"History suggests not. The UN arose from the ashes of a war that theLeague of Nations was unable to avert. It was simply not up to confrontingItaly in Abyssinia, much less - had it survived that debacle - to taking onNazi Germany."
If history is repeating itself, then is this the tragedy or the farce? if it is a farce, it is too tragic to contemplate.
How is one to distinguish between tragedies and farces, the problem with this is people may laughin the wrong place or at inopportune moment and offend other people, say at a funeral. So I searched someone who knows Iraq and its culture for a proverb that may throw some wisdom on the matter, and he says, one ancient Babylonian proverb said and this is well documented :"the greatest of calamities or tragedies is that which makes you laugh", meaning that one is so hurt suchthat one is driven to insanity. here of course, farce and tragedy coincide in actuality, making the matter somewhat dialectical.
speaking of the dialectic, this leads to Hegel on war, or his patronizing stance with the Prussian court, and for that you may look up his philosophy of right, but in short one may quote this:
[Conflict with another sovereign state] is the moment wherein the substance of the state--i.e. its absolute power against everything individual and particular, against life, property, and their rights, even against societies and associations--makes the nullity of these finite things an accomplished fact and brings it home to consciousness. (PR:323)
"War is the state of affairs which deals in earnest with the vanity of temporal goods and concernsWar has the higher significance that by its agency, as I have remarked elsewhere, "the ethical health of peoples is preserved in their indifference to the stabilization of finite institutions; just as the blowing of the winds preserves the sea from the foulness which would be the result of a prolonged calm, so also corruption in nations would be the product of prolonged, let alone `perpetual,' peace." (PR:324R)
Then the words of an idealist sycophant (Hegel), devoid of any concrete substance, in which he extols the Prussian drive for war, are taken by one Lee Harris, in 'Our world historical gamble'. to imply that war is necessary for the betterment of the human spirit:
"The war with Iraq will constitute one of those momentous turning points of history in which one nation under the guidance of a strong-willed, self-confident leader undertakes to alter the fundamental state of the world. It is, to use the language of Hegel, an event that is world-historical in its significance and scope. And it will be world-historical, no matter what the outcome may be. Such world-historical events, according to Hegel, are inherently sui generis - they break the mold and shatter tradition. "
Indeed momentous, the war is notwith Iraq it is on Iraq, and it is literally the molestation of the weak by the powerful; one x us pilot described the bombing of the escaping convoys from Kuwait in 1991 as "shooting fish in a barrel", later known as the highway of death.
This weak and powerful business reminds me of something I read long ago which is to the first political manifesto known to man, Hammurabi's code in which he says:
"The great gods have called me, I am the salvation-bearing shepherd, whose staff is straight, the good shadow that is spread over my city; on my breast I cherish the inhabitants of the land of Sumer and Akkad; in my shelter I have let them repose in peace; in my deep wisdom have I enclosed them. That the strong might not injure the weak, in order to protect the widows and orphans, I have in Babylon the city where Anu and Bel raise high their head, in E-Sagil, the Temple, whose foundations stand firm as heaven and earth, in order to bespeak justice in the land, to settle all disputes, and heal all injuries, set up these my precious words, written upon my memorial stone, before the image of me, as king of righteousness."
The man may have a visionary too:for he says:
"In future time, through all coming generations, let the king, who may be in the land, observe the words of righteousness which I have written on my monument; let him not alter the law of the land which I have given, the edicts which I have enacted; my monument let him not mar. If such a ruler have wisdom, and be able to keep his land in order, he shall observe the words which I have written in this inscription; the rule, statute, and law of the land which I have given; the decisions which I have made will this inscription show him; let him rule his subjects accordingly, speak justice to them, give right decisions, root out the miscreants and criminals from this land, and grant prosperity to his subjects."
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