[lbo-talk] how's it feel?

C. G. Estabrook galliher at alexia.lis.uiuc.edu
Tue Apr 15 19:05:28 PDT 2003


What occurred to me is Erasmus' maxim, dulce bellum inexpertis -- war seems sweet to those who don't know it. I'm astonished at how easily we in this country seem to pass over the fact that war is a matter of killing people. This war is particularly so, if the slaughter carried out in an outburst of anti-Semitism by the government for which we are responsible can even be called war, given the vast disparity of the combatants' armaments.

The Irish patriot James Connolly wrote a century ago, "One great source of the strength of the ruling class has ever been their willingness to kill in defense of their power and privileges. Let their power be once attacked, either by foreign foes or by domestic revolutionaries, and at once we see the rulers prepared to kill and kill and kill." The Bush administration, like those that preceded it, has shown what Connolly calls "the readiness of the ruling class to order killing, the small value the ruling class has ever set upon human life."

And the killings -- crimes to our shame recognized around the world -- are perpetrated by the same gang of criminals who have been directing US policy on behalf of an economic elite for most of the last generation. I am particularly mortified that these crimes should follow from a constant policy and a plan that they have declared publicly -- a plan summarized by our client, the war-criminal who is prime minister of Israel, as "First Iraq, then Iran."

Even Mr. Jefferson of Virginia wrote, "Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice can not sleep forever..."

On Tue, 15 Apr 2003, Doug Henwood wrote:


> The Times of London has asked me to do a piece on what it feels like
> to be a peacenik (the editor's word, Carrol) in America today. I more
> or less know how I feel, but I'm wondering how others feel - isolated?
> hopeful? despondent? shocked? confused? regretful?
>
> Doug
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>



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