[Dragaera] Sethra Lavode's Words on War

[Davdi Silverrock]

On Feb 10, 2008 5:05 PM, 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."

Well, I do vaguely recall Vlad saying something like this (preferring
to acquire money peacably rather than violently).  And wasn't his own
Jhereg war started by himself, the defender?

>
> Or, "The Orca never wants to beat you up...  Oh wait."
>

Sethra's rather bloodless remarks do appear to imply that ambition and
greed never correlate with anger and cruelty; that acts of terror
and/or massacres never occur during war.  I suspect that she knows
better.

One way of reading those quotes is as thinking counter-intuitively;
laterally; outside the box.  I might offer that Sethra likes thinking
that way, both because it has brought her success, and because not
changing the way one thinks for several hundred thousand years is
boring and likely to lead to stagnation and decay.