You can’t have a war by yourself

Letter to Editor

A recent Star Tribune headline read: "Raids in Baghdad thwart wide-ranging bomb plot" (1-13). Now we need to raid the Pentagon and "thwart" all of the "wide-ranging bomb plots" they have in the making. Like all of these never-ending cowardly drone attacks on western Pakistan.

"War" is a bizarre realm. You get to justify attacks upon your enemy based on defining it as "war," and then you get to justify even more attacks upon your enemy when they "war" upon you. Even though them "warring" back on you completes the circle and gives you true "war," because "war" is defined as "armed conflict." Without your enemy fighting back, how is it "war"?

Key word is "conflict." That means you need two, you need two sides violently opposing each other to make it "war." You have no right to call it "war" if you are not going to give the enemy the freedom to "war." You need them; without them resisting, you have no "war." If we have the freedom to plan bombings based on it being "war," they also have this freedom. What if they stopped planning future bombings—then there would be no more "war"; for it to be "war," they need to do these types of "war" things. For the U.S. government and its media to go on and on about continuing this "war" … the enemy has to plan and carry out bombings. Does the U.S. military really want to come home?

"Why are you going to kill me?"
"Because you killed ten of my comrades."
"But it's war. Me killing them is acceptable. It's war."
"That's right and me killing you is also acceptable based on it being war."
"So war has nothing to do with right or wrong?"

"No, how could it? War is about being the best at violent conflict. Right or wrong cannot enter such a realm. It can only be about the last man standing."
"War" is not a given, that is, based on your violent ability to attack someone. For it to be "war," your enemy has to cooperate and violently resist you. That is what the enemy in Iraq and Afghanistan is doing. To believe that you can go to "war" without knowing for sure if the enemy is going to cooperate and violently oppose you is a rather dangerous assumption.

We know not much else but "war"—and with this being the case, we need "enemies" that violently oppose us. The U.S. government should be thankful for the small amounts of violent resistance the insurgents and the Taliban have been able to come up with on such limited "war" budgets. Without it, the U.S. government would have no "wars" and no justification to stay over there indefinitely. The U.S. government needs violent resistance, because "war" is their only vehicle. Without "war" they got nothing.

Men get the freedom to "war" if they can, regardless of what-ever. The overseers of "war" in Washington should feel very fortunate; there is no way they can "lose these "wars" on the "battlefield." Those resisting them give them all they need.

Frank Erickson
The letter writer has an op-ed column in the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder newspaper.