The degree of explosive power in any politician's discourse regarding war is directly proportionally to the distance between the microphone and the front lines. Indeed, also for practical matters, leaders usually are kept in safe locations and it is quite infrequent that they actually visit or ever see the war zone. So there are practical reasons to conceal wartime leaders, but extra care should be taken not to show them as cowards, leaving behind others to fix the row for them.

Hizbullah's fighters are indeed terrorists and could be singled out as fanatics or heroes, depending on the point of view of each one. But what is not heroic is the way in which their spiritual and material leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah seems to be behaving: a newspaper from Kuwait stated today that he is actually not in Lebanon but Syria, hiding.

Israeli leaders are indeed, not in the war zone; however, some ministers have visited their troops in the front, and they seem to conduct business as usual, and the same for the Lebanese government and as non-Hamas Palestinian authorities, such as President Abbas.

Of course, Hamas and Hizbulah are being bombarded by the Israelis and the leaders of both militias are indeed prime targets, but the impression that they are leaving, especially Mr. Nasrallah seems quite unfortunate and could backfire among the militants that are dying in his name. Fanaticism certainly will cover his back for a while, as militia fighters continue with their enthusiasm fighting Israeli troops, but for how long until the see that their leaders have literally escaped?

From the point of view of military leadership, and in order to assure the political survival of any combat force, such conducts are to be avoided because they will usually end causing trouble. Of course: they seem to show that such leaders are in fact cowards.

Moreover: the fact that both Lebanes and a fraction of Palestine VIPs seem to be not considered as targets by the Israelis might suggest fractures within the adversaries of Israel and making an apparent dispaly of cowardice will certainly weaken some leaders in the home front.

This is an example to learn from the negative side: in other words, leaders should have a rather more dignified attitude than this Sheik. If you want to read the full news about Mr. Nasrallah's apparent whereabouts, see .

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The same could be said about those petty bureaucrats that become so sinister and evil when dealing with common people that their "class" gives rise to characters like Eichmann. In fact, I think that we should take on them, pinpoint those S.O.Bs by name wherever they are in the world and give their names some exposure...

You will find such little fascist midgets almost everywhere: airport clerks, customs clerks, taxmen, policemen, business bosses, etc.

It is the bureaucratic machinery of a state that becomes a true real life monster: Even the death penalty administered legally by a state is something that depends on a system rather than individuals. In the past, killing someone wasn´t quite the *problem* that it has become today, i.e. you took a sword and butchered the person you didn´t like. In a few places around the world you can still make someone disappear because these are isolated areas, but for the most part, it is difficult to commit such an act outside the shadow of the law.

So in the past it was easier and governments didn´t care so much either: The wounded left in medieval battles were often slaughtered if they belonged to the losing army, corpses were *officially* scavenged and so on. Today you can still kill someone legally if you are - say - a police officer, a soldier, a judge or a judicial or prison clerk that takes part in the process of administering a death penalty. Even the language has been altered in this aspect! You are *serving time* while you are in prison, while *serving* comes from *service*, and indeed, while in jail you are performing no service but being punished, justly or not. What kind of *service* is implicit in a jail, anyway?

Someone readers would probably argue that this has been sanctioned by the law and thus does not constitute a crime, and indeed it doesn´t on paper, but it is still killing and my point is whether you can - under certain circumstances - kill or not in order to prove my point that while private monstrosities may have been outlawed for the most part, the fact remains that instead of outlawing murder the state has assumed it as its own attribution for whatever reasons, but nobody has seriously given a thought of erradicating it. Moreover: Using what is written on paper as an absolute rule rather than a general guide that could be ignored under certain circumstances is a sign of the decadence of fre will and self-discipline.

Laws are fine as long as they don´t become aboslute commandementes because if they do and society becomes ruled solely by them it acquires a kind of rigor mortis that will preclude most creative efforts; indeed, many a true success or discovery has been achieved by actually ignoring or refusing some written laws, while the holocaust was achieved by doing things by the book. The nazis were very meticulous in their laws, and their whole killing machinery was legal on paper. So, if I have to choose finally between respecting the law or breaching it, I think that acting illegally could be healthier most of the times.

You can say that there are countries where policemen seldom carry guns or where they are very limited in their use, such as the UK or Norway, but let me remind you that both those are NATO countries, and neither has renounced to having armies which in fact, are killing machines. They might use them or not, but they keep that capability under the hat.

With the advent of republics some of these practices were abandoned, while others - like killing - were legally and officially assumed as a privilege or attribution of the state as a machine itself. WWII carpet bombings were managed and executed using statistics and true business practices, only that in that case *productivity* was understood as the level of destruction achieved.

The reason why killing has been outlawed for individuals isn´t law and order, but rather because it is a very efficient way to solve problems to one´s own desires, and governments around the world would rather keep that comforting thought for themselves because granting such power to individuals would of course cause chaos and at the same time, eliminate the only true prerrogative: the ability to use force. It is the potential ability to kill legally what defines a state and no glorious pasts, no heroes or brillian thoughts. The USA is what it is not because Jefferson or Lincoln, but because of its financial and military might.

So, it is very rare indeed to have today individual figures responsible for lousy leadership, corruption and even atrocities, and we rather have individual components of whole systems that are wicked either by design or by the growth of so much entropy in their originally idealistic structures and intentions that have mutated into incredibly different scavengers of life.