Word: fodder
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...political forebears include not just Adolf Hitler -- the precedent George Bush likes to stress -- but Joseph Stalin as well. A corollary to the cult of personality is the principle that everyone but the leader is expendable. In addition to ensuring obedience, terror reminds the followers that they are cannon fodder in the struggle ("the mother of battles," as Saddam would have it) against all who oppose Numero Uno. The state itself becomes an instrument for achieving his goals, no matter how devastating to the interests of the people...
...attacked. Surprisingly, even a number of Israeli military experts, including former Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin, have suggested that Israel should think twice before responding to an Iraqi assault if the damage is light. But Foreign Minister David Levy sternly rejected that advice last week. "Israel is not cannon fodder," he warned, and "cannot allow itself to be attacked without responding, just to preserve some coalition which is following...
...Kuwait with a flanking attack?). They include questions of psychology: Is the Iraqi army battle hardened from eight years of war against Iran, or battle weary? Would the troops on the front line, many of whom are thought to be ill-trained draftees who know they are cannon fodder, fight hard or give up quickly? For that matter, how battle ready are American soldiers, hardly any of whom below the rank of colonel have ever been in combat...
...short, we become ideal fodder for concentration courses--smart enough to fulfill the requirements, cynical enough not to do the reading, glib enough to get a laugh and blase enough not to rock the boat...
There is another, irresistible question. Will Mario Vargas Llosa, whose fiction is often derived from his life, turn his political career into novelistic fodder? Vargas Llosa insists that for him art and politics are separate worlds with precisely opposite requirements. "In politics you can't be the master of the game," he says. "You must create consensus, have great flexibility, accept criticism. Not in literature. When you write a novel, you should be very intolerant, very intractable about the goals that you have set." His critics say this stubborn streak has kept the author from building the alliances, particularly with...