----- Original Message -----
Sent: Saturday, March 22, 2003 1:33
AM
Subject: [PEN-L:35896] Re: Pearls from
Perle and Hammurabi
"History suggests
not. The UN arose from the ashes of a war that the
League of Nations was
unable to avert. It was simply not up to confronting
Italy in Abyssinia,
much less - had it survived that debacle - to taking on
Nazi
Germany."
If history is repeating
itself, then is this the tragedy or the farce? if it is a farce, it is too
tragic to contemplate.
How is one to
distinguish between tragedies and farces, the problem with this is people may
laugh in the wrong place or at inopportune moment and offend other
people, say at a funeral. So I searched someone who knows Iraq and its culture
for a proverb that may throw some wisdom on the matter, and he says, one
ancient Babylonian proverb said and this is well documented :"the greatest of
calamities or tragedies is that which makes you laugh", meaning that one is so
hurt such that one is driven to insanity. here of course, farce and
tragedy coincide in actuality, making the matter somewhat dialectical.
speaking of the
dialectic, this leads to Hegel on war, or his patronizing stance with the
Prussian court, and for that you may look up his philosophy of right, but in
short one may quote this:
[Conflict with another
sovereign state] is the moment wherein the substance of the state--i.e. its
absolute power against everything individual and particular, against life,
property, and their rights, even against societies and associations--makes the
nullity of these finite things an accomplished fact and brings it home to
consciousness. (PR:323)
"War is the state of
affairs which deals in earnest with the vanity of temporal goods and
concerns....War has the higher significance that by its agency, as I have
remarked elsewhere, "the ethical health of peoples is preserved in their
indifference to the stabilization of finite institutions; just as the blowing
of the winds preserves the sea from the foulness which would be the result of
a prolonged calm, so also corruption in nations would be the product of
prolonged, let alone `perpetual,' peace." (PR:324R)
Then the words of an
idealist sycophant (Hegel), devoid of any concrete substance, in which he
extols the Prussian drive for war, are taken by one Lee Harris, in 'Our world
historical gamble'. to imply that war is necessary for the betterment of the
human spirit:
"The war with Iraq will
constitute one of those momentous turning points of history in which one
nation under the guidance of a strong-willed, self-confident leader undertakes
to alter the fundamental state of the world. It is, to use the language of
Hegel, an event that is world-historical in its significance and scope. And it
will be world-historical, no matter what the outcome may be. Such
world-historical events, according to Hegel, are inherently sui generis - they
break the mold and shatter tradition. "
Indeed momentous, the war
is not with Iraq it is on Iraq, and
it is literally the molestation of the weak by the powerful; one x us pilot
described the bombing of the escaping convoys from Kuwait in 1991 as "shooting
fish in a barrel", later known as the highway of
death.
This weak and
powerful business reminds me of something I read long ago which is to the
first political manifesto known to man, Hammurabi's code in which he says:
"The great gods
have called me, I am the salvation-bearing shepherd, whose staff is straight,
the good shadow that is spread over my city; on my breast I cherish the
inhabitants of the land of Sumer and Akkad; in my shelter I have let them
repose in peace; in my deep wisdom have I enclosed them. That the
strong might not injure the weak, in order to protect the widows and
orphans, I have in Babylon the city where Anu and Bel raise high
their head, in E-Sagil, the Temple, whose foundations stand firm as heaven and
earth, in order to bespeak justice in the land, to settle all disputes, and
heal all injuries, set up these my precious words, written upon my memorial
stone, before the image of me, as king of righteousness."
The man may have a
visionary too: for he says:
"In future
time, through all coming generations, let the king, who may be in the land,
observe the words of righteousness which I have written on my
monument; let him not alter the law of the land which I have
given, the edicts which I have enacted; my monument let him not mar. If such a
ruler have wisdom, and be able to keep his land in order, he shall observe the
words which I have written in this inscription; the rule, statute, and law of
the land which I have given; the decisions which I have made will this
inscription show him; let him rule his subjects accordingly, speak justice to
them, give right decisions, root out the miscreants and criminals from this
land, and grant prosperity to his subjects."
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