Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
> My position is that American servicemen & servicewomen (which
> unfortunately sounds awfully like "comfort women") & veterans should
> _think_ & reject Victor's Justice -- but not through special pleading.
>
Vietnam vets have long done their deliberations. I think there's a tendency for vets to salvage some kind of honor and heroism from their efforts - a move that militates very much against what you want. The passage of time is not kind to a preferred reconciliation of the cognitive dissonance experienced by the vets who served in Vietnam. Nor to those who didn't. And notions about "adequate justifications" are always open to debate. Your special pleading is Powell's airtight case. I hardly endorse his reasoning but I know that mindset is inpenetrable.
On the other hand, you're using a blunt instrument. Isn't this playing in the fields of absolutism, if I understand you correctly. How do you avoid the moral posture of "no good soldiers come out of bad wars?"
Isn't Max's question relevant? What about all those who served in the military during the cold war, especially those in FBM submarines, missile silos, B-52s all working toward a nuclear apocalypse. There was a conspiracy to obliterate life as we know it and the effort was unparalled as was the complicity. Am I a war criminal because I served on one of the boats that were little more than a floating missile platform?
Dennis Breslin