>... It is appropriate in some
>circumstances, but not these, since we're talking about a real war in which
>the stakes are very high. And since most folks on this list live in the
>U.S., and it's the U.S. government that's mostly behind the war, and the
>U.S. government that contributed lots to the circumstances that led to the
>war, we're not just innocent bystanders having an academic dispute.
I had hoped that folk here would take my point better than has apparently been the case: the stakes are small _for us_, the folk doing all the jawing, viewing-with- alarm, and infighting. It is not _we_ who are being bombed, rocketed, or shelled. We continue to have access to water, food, shelter...all the amenities of high-status existence. Nor is that state likely to change, regardless of the outcome for the poor damned Kosovari and Serbi who only want to get on with their lives in peace. The stakes are incalculably high _for them_...but _not for us_. Nothing we say here will change f.b.a., yet our arguments are just as heated as tho they had real-world consequences.
Better we should be planning. Something might actually come of planning.