[Rhodes22-list] reply to Dave Woten about subject of war

[DCLewis1 at aol.com]

Ed,
 
You're right about the subject line, I apologize. 
 
As to wars being long - as I recall there was a 100 years war in  medieval 
Europe, so wars can indeed go on a long time, but to my knowledge all  wars have 
ended in treaties, surrender, or annihilation.  I can't  think of a single 
real war that's just gone on forever or one that has  magically, mystically, 
just petered out without the other side  surrendering, being annihilated, or 
accommodating the winning side via a  treaty of some sort - for example Wikipedia 
tells me the 30 years war ended  with the Treaty of Munster, there was a 
demarcated end.  I'd welcome an  example of a real war that has gone on forever, or 
that magically  dissapated.  
 
As to the definitions of war you cited, again you are correct, but map the  
correct definitions you cited 
“War is a condition of belligerency to be maintained by physical  force.”   “
A contest
between states, carried on by force, whether  for defense, for revenging
insults and redressing wrongs, or for any other  purpose; declared and open
hostilities.”
into "the war on cancer", "the  war on poverty", "the war on drugs", it's a 
metaphorical stretch - and that's my  point.  What belligerency have we 
maintained by physical force in "the war  on cancer" - none.   Exactly what is the 
geo-political state we are  contesting against with physical force in our war on 
poverty - none. We can  take poetic license and say the "state" is poverty,a 
condition of society, but  clearly that's a metaphoric extension of what your 
definitions  were describing.  Which geopolitical state have we asserted "a  
condition of belligerency maintained by physical force" against in our war on  
drugs - none (maybe Panama, but the war on drugs goes far beyond  Panama).  
It's politically attractive to use the term "war" in dealing  with cancer, 
poverty, drugs, or a lot of other things, but none of those  "issues d'jour" are 
really wars, they're are areas of focused attention and  resources, not wars.
 
There's a good side and bad side to declaring topics d'jour to be  wars.  The 
good side is it gets people excited and focused - for a  time.  A politician 
can get a lot of good press by declaring war on some  topic or behavior. The 
bad side is that most or many of the issues are not  amenable to any sort of 
"victory", they are problems that have been with mankind  forever, and will 
likely always be with us in one form or another.  Because  we can't declare 
victory, after decades with no or little progress, people get  discouraged and give 
up the cause for lost - drugs are an example.    My point is, we haven't lost 
and we can never win,  these are long  term problems of mankind that have been 
with us forever, not wars, and we  just have to keep working on them - 
probably forever.
 
Regarding drugs: If I understand correctly, the claim is that if we just  
legalized drugs the problem would go away.  I'm asserting the problem(s)  would 
just be different.  I think that if we legalized "hard drugs" (i.e.  drugs that 
are seriously addictive and seriously debilitating) the moral,  social, and 
economic costs to society created by a class of literally tens  of millions of 
addicts would dwarf our present problems by orders of  magnitude.  If drugs 
were legal, Brad's son would not be on the high seas  trying to interdict, he 
would be riding an ambulance stuffing body bags.  I  think that criminalization 
of drug use actually works to disincentivize a lot of  people that would 
otherwise try addicting drugs, and the moral, social and  economic costs associated 
with tens of millions of addicts is so extraordinarily  high that any 
disincentive is a good and useful thing.
 
JMO
 
Dave



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