Is it possible to win a "war" against an abstraction?U.S. policy has us involved in wars on things like terror, drugs or poverty; are these actualy reachable goals? "terror" , for example, is a noun, defined as "an instance or cause of intense fear or anxiety". How then do you win a war against said noun? How will you know when you have won? Will everyone simply cease being afraid? Will the word no longer appear in the dictionary? What about a war on drugs? Will victory be attained when all habit forming substances no longer exist? Will we then expand that war's parameters to include coffee or junk food? It seems to me that a war on terror or a war on drugs makes about as much sense as a war on dandruff. The way that the fighting of said wars is conducted seems equally foolish. In the "war on terror", we round up thousands of America's youngest and poorest citizens, then drop them on a seemingly random middleeastern country and order them to kill thousands of that countries youngest and poorest citizens, all the while being killed and maimed themselves. And to what end? Does this make Americans somehow "safer", or more "free"? What about American soldiers? Are they safe or free? And I won't even go into the "war on drugs". Lets just say it hasn't worked out nearly as well as the "war on the middle class" has. A war against Nazis? At least that was a tangible enemy with a leader and an army, we knew when that war was over. Or a war against the north Vietnamese; didn't win that one, but at least you knew who the enemy was. A war on terror just seems too rhetorical. And don't even start with the whole "war hasn't been officialy declared by congress" argument, we don't fight that way anymore, and everyone knows it. We never declared war in Vietnam either, and 58 thousand Americans are no less dead than if we had.
Joseph the Second
No. Because there's too much shape "shifting- going" on... :(
hogzeye
There's always some fool trying pose supposedly 'intellectual' questions here, in order to try to portray themselves as more intelligent than they are.
Especially when that fool keeps using the 'said' term.....'said wars' and 'said noun'.
Anyway, back to your suggestion that you can't wage war on a noun (lots of idiots came out with this one at the time), and that we don't know who our enemy is.....well yes you can, and yes we do.
In the context of it's use, this term means declaring war on terrorists, (as you and others like you, know full well) wherever they are in the world. Anyone can try to be clever or pedantic, but it has the opposite effect.
the old dog
NO.
We are in a perpetual state of 1984, albeit 27 years after the infamous date set down my Orwell. But never the less, we are all in that collective state of a war against Abstractions.
We will not win.
Neither will the other side win, but still they too are in that perpetual state of 1984.
Orignal From: Is it possible to win a "war" against an abstraction?
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