====================================================================== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. ======================================================================
In Bonnie's post on the cost of war I found the following of particular interest: “The army is at war, but the country is not,” said David M. Kennedy, the Stanford University historian. “We have managed to create and field an armed force that can engage in very, very lethal warfare without the society in whose name it fights breaking a sweat.” The result, he said, is “a moral hazard for the political leadership to resort to force in the knowledge that civil society will not be deeply disturbed.” A corollary is that taxes have not been raised to pay for Iraq and Afghanistan — the first time that has happened in an American war since the Revolution, when there was not yet a country to impose them. Rightly or wrongly, that has further cut American civilians off from the two wars on the opposite side of the world." This is exactly what how I would describe the experience of the war in Afghanistan in Australia. The army is waging it but the country by and large chooses to look the other way. Of course unlike in American, the war is dependent on taxes and it is increasingly expensive. Moreover as the caualty rate creeps up the war might just begin to register on people's radar. Furedi's concept of the disengaged society seems a particularly apt way to describe the whole process. There is no enthusiasm for the war, nor is there much resistance. comradely Gary ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
