[W.F. Lantry]

Originally Posted by Julie Steiner

Someone was asking why the world was so much less chaotic some decades ago.

I don't know. Was it? For us, the 60's was Vietnam. But there were also other proxy wars all over the place, mixed up with independence wars at the end of colonialism. In France, there was murderous unrest over Algeria: http://rebellyon.info/Le-massacre-du...e-1961-a-Paris

In the 70's, we still had Vietnam for almost half the decade. The cold war was still going on. Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Yom Kippur, Angola, Iran. In France, Action Directe carried out 50 separate attacks.

In the 80's, it was Salvador, Beirut, riots in India killed tens of thousands. Iran-Irag killed hundreds of thousands, an entire generation of young men. Airliners were getting blown out of the sky: Air India, Lockerbie, Sakhalin. The Falklands, Angola, Tiananmen. In Europe, it was the time of the Brigades Rouges: there were guards with submachineguns on street corners everywhere I went. Fascism was on the rise: the English department where I taught suffered arson attacks, the building where I lived was bombed. Twice.

Things got worse in the 90's: Somalia, Rwanda. Congo, Chechnya, Kosovo, Yugoslavia, Kuwait and the Gulf war. Oklahoma City, WTC. In France, there were nearly a dozen bombings of the Paris Metro.

We forget. Even though we lived through those times, we still forget. Yes, the dictator of Iran who we supported locked the doors of a crowded theater, and burned it down. Yes, dictators used the attack jets we and the Russians sold them to bomb their own citizens. But in spite of our policies, dictators are not all that good at preserving stability. Suharto ruled for 30 years, but he ruled over corruption, chaos, and blood.

But most of the things listed above weren't the direct result of dictators. Something much larger goes on. I'm not a historian, so I won't hazard a guess on exactly what it is. But it never seems to go away. Hence Trotsky's famous quote: "You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you."

Yours, in peace,

Bill