Intellectual Conservatism and Class Bias against Soldiers

Nathan Newman nathan.newman at yale.edu
Wed May 12 06:00:02 PDT 1999


-----Original Message----- From: Jim heartfield <jim at heartfield.demon.co.uk> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com>
>Nathan takes refuge in a spurious moral equivalence. After all a life is
>a life is a life, so what does it matter if you kill civilians instead
>of soldiers. Like Macbeth, he is so steeped in gore that it is as easy
>to go on as back.
>But if there is no difference between killing civilians and soldiers,
>what is the complaint against the Milosevic regime, exactly?

It is those who de facto ally with Milosevic by defending him who are steeped in the gore of Kosovar deaths and ethnic clensing.

I said specifically that it does matter if you kill civilians versus soldiers (and that killing civilians is in some cases preferable to killing soldiers), but some folks seem unable to hear and engage with any argument that does not conform to their own.

While I used the hospital example where everyone there was a Milosevic supporter as an extreme case (hypothetically), the real civilian targets should be ones most implicated in supporting and defending the Milosevic regime, including the top leadership itself.

Would anyone argue that killing some poor kid drafted into the army is more moral than bombing the home of the Serbian legislator who voted to send him to war?

--Nathan Newman



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