On Wednesday, March 6, 2002, at 06:00 PM, Carrol Cox wrote:
>
>
> Jeffrey Fisher wrote:
>>
>> while i disagree with nathan's "legalese" approach to the war crimes
>> issue, i actually think the analysis in his last two graphs is
>> relatively cogent. i would add the following,
>>
>> (1) it seems to me that, morally, the distinction you are questioning
>> between military and civilians is not questionable only in civil wars,
>> which i think are mistakenly seen as somehow "different" . . .
>>
>
> Any Israeli settler on the west bank is a criminal of some sort just by
> eating breakfast or going to a movie.
> They are criminals by definition, and have as much right to exist as
> someone who walks through my front door and begins to trash the place.
sorry -- i was writing too quickly and may not have been clear. the point i was trying and perhaps failing to make is that the distinction nathan was questioning, between military and civilians, is a problematic distinction not only in the civil wars to which he was restricting his interrogation (which are mistakenly seen as different from some other kind of war) but in perhaps most wars, if not all wars. i was trying to amplify rather than mute the point. sorry for my laziness/hastiness.
j