![[F]](../_images/site.gif) New York Times on the Web Forums  Science
Russian military leaders have expressed concern about US plans
for a national missile defense system. Will defense technology be
limited by possibilities for a strategic imbalance? Is this just SDI
all over again?
    (9366 previous messages)
lunarchick
- 09:05am Sep 18, 2001 EST (#9367
of 9376)
lunarchick@www.com
Bwsh will be discussing Human Rights in China .. isn't the first
human right, the right not to be shot at?
lunarchick
- 09:06am Sep 18, 2001 EST (#9368
of 9376)
lunarchick@www.com
Is the concept of
WAR a valid one in the Twenty First
Century ?
lunarchick
- 09:14am Sep 18, 2001 EST (#9369
of 9376)
lunarchick@www.com
War - in the Information
Age.
lunarchick
- 09:21am Sep 18, 2001 EST (#9370
of 9376)
lunarchick@www.com
... ethically justifying war and forms of warfare.
The historical aspect, or the "just war tradition" deals with the
historical body of rules or agreements applied (or at least
existing) in various wars across the ages. For instance
international agreements such as the Geneva and Hague conventions
are historical rules aimed at limiting certain kinds of warfare.
It is the role of ethics to examine these institutional agreements
for their philosophical coherence as well as to inquire into
whether aspects of the conventions ought to be changed. Just WAR
Theory
rshowalter
- 09:26am Sep 18, 2001 EST (#9371
of 9376) 
Robert Showalter
showalte@macc.wisc.edu
Thomas L. Friedman's book THE LEXUS AND THE OLIVE TREE
sets out a pattern of practical hope for the future -- hope for the
whole world. According to patterns that would be to the advantage of
the whole world, if they worked as Friedman hopes. These patterns
work imperfectly and incompetely now. But a world of information,
and interdependence, and new prosperity, and reinforced and better
defended tolerance -- that's the world he hopes for. That's a hope
most Americans share. It is an ideal not inconsistent with
maintenenance of what matters in the identity of peoples.
We're facing a conflict that is, in some significant ways, a
conflict between a hopeful future, and a harsh medievalism.
Friedman's Op.Ed Piece today offers some careful, essential
orientation, and warning. An essential point is that we have to
be the good guys -- not based on hype, but substance. That means
we must be willing to adress some problems that we have. And
build, and be part of, a world community.
The piece is eloquent, and anyone who thinks about the tactical
situation Friedman recounts will know the necessity of care - - for
we have much to lose, and plenty of vulnerabilities, both at the
level of objective relations, and at the level of ideas and ideals
on which all solid power has to depend.
I add some bolding for emphasis.
rshowalter
- 09:26am Sep 18, 2001 EST (#9372
of 9376)
Robert Showalter
showalte@macc.wisc.edu
*******
The Big Terrible By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/18/opinion/18FRIE.html
AMMAN, Jordan
"By quirk of fate I have been in Jordan for much of the World
Trade Center crisis. Sitting here, I've been struck by the number of
e-mails that have reached me from friends around the Arab-Muslim
world — from Kuwait and Cairo, from Lebanon and Turkey — all just
wanting to say how upset they were with what happened and checking
if the family was O.K. In their own way, they each echoed what a
secretary in Jordan tried to say to me in the most eloquent broken
English — that this terrorist attack was "the big terrible."
"I relate this not to suggest that my friends around the
Middle East reflect all public opinion out here. They do not.
One need only visit some of the most popular Arabic Web sites and
chat rooms to see that public opinion in the Arab world is split
about 50-50 — between those appalled by the bombing and those
applauding it. The harshest e-mails, Arab techies tell me, come from
Islamists in Saudi Arabia and the gulf, home to some of the
hijackers.
"No, I relate this simply to say that America still has many
admirers in this part of the world. For all that Middle Easterners
get enraged with America, many others value it, envy it and want
their kids there. They envy the sense of ownership that Americans
have over their own government, they envy its naïve optimism, its
celebration of individual freedom and its abiding faith that the
past won't always bury the future. For a brief, terrifying moment
last week people out here got a glimpse of what the world could be
like without America, and many did not like it. America is not
something external to them; people carry around pieces of it in ways
often not articulated.
"Why does all this matter? Because we need the help of the
moderate Arab states to fight this war. And for now, most of these
Arab leaders are ready to cooperate with us — because enough of
their publics are tilted our way. But the moderate Arab
leaders are praying that the U.S. will proceed carefully and
surgically, because they know that public opinion here, even after
all the American deaths, is by no means solidly pro-American.
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