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Politics : About that Cuban boy, Elian -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: marcos who wrote (5919)	5/21/2000 5:23:00 PM
From: chalu2	Respond to of 9127

>>Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul<< They must have had a good time trying to pronounce this name on Cuban TV. Seems like a Polish/German mixture.

To: marcos who wrote (5919)	5/21/2000 9:50:00 PM
From: epicure	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 9127

I saw a very interesting lecture on CSPAN, by a Mr. Ignatief who has written a book called Virtual War: Kosovo and Beyond. Interesting to ME was that it addressed many questions I think about- such as why do we intervene and when, in global conflicts, and who should decide in a democracy when to intervene, and it also explores the affects of the new more removed methods for waging war on the democratic will to wage war and to interfere. I caught most of his major points- which were 1. in a democracy the major brake on interference in other countries via military violence has been civilian casualties- since we now export the casualties to the other side Ignatief believes this brake is gone- and the major brake on war NOW is the media. So in Kosovo where there ARE media present people care more than about what is happening there than they do about Iraq- even though more tonnage has been dropped on Iraq (and I did not know that). 2. He asks what WILL restrain us if war becomes easier and easier for us to wage (as it becomes more and more technical and less and less of a risk to our own soldiers and civilians)? He wonders if we will become neo-imperialists- with a sort of human rights imperialist agenda. Mr. Ignatief was for intervention in Kosovo- but he was honest enough to admit he sees no justification for that in the UN charter (which runs along very similar lines as my philosophy of intervention and puts a HIGH value on the inviolability of states- EXCEPT where states threaten international peace- basically my criteria for international interference, although I demand actual hostilities to break out before I would like to see interference- and then I would ALWAYS like to see aggression stopped cold by a united world front. But then I'm a dreamer, a pragmatic, utilitarian, relativistic dreamer). Anyway- considering what we have been discussing here- I saw this book as an interesting resource. I'm going to read it and I thought some of you might enjoy it too.