Date: Fri, 2 Feb 1996 09:35:52 -0500 (EST)
From: jfanders <jfanders@indiana.edu>
To: revs@csf.colorado.edu
Subject: War Crimes

I fully agree with Allen Spector on the ubiquity of war crimes in all 
wars on all sides.  I get especially heated when there is condemnation 
of killing unarmed civilians on the ground, but bombing them from the 
air is somehow acceptable.  The delivery vehicle for the death sentence 
insulates the killer and somehow absolves him/her from any responsibility. 

The excuse is that we do not INTEND to kill the civilians as we bomb, but 
only soldiers.  This we say as we bomb cities and villages.  Such blatant 
hypocrisy and self-delusionment.

And of course nuclear weapons are the most indiscriminate of all.  How is 
incinieration in a fire ball that much different from incineration in an 
oven?  The insidious isolation of technology somehow absolves us?  The 
unarmed civilians are just as dead!


Yours in disgust,


Jonathan Anderson
School of Public and Environmental Affairs
Indiana University