Loving and Killing

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

At 2:02 AM +1100 3/19/03, topp8564 at mail.usyd.edu.au wrote:
>  > Everyone needs a paycheck, and joining the US military as a private
>>  in "peace time" is much less morally consequential than, for
>>  instance, cooking up more destructive weapons than ever at a
>>  university or corporate lab, lobbying the US government to veto an
>>  agreement that would allow poor nations to buy generic medicines to
>>  fight AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis, and other diseases, creating mass
>>  unemployment to squelch working-class rebellions, etc. (I put the
>>  words "peace time" between quotation marks because the US government
>>  has never been fully at peace with all the nations in the world at
>>  least since WW2, even when it is not explicitly at war with one and
>>  not mobilizing troops on a large scale).
>>
>>  It's neither necessary nor desirable for leftists to demand that all
>>  be pacifists unfailingly and refuse to join the military anywhere,
>>  any time.  One of the main points of calling on both US soldiers and
>>  civilians (as well as their allied soldiers and civilians) to refuse
>>  all unlawful orders to wage war on Iraq is to highlight the
>>  illegality and immorality of the preventive war of aggression,
>>  conquest, and colonization that the USG is about to launch, _even_ by
>>  the standards of liberal democracy under capitalism.
>>  - --
>  > Yoshie
>
>Nuclear weapon designers and corporate lobbyists aren't at the 
>bottom of the solidarity schedule, they're near the top of the 
>elimination schedule...

What of assembly-line workers in munition factories, office workers 
in the military-industrial complex, etc.?

At 2:02 AM +1100 3/19/03, topp8564 at mail.usyd.edu.au wrote:
>In this sense the problem is irreducibly the presence of a large 
>standing army.

The military is wasteful, and it is normally a burden on national 
economy, unless the military itself engages in the work of social 
reproduction, as they do in Venezuela and Ecuador.  Americans ought 
to be given a chance to make a decision: a large standing army, a 
large prison population, and a large network of military contractors 
vs. a rich social welfare state that radically decreases fear of 
unemployment.

At 2:02 AM +1100 3/19/03, topp8564 at mail.usyd.edu.au wrote:
>Of course, in a parallel universe where international law isn't two 
>jokes in one phrase, your course of action wouldn't be futile. I 
>doubt it is entirely futile in this world: I suppose the net effect 
>of what you suggest would be to highlight the utter lawlessness of 
>international law, so that's perhaps a sensible thing to do.

I doubt that reminding all of a duty to disobey all unlawful orders 
makes a huge immediate difference in the war on Iraq, but we are in 
for a long-term struggle, and we must continue political education 
patiently.
-- 
Yoshie

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