Re: New article at metaphim

Daniel, I know what it says :). I was trying to provide context. War
with Afghanistan = retaliatory war. War with Iraq = almost retaliatory
war (many Americans, according to polls, believed the 9/11 hijackers
were from or trained in Iraq). We're in the middle of a cycle of
vengeance that begun with retaliation to the 9/11 attacks. The vigils,
etc., were just reminders of this to me -- it provided immediate
historical context for the ideas I was trying to present.

You should also note that I -didn't- condemn retaliation or violence as
acts in themselves. I was specifically condemning a -mindset- that
believes problems can be solved with vengeance, and especially that
since the problems are solved, vengeance has no negative consequences.
We need to consider the possibility that the consequences of our acts of
revenge may be worse and more far reaching than the initial act that
prompted our revenge, that our real life ending may be more like Hamlet
and less like The Lion King.

Saying all this, though, if you were to ask me what choice we had but
retaliation against the Taliban and Bin Laden, I would say we had no
apparent choice at all. I think we need to go into this with our eyes
wide open, though. I don't think we have been.

Jim

Yocum Daniel GS 21 CES/CEOE wrote:

> Hardly Jim, with this tucked in the tail of a whole article comparing
> vengeance between Lion King and Hamlet. Gnats and camels Jim and who
> swallows what.
>
> "This is starting to sound all too familiar. I'm writing this three
> days after the latest round of 9/11 vigils, patriotic speeches,
> "we'll-never-forgets" (it's not a matter of never forgetting, it's a
> matter of being allowed to stop thinking about it for even a single
> day), after months of news about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and
> the aftermath that never seems to end-and never mind the seemingly
> endless mutual retaliation between Israelis and Palestinians.
>
> We can make the world a better place simply by killing off the bad
> guys. Right. I can think of nothing more appropriate than a reminder
> of the futility of vengeance around the time of September 11. It's
> nice to know Bin Laden and the U.S. government have so much in common.
> It's even nicer to know that Disney, and the rest of the U.S. media,
> is there right behind them both."
>
> Daniel
>
>
> Daniel, that's a pretty big interpretive leap of my article. No,
> calls to "remember 9/11" weren't described by me as a call to
> vengeance. I was just providing background for the ideas being
> presented.
>
> Jim
>
>>
>>

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Received on Wed Sep 17 11:42:59 2003