http://www.opendemocracy.net/globalization-vision_reflections/war_sense_3970.jsp
violence and war are also seen as exclusively negative in their consequences. This view stretches back to the 19th- and early 20th-century "liberal interpretation of war"; it was neatly captured in a World Bank report in June 2003 that argued "war is development in reverse". This vision of violence is flawed. Violence and war are not mindless. And despite their awful destruction their consequences are not always wholly negative. To see them this way is ahistorical as well as inaccurate the naivety with which most so-called civil wars are perceived leads to an ahistorical and simplistic vision of "reconstruction". It is ahistorical in its poor understanding of violence and development. It is ahistorical in its ignorance of earlier episodes of reconstruction (after the American civil war, after the two world wars, for example). And it is usually ahistorical in its failure to consider the context of "state-building" challenges (as the current vogue has it) in Afghanistan, Iraq, Sierra Leone, Somalia, or East Timor. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com
