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Karey: Im not sure what your preamble on Hitler Youth Corp means, except perhaps as an attempt to bring Walker Percy into the discussion. I suspect it is a technique of invidious association, though in what sense our country has found a like _expression_ among our youth or in some other sector, escapes me. I would enjoy some clarification on what our current version of the Hitler Youth Corps may be. As for The unjust war doctrines
are unscientific formulations from the good-faith debates of ethicists. We can
all find one to our liking. Ive found a few who endorse the war in
As for the Pope condemning the Iraq War, Im afraid that doesnt have much moral heft to me. If Im correct, the Catholic Church went out of its way to comfort the Nazis. If the Catholic Church lacks the moral clarity to recognize that the serial and grotesque rapacities of a dictator demand forceful interdiction, Im sorry, but I have no intention to wait around for them to catch up to me. Anyway, I believe such catch-up is inevitable; Im sure Catholicism is not too far down the to-do list of Islamicist fury. As for Abu Ghraib, I believe you
are incorrect. It was isolated and was not connected to a higher chain of
command. If I am wrong, I would be interested in proof. It was brutish and
obscene of course but hardly characteristic of our treatment of prisoners, there
or elsewhere. Obviously it cannot be compared to how prisoners of war are
treated by Islamicists, as those poor souls get their heads sawed off --
something perhaps closer to a gross and unapologetic abandonment of the Geneva
Convention? Moreover, our incidents of abuse are followed by swift remediation.
We are now constructing a new holding facility in And then of course, there is the
same old claim that we are all being spun as a part of a "fascist"
fear-mongering. We are manipulated by Karl Rove and swept along by vulgar mob
sentiments. I can only speak for myself, but I am not. I wonder why it so
bewildering to so many to think that people can reasonably and on their own
arrive at the decision that a war against terrorists, who have declared their
intent to wipe us from the face of the earth, makes basic sense? Somehow we must be influenced to believe
this? Anyway, Im curious who is being swept anywhere. More than half of the
population currently opposes the war in
As for Ernest Beckers meditations on the neurotic roots of war, nothing better underscores, with all due respect, the abstractions of academia. If I have a neurosis it is to guarantee that I and/or my fellow citizens dont get our heads chopped off. And my fear or concern doesnt spring from any dark, Freudian recess of anxiety responsible for phantasmal projections of psychosis. It springs from people chopping our heads off. If killing my enemy gives me meaning and purpose, it is a good meaning and purpose, and reflects total sanity, and I am glad of it. Becker belongs high on the bookshelf in this conflict. And to Julio: I would read Orwell
a little more closely, especially his essay on wartime
Nowhere in your disquisition on our "fascist" state do you address this fundamental question: what do we do in the face of a nihilistic, barbarous, and genuinely fascist movement that wishes both literally and figuratively to decapitate us. A movement which has no interest in sharing this planet with us, and will accept massive self-immolation as a price for our destruction. Until the anti-war movement can address, even admit this, I cannot take any of these arguments seriously any protests against Don Rumsfeld or Karl Rove or Dick Cheney man nothing to me. They are merely ideological fulminations -- elegant and theoretical and nugatory. They do not help me understand the real threats to my culture or how to answer them. Now, as for what Walker Percy
would say to our current problems? I do not know. I only know that he prized and
defended western liberal values, science, art, education, freedom of speech,
truth and beauty and suchlike. I
cant help but think he would have had some form of intelligent and forceful
response to a barbaric movement dedicated to snuffing them all out. It may very
well be that he would have opposed the war in
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