[Dragaera] Sethra Lavode's Words on War

[Doug Croteau]

It is a defense mechanism drilled into the people who repeat the mantra
to remove the burden of guilt from those who would lead attacks. Every
nation makes it "the other guys fault". I cant think of any point where
the invading force told their nation/soldiers "we are wrong but we are
doing this anyway."

Of course your generals are going to be intelligent, so unless they have
some seriously twisted ways of thinking, they will be burdened with the
truth of their own actions. Can you imagine if Bush had stood up and
said "We have very questionable intelligence which is probably not true,
but we will invade anyway" before Iraq? They were telling the soldiers
on the ground they had satellite photos of the WMD's being shipped to
Syria. Is that true? I really doubt it, but are you going to lay out
anything but perfect invasion logic to your troops?

This seems like the same to me.

-----Original Message-----
From: dragaera-bounces at lists.dragaera.info
[mailto:dragaera-bounces at lists.dragaera.info] On Behalf Of Jon Lincicum
Sent: Sunday, February 10, 2008 9:25 PM
To: Philip Hart
Cc: Dragaera List
Subject: Re: [Dragaera] Sethra Lavode's Words on War

Philip Hart wrote:
> On Sun, 10 Feb 2008, Davdi Silverrock wrote:
>
>   
>> "It isn't that complicated. The attacker doesn't want war. The
>> attacker wants to conquer. If the defender would simply allow him to
>> do so there would be no war."
>>     
>
> I always wonder if Sethra actually believes this.  Too bad Vlad
doesn't 
> come back with, "The Jhereg never wants to break your leg.  If the
mark
> would just allow him to take his money there would be no violence."
> Or, "The Orca never wants to beat you up...  Oh wait."
>
>   

This always struck me as a misleading assessment of the situation.

It tends to imply that culpability for the war lies entirely with the 
defender...when in fact, the aggressor is at least as culpable. Just 
because it's technically true that the defender has the *option* to roll

over and accept defeat without a fight, it can be stated they are 
ultimately responsible for the state of war... Without the aggressor, 
there is no need for the defender to have to make that choice.

So, the statement is technically true... But still very misleading.

Majikjon
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