Word: walzer
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After reading pro-war statements by two authors whom I respect--Michael Walzer's in The New Republic and Joshua Sharfstein's in The Crimson ["Protestors Mistake Iraq for Vietnam," Jan. 23]--I have decided to join the anti-war movement. Weak as many arguments against the a may be, the liberal support is just as myopic but far more destructive...
...things. If the war frees Kuwait, destroys the Iraqi military threat and chastens or kills Hussein, it will have done some good things. But these positive results will not justify the war. Although I am wary to criticize a smart man who wrote a big book on the subject, walzer's use of the term "just war" is strikingly ambiguous and only begs the important questions...
Proponents of war call dealing appeasement. Walzer says that it we make concessions, "we make ourselves complicitous in the aggression--and in all the further aggressive behavior that our action encourages, as the British and French were complicitous in the conquest of Czechoslovakia after Munich...
...arguments for war comes down to this: cause suffering now to save suffering later. As Walzer says, 'There are times when, if we are to preserve any decency at all, we must be prepared to count (and discount) human bodies...
...Walzer makes an extremely silly argument against demonstrating: War "might well be politically or militarily unwise, but that is not a matter for marching." if a war, even a "just war", causes immeasureable suffering, isn't that something to protest about? Aren't most difficult questions "moral questions"? Sharfstein says that a "bloody ground offensive to retake kuwait may not be worth the cost in American lives and in Arab hatred for the U.S. and Israel...