i finished the warrior's honor just now. its nonfiction, a collection of 5 essays about ethnic violence and ethics in international affairs. each essay had a different focus, but the overall idea was an exploration of whether and how ethics can be a basis for international policy. one of my favorite essay was "the narcissism of minor differences," an attempt to explain how things that can seem like minor unimportant characteristics in a multi-ethnic society (e.g. whether one is a serb or a croat in tito's yugoslavia) can, within a matter of only a few years, turn into the basis for slaughtering each other. my other favorite was the title track, an essay entitled "the warrior's honor," an essay about the international red cross. its limited mandate (treat the sick and wounded, regardless of whether it inadvertently aids the aggressor in the conflict or even genocide) and the ethic paradoxes such a limited mandate creates. (the chapter before that is a similar analysis of the u.n.)
what really struck me about the book was how much it is a product of a era that has passed. it was written in 1997, when questions of whether the west should intervene in a place were regularly argued with ethical language (e.g. bosnia, rwanda, burundi, the never quite created cambodian war crimes tribunal, etc) rather than the black and white language of "terrorists" or "preemptive strikes" (implying self-defense rather than a goal of stopping injustice) we hear today. i was not always in favor if the earlier ethics-based interventions, but i miss the time when what the end result of our intervention would look like was at least taken seriously as part of the debate.
my next read will be the corrections by jonathan franzen, a book that everyone else read about a year and a half ago. i tend to avoid books when they first come out and everyone is talking about them. first, all the publicity turns me off, although i often will seek out the book when things calm down later. also, and more importantly, i am too cheap to buy the hardback.
i think this is the first time i have blogged thrice in a single day. this will probably be the last time. we're having friends over for dinner and game-playing tonight. until next time...
