/13/01 10:47 AM, B. D. Colen at bdcolen2001@yahoo.ca wrote:

> Come on, JD, The War with Mexico, as utterly
> unjustifiable as it is by today's standards of
> international behavior, was pretty much typical for
> its time.

I was just supplying an example of a largely economic war, not saying
anything about whether it was typical or atypical.

You want a more recent example? The Gulf War was clearly motivated by the
need for the West to safeguard its oil supplies. While the overt moral
justification of coming the the aid of 'little Kuwait' certainly had
content, does anyone really believe that if oil supplies had not been at
stake that such a huge campaign would have been mounted? I can think of a
dozen similar invasions around the world where the US did nothing.

I do not believe this makes the war 'wrong', any more than it was
'justified' by the plight of Kuwait, whose own rulers are hardly paragons of
democratic virtue. It was a war. War is not about right and wrong. It is
about realpolitik... the struggle for power in the world. If you wish to
defend a way of life, sometimes you have to defend economic interests. And
despite the propaganda war is very seldom about morality. Even WWII, which
clearly had an enormous moral justification, was entered with enormous
reluctance by the Allies. A rump of conservatives in the British government
continued to think that peace could be reached with Hitler for months if not
years after the conflict began, as did the Archbishop of Canterbury. And the
US joined only when its own interests were directly harmed at Pearl Harbour.

Thank God they did. Realpolitik.

Bin Laden and his crew wish to increase their power over the world. I
personally think they should be stopped and if force is the way to do it, so
be it. Their acts two days ago made 'war' with them politically possible and
probably essential in a way that it had not been previously (it would have
upset too many nations the US didn't want to upset - Russia, China,
Pakistan, Saudi Arabia). In a sense it was a huge own goal by the
extremists, because it finally mobilized world opinion against them,
something the Allies had failed to do for a decade.

But everyone should realise that arguing that God is on our side, or that
Bin Laden or Sadaam Hussein are crazed madmen is simply rhetoric. God
doesn't vote, period.

In the end it all comes down to imposing political will by force.
- -- 
John Brownlow

http://www.pinkheadedbug.com