Ares is equitable
Mattern, Evelyn
at the hands of might. And this "violence so crushes whomever it touches that it appears at last external no less to him who dis- penses it than to him who endures it." This is Weil's thesis, as...
...Perhaps because I have been in Baghdad and know some families of Iraqi soldiers, I am tempted to give Simone Weil the last word, though there is small consolation in it...
...Much of that support was shattered by Palestinian identification with Saddam...
...Even that part of Israel which advocates a just solution to the Palestinian problem is deeply concerned by an international coalition that might ignore Israel's legitimate security concerns...
...Furthermore, Israelis have clearly undergone a process of deprovincializing the Israeli-Arab conflict...
...This is Weil's thesis, as somber in the days of George Bush as in the days of ChurchiU and Agamemnon...
...The wars fought by America in the past, such as the Vietnam war, were always connected to the ongoing threat of a Soviet- American confrontation...
...Deliverance finally appears only in the form of extreme destruc- tion...
...Are the voices of protest opposing the United States-led coalition against the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait also the voices for peace in the Middle East...
...They play the game until violence takes over and all conception of goals, even goals for the war, is lost...
...It isn't that the strategic, economic, and political issues of the Middle East are not inter- related...
...This time we are witnessing an unprece- dented phenomenon in which the U.S...
...Where is grace...
...Linkage" would have seriously thwarted the peace process between Israel and its Arab neighbors...
...Tragically, Saddam Hussein threatened world peace at a very critical juncture in this process...
...She further analyzes why men go off to war as to a game...
...While there is still a temptation to use expressions such as the "new world order," and although we are far from a harmonious world without conflict and crises, we are undoubtedly moving in the direction of new international rules...
...Perhaps they [Europeans, Americans] will rediscover that epic genius [Homer] when they learn how to accept the fact that nothing is sheltered from fate, how never to admire might, or hate the enemy, or to despise sufferers...
...An entire nation sat in sealed rooms, wearing gas masks, and arrived at the realization that the conflict in our part of the world will not be decided by the rocks and knives of the intifada nor by the settlers of Hebron or Nablus...
...22 March 1991:183...
...The world is in a transition from a state of polarization between two powerful enemies, to one in which concepts such as "sta- bility" and "interests" are being given a different and much broad- er meaning...
...It is doubtful if this will happen soon...
...but rather, that these issues, and others, are part of larger regional and global forces affecting our lives as well...
...is coordinating its efforts, on different levels, not only with Western Europe, but also with the Soviet Union--President Mikhail Gorbachev's last-minute initiatives for a peaceful settlement notwithstanding...
...Rather, it is that "linkage" would have induced a rad- icalizing influence on the Arab masses, including the Palestinians, thus encouraging extremism and a false messianism around Saddam...
...I have no doubt that the peace movement in the United States demonstrated against war out of concern for the loss of human life...
...On the other hand, the leaders of the Right acknowledge that the international coali- tion which was forged to advance on the aggressor from Baghdad will not be curtailed by Yitzhak Shamir's veto...
...CHOOSING 'KLITAH' OVER 'SHLITAH' hrough the clouds and the ascending smoke hovering over the Persian Gulf, diplomats and analysts are trying to discern what lies beyond the horizons after the war...
...We cannot ignore the dramatic effect of the Gulf war and repeated Scud missile attacks on the people of Israel...
...The Persian Gulf crisis has forced the right wing in Israel to admit to an inescapable paradox...
...This would have vindicated the Israeli leadership, entrenching itself even deeper into the bunker of rejectionism due to the Iraqi threat and the inability of the world community to remove this brutal aggressor from the region...
...Disagreement over postwar settlements will, to a certain extent, eclipse the debate which has accompanied events since last August...
...If the recent troubling developments in the Soviet Union do not throw that country back into the age of cold-war and Stalinist- like repression, then we can and should expect Soviet participation in new strategies for resolving local and regional conflicts...
...The Left in Israel preferred a peaceful solution to the Persian Gulf crisis, but without giving Saddam Hussein a prize for his aggression by "linking" Iraq's withdrawal to the Palestinian prob- lem...
...Surely we have evidence of that in the world also...
...Public opinion polls prior to August 2 indicated increasing Israeli support for dialogue with the Palestinian leadership and a polit- ical solution to the conflict between our two peoples...
...But the debate will not be submerged entirely...
...where is the tuming that prayer and suffering occasionally borne with grace can bring about...
...As Christians we might think that Weil's and the Greeks' notions of fate are more determinate than geometric...
...These are two indisputable facts...
...Israel did not incite Iraq to invade Kuwait, and Saddam did not brutalize the Kuwaiti people in order to save the Palestinians...
...Thus no one does anything to bring about its end...
...However, I believe they may have ignored the extraordinary historical changes which have taken place in the world during the last three years...
...EVELYN MATTERN Evelyn Mattern lives and writes in North Carolina...
...GIVING BIIITH TO PEACE...
...Homer, of course, knew neither video games nor the football metaphors used by American pilots bombing Baghdad...
...On one hand, it wishes to see Saddam Hussein's military force totally destroyed...
...But as a Christian who hopes and prays and fasts for the "turning" of our mighty leaders, I am tempted these days by the notion of fate, of karma, of righteousness, even as I am terrified of its consequences for us as Americans...
Vol. 118 • March 1991 • No. 6
