On Mon, 25 Apr 2005 13:32:37 -0500, Dan Minette wrote > We are lucky in that we can collectively, within the nation, intervene > with professionals by calling 911 in those cases or reporting suspected > abuse to authorities.
I think Dave's point was that you can't solve somebody else's problem with addiction, nor can any authority. It is up to the person with the addiction. No addict ever quit as a result of threats and attacks, I'm fairly certain. Those who seek to change have been helped by people who know how to nurture, including having tough boundaries that seem like punishment to the addict. Recovery starts with things like sleep and nutrition. To stretch the analogy to international relations, we can't force democracy (our definition of healthy government) on a nation that doesn't want it, for example. Sanctions and monitoring, such as the inspections and no-fly zone seem to parallel the idea of putting boundaries on the misbehaving individual. Food for oil was an attempt to tackle basic health issues. Invading, occupying and demanding democracy don't fit into any personal recovery model I can imagine. > By moral people. The US will not for the forseeable future subject itself > to submission to outside agencies. It's wrong to sit back and let > Japan be obliterated by N. Korea if we could stop it. It's also > very much against the interests of the US. Combining the two, we > have compelling reasons to not allow N. Korea this capacity. Stopping a nuclear attack has never been the question (since WW II ended), since nobody has actually tried to launch one. The question has always been much murkier -- do we allow further development of nuclear weapons? Stopping nuclear proliferation has the approval of most of the world; the question is how to go about it, not whether or not it is appropriate to stop anyone from launching nukes. > Preventing someone from causing grave harm to us and our allies is > not codependant behavior. Of course. But how do we decide that someone is about to cause grave harm? That's the hard question, not whether to respond. Ideally, like the police at their best, we do absolutely everything we can to avoid coming to such a confrontation, then do everything we can to allow the other party to back down. Do we trust that we can decide when to use deadly force on our own, despite our capacity for self-deceit and our selfish side that thirsts for wealth and power? How do we take into account the fact that our response to threats may cause enormous suffering? I think your wife might say that these are just the problems that people struggle with on a personal level, too -- what seems to be done selflessly is often discovered to be self-interest; much harm is done in the name of doing good for others. That's codependency for ya. The answer, I think, lies in self-awareness... so how does a nation develop its self-awareness? How do we look in the mirror, how do we discover our motives? Nick _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
