War Without End

American writer Susan Sontag recently received the peace prize of the German booksellers' association and gave a most interesting acceptance speech about the current (strained) state of US-European relations.

Sample quote: "Americans have got used to thinking of the world in terms of enemies. Enemies are somewhere else, as the fighting is almost always "over there," Islamic fundamentalism having replaced Russian and Chinese communism as the threat to "our way of life." And terrorist is a more flexible word than communist. It can unify a larger number of quite different struggles and interests. What this may mean is that the war will be endless - since there will always be some terrorism (as there will always be poverty and cancer); that is, there will always be asymmetrical conflicts in which the weaker side uses that form of violence, which usually targets civilians. American rhetoric, if not the popular mood, would support this unhappy prospect, for the struggle for righteousness never ends."

(Via the Literary Saloon)