Which Way, L.A.?

Book Festival Authors on the Policy and Gore of War

Three of the authors at this weekend-s Los Angeles Times Festival of Books have written about America-s military power. Though they all published before the war in Iraq, that conflict illustrates some of the questions they raise. Should military power serve political or economic interests? Is it a way to achieve moral objectives? Should it be limited to self-defense? At a time when annihilation is a real possibility, are there alternatives to war? In the meantime, what about the people who go to war and actually do the killing? Anthony Swofford is a former marine and the author of Jarhead: A Marine-s Chronicle of the Gulf War and Other Battles. Samantha Power, the founding executive director of Harvard-s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide. Johathan Schell, who writes about alternatives to war, is author of The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence and the Will of the People.