America is at war with terrorism. Terrorists must be brought to
justice.
We hear these phrases together so often that we rarely pause to
reflect on the dramatic differences between the demands of war and
the demands of justice, differences so deep that the pursuit of one
often comes at the expense of the other. In this book, one of the
country's most important legal thinkers brings much-needed clarity
to the still unfolding debates about how to pursue war and justice
in the age of terrorism. George Fletcher also draws on his rare
ability to combine insights from history, philosophy, literature,
and law to place these debates in a rich cultural context. He seeks
to explain why Americans--for so many years cynical about war--have
recently found war so appealing. He finds the answer in a revival
of Romanticism, a growing desire in the post-Vietnam era to
identify with grand causes and to put nations at the center of
ideas about glory and guilt.
Fletcher opens with unsettling questions about the nature of
terrorism, war, and justice, showing how dangerously slippery the
concepts can be. He argues that those sympathetic to war are heirs
to the ideals of Byron, Fichte, and other Romantics in their belief
that nations--not just individuals--must uphold honor and be held
accountable for crimes. Fletcher writes that ideas about collective
glory and guilt are far more plausible and widespread than liberal
individualists typically recognize. But as he traces the
implications of the Romantic mindset for debates about war crimes,
treason, military tribunals, and genocide, he also shows that
losing oneself in a grand cause can all too easily lead to moral
catastrophe.
A work of extraordinary intellectual power and relevance, the
book will change how we think not only about world events, but
about the conflicting individualist and collective impulses that
tear at all of us.
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