Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

From the Quotation of the day mailing list, 2008-09-06:

"Every illness is a musical problem - the cure is a musical solution. The more rapid, and yet more complete the solution - the greater the musical talent of the doctor." -- Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg) (1772-1801), German Romantic poet.

(submitted to the mailing list by Terry Labach)

[Happy birthday to my guitarist brother, and to fiddler fidhle, who share a first name.]

This popped into my head yesterday. I've got no idea who the speakers are, other than that neither one is a soldier and they live in a democracy. Neither do I have any sort of mental outline of a story this could go in -- just this snippet of dialogue between two so-far-unnamed characters who may or may not ever exist for more than this bit. (Maybe I can come up with a story to use it in, but I'm pretty sure constructing a story specifically designed to have this passage in it would be an unclever approach (as opposed to having an idea for a whole story to start with and then seeing whether this fits onto it or not).)

"I believe that in order to be prepared to go to war, a country -- its government, its soldiers, and its citizens -- has to be ready and willing to commit atrocities. If you're not willing to use napalm and nukes, you're not really ready to go to war. If you're not willing to become a terrorist, you shouldn't be voting to go to war. You might not have to do those things in a war, but if you're not prepared to go that far if needed, then you're not really thinking of war, just a sanitized fantasy of movie war. Real war is ugly and nasty and not morally clean, and if you can't stomach that, you have to oppose war. And I'm not ready for my country to go to war."

"What about torture?"

"Oh, torture's just sick -- that's beyond the pale even if you embrace war."

"Wait, burning people alive on the battlefield or bombing a city is okay, but breaking a prisoner's legs isn't?"

"They're both bad, but one is war, and the other is just sadism. Torture isn't a step toward winning, it's not effective for anything, it's just sadism and revenge. On the battlefield, do whatever it takes. But once they're your prisoner, there's no good reason to keep hurting them. That's not fighting any more; it's just being a monster."

"I can't believe you'd condone killing millions of people with a nuclear bomb, but not beating up one prisoner!"

"Well, I don't have the stomach for napalm or nukes, either -- I fail my own ready-for-war test. But the difference between those and torturing prisoners seems clear as day to me nonetheless."

(I'm also not sure whether I agree with the first speaker about the other stuff or not, but she or he is right about torture.)