One of the great stories of all time, this re-examination considers our own attitudes to war, cycles of revenge and what it really means to be a hero.
It also recognises that fault and blame need to be removed from the process so that partners can come to the negotiating table not with the belligerent attitude of war-time foes but one more conducive to conflict-resolution.
The histories, interests and attitudes of the war skeptics are as relevant as whatever psychodrama President Bush may be playing out by finishing off his father's archenemy, or whether the drive against Iraq represents some dubious alignment of American interests with Israel's.
The decision on rescheduling marijuana simply would not have been possible under Leonhart, but there is hope with new leadership that the agency will finally move beyond the worst attitudes of the War On Drugs and start to help craft a new federal legal policy.
A professional war correspondent who has personally witnessed armed conflicts in Vietnam, the Falkland Islands and other danger zones, Hastings has a sober, unromantic and realistic view of battle that puts him into a different category from the armchair generals whose gung-ho, schoolboy attitude to war fills the pages of a great majority of military histories.
He refrained from military action against Iran's nuclear installations, and by all accounts told Israel to hold back too.The loop and the underlying constantOne interpretation of America's attitude to war is that it is stuck in a loop.
Perhaps this was a seed of Benn's attitude to war - he was not a pacifist - in the Falklands, Kuwait or Iraq: He went to Graham Street mixed infants school, and then to the Frances Holland School for Girls, at 13 guineas a term; and from there to Gladstone's, in Cliveden Place.
In the light of history, however, this attitude to war is highly uncharacteristic.
A debate over whether women have different attitudes toward issues of war, peace and economic development has been going on for years in women's organizations, whose leaders have often been reluctant to characterize any set of ideas as a woman's view.
Graham Mollart Farnham, Surrey But for the obstructive attitude of the War Office, there would have been more women to honour for their contribution to the British war effort (Letters, 3 January).
"They must establish an attitude of protracted war," he said.
