some quibbles/comments...
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Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Chris Burford writes [about the Columbia tragedy]:
> There is also an imperial grief. I hope humane people on this list will
> forgive me, in speculating whether this tragedy might do anything to knock
> Bush's imperial arrogance. The idea that the whole nation must go into
> mourning because it is shocking that 7 people trained for struggle might
> fall foul of the risks, is not unconnected with the belief that the USA
> must remain inviolate from having to negotiate a collective global way of
> reducing risk in the world.
call me a crude materialist, but it's not just a "belief." It's also the facts that (1) the US media find more to broadcast about national events; (2) the event involved the US government, the most powerful in the world; (3) it involved NASA, a government organization that (despite its military connections and privatization) is overwhelmingly supported by people in the US and gets a lot of support around the world; and (4) the US is currently the most powerful country in the world.
> The particular cruelty of the recent US wars, has been partly dependent on
> the idea that not a single US serviceman must die - the high level bombing
> of Yugoslavia, and then of Afghanistan. In the latter case specialist teams
> were allowed to take part and be "in harm's way" to use Bush's homely
> phrase, to the extent that a special interrogator who was too provocative
> got killed. The death reflected more on US cowardice than that of the perpetrator.
I don't know if the word "cowardice" can be applied to an entire country. However, Chris probably meant the word "US" to refer to the US power elite. But even that elite isn't cowardly in its use of the sons and daughters of the non-elite in war. The problem isn't "cowardice." The fear of losing even a single US soldier arises from the "Vietnam syndrome" (i.e., the mass resistance to and/or dissent against the US war against Vietnam, which was encouraged by the large number of US casualties) and from the brouhaha due to the disaster of the US adventure in Somalia more than 10 years ago. The elite doesn't want that kind of mass resistance and that kind of brouhaha, so it tries to spare US lives. However, I bet that "Rummy," Wolfowitz, and the boys would love to destroy the Vietnam Syndrome forever so that they could be brave using other people's children again, just as in the "good old days."
> Now we are on the threshold of Bush completing his father's unfinished
> business in Iraq, which took something over 100 US service lives if I
> recall correctly.
most (almost all? all?) of whom were victims of "friendly fire."
JD
