War on Terror, War on Poverty, War on Drugs, War between the Generations

Each use of the term "WAR" above has a different fundamental meaning and no use relates closely to other more common uses:  World War II, The Vietnam War, these conform to Cicero's definition: "a contention by force." 

The root of our English word "war" is "werra" which means confusion and enters otherwise into daily use as the word "weird." 

...  a person can benefit from quiet time to contemplate on this matter ...

Our political world would have war looked at in these ways:

I.  War has a definition:  " a state of armed conflict between different nations or states or different groups within a nation or state.

II. War refers to a particular armed conflict between people or groups.

III. War can be a sustained effort to deal with or end a particular unpleasant or undesirable situation or condition.  For instance, "US autorities are waging war against all forms of smuggling."

The War on Terror falls into the third (III) group here, so it is a recognized use of the word "war."  That does not mean that the word "war" has the same meaning in each application.  The third group is NOT war which requires the definition of opponents and the declaration of war.  The third group serves the purposes primarily of advocacy groups with social and political objectives, but seldom with the concept of an "armed conflict" and even less often with a clear definition of the "enemy."

Killing Osama bin Laden was an act of armed conflict and it was implemented by forces whose primary purpose is waging war. 

So, what does it mean that these quite separate ideas of "war" find common purpose and implementation?   When the threat is big, then the involved constiuents grow in number, complexity and power.  When a governing body implements "war" it no longer matters if the word usage is accurate, the outcomes just, the progress monitored, nor the outcomes defined.  That is, when the United States as a major governing body declares war on terror without specifying:

1)  the opponent
2)  the objectives
3)  what constitutes victory

then their is an action without end, without moral foundation, without ethical rationale, and with no way of ending the action.


Thus the US still occupies, however clumsily, however expensively, nations where they went to war without specificity:  Korea, Germany, and Japan.

Osama bin Laden opposed the West, his strategy had been to defeat the West economically, to lure the West into wasting their resources in poorly chosen struggles and encourage the transfer of Western Wealth to other places.

Every current economic indicator shows bin Laden's goals are daily closer to fact.