Jared’s Blog

I did not enjoy this weeks lecture on War. Perhaps it was as a result of my sensitivities, particularly with regards to World War II, Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, but I found the lecturer to be hinting at legitimising the acts of Adolf Hitler through the legality of what he did.

Unfortunately because of group presentations we weren’t able to debate in class, which I thought would of been really interesting considering the numerous attitudes people can have to war. Perhaps in the future the topic of war can be placed before or after the group presentation period, particularly given that, unfortunately, it is something that just about links every country on earth! (Had to backspace there as I still have a tendency to call it a nation).

Patrick Deer’s article “The Ends of War and the Limits of War Culture”  commenced with the statement “War is back”. Which made me wonder “Did it ever go away?”. I answered my own question: no. What went away, rather, was the media’s interest in an all too common happening. War has been rife, especially in Africa for several decades though for the most part (and a cynic might argue it’s because of a lack of oil in the region), the Western community is silent. The Genocide and military opperations in Darfur, Sudan come to mind.

Rather than approaching these pressing issues, academics seem fixated on what we see on the media (and attacking the Bush Administration), rather than researching far reaching issues and really educating us all on a war that’s not back, but a war that has always been here.

PS. Sorry if this posting seems all over the place!

References:

Deer, Patrick 2007, ‘The Ends of War and the Limits of War Culture’, Social Text, vol. 25, no. 2, pp. 1-11. http://drr.lib.uts.edu.au/file/19191/976001_deerendsofwarthelimitsofwarculture.pdf