Michael Walzer wrote, in 1992, (Walzer, Michael, But Was it Just?: Reflections on the Morality of the Persian Gulf War<\/i>, \"Justice and Injustice in the Gulf War\", pp. 1 - 17, edited by David E. DeCosse, New York: Doubleday © 1992) that “In one of its modes, just war theory would also abolish war by the (theoretically) simple method of calling unjust wars “crimes” and just wars “police actions.” He goes on to say that there is no police force (no multilateral police force) capable of organizing and deploying that power, nor will there ever be, so that the question of just war will still need to be argued out, case by case and country by country.\n
But ... wouldn’t that be great? No more war, just like that!\n
OK, it does sound a bit silly, but think about it for a while. It’s clear to me that the way we talk about things affects the way we think about them; a rose by any other name might smell as sweet, but more people buy dried plums than prunes.\n
One of the problems I have with the whole anti-war movement is that we are currently at war with Iraq, without yet invading. After all, in the ninth century, an economic blockade enforced by troops was called a siege; now it isn’t. It used to be an act of war, now it is a prelude to war, or an alternative to war. The question isn’t between war and peace, because any reasonable definition of peace is not likely, not soon, not in the Gulf. The difference is between tactics, methods of warfare, and scale—all of which are important, but difficult to discuss in a war\/peace slogan match.\n
(Digression: I don’t mean to entirely dismiss those who do believe that we should not have a war of any kind, who are in favor of lifting sanctions, removing all our troops, lifting the no-fly zone, and relying on moral suasion to prevent any further aggression. I don’t agree with it, but it certainly is a coherent point of view, and one outside the above paragraphs’ sightlines, if only because I can’t really find it in the global discussion. End digression)\n
Anyway, I’m enjoying imagining the rhetoric in a world where the word “war” wasn’t used, and we had to discuss, debate, and defend our actions without it. We could, of course, have a police action on terrorism, which would be nice, but might not persuade us that we need to invade anybody. We could have re-enactments of the Crime between the States, and movies about World Crime II (or, more rarely, the Great Crime). Young men would have their mettle tested in police actions; perhaps no more so than when walking the beat. We could talk about our fears of an India-Pakistan crime, or perhaps an India-Pakistan police action, or both at once. And, of course, your 2004 Washington Expos would be first in police action, first in crime, and last in the National League.\n
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Not that Our Only President likes to use the word war, anyway, as he has no constitutional authority to declare war. He can declare a police action, though, and that’s where Your Humble Blogger stops for the day.\n
\n
Thank you,
-Vardibidian.\n<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Michael Walzer wrote, in 1992, (Walzer, Michael, But Was it Just?: Reflections on the Morality of the Persian Gulf War, “Justice and Injustice in the Gulf War”, pp. 1 – 17, edited by David E. DeCosse, New York: Doubleday ©…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[201],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-964","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-navel-gazing"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/964","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=964"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/964\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}