|
ace--what exactly is the point that you imagine yourself to be making with this?
the rationale behind conventions that ban torture and other war crimes have to do with two basic problems:
a) inflicting excessive pain
b) placing limits around the collective psychosis of war.
the first should be obvious even to you.
you could say that war is about pain what about people who are wounded. and i'd maybe entertain this question did i not think that from the outset you were arguing in bad faith. you want to play this silly manly man gordon liddy-style hairsplitting game because you imagine that in so doing you can generate problems of boundary and in the process exculpate yourself for having supported the bush people and the bush people for yourself. this doesn't interest me, so there's no reason to play the game with you.
the second is easier---the boundary is law-governed state as over against the space of collective psychosis that is the battlefield. the boundary is the deliberate inflicting of pain on a defenseless prisoner as over against the chaos of battle.
__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
|