August 04, 2004
Wars of Necessity
Matthew Yglesias makes a profound point:
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Near as I can tell, the United States has fought one war of necessity -- the second world war. Since the country wouldn't have existed without the Revolution, you can add that in. Beyond that, the US has fought for a variety of more-or-less abstract principles and more-or-less concrete material interests (often mixed together as in the Civil War), but never for its survival as a nation or in response to direct aggression.What, exactly, is meant by 'War of Necessity' anyway? For example, can anyone really argue that the actions taken by the Jefferson administration against the North African city-states were 'necessary' for the survival of the country? Was that not a 'war-of-choice' and not of 'necessity?
Unless we define choice and necessity in some way that the definitions only fits on partisan grounds. For instance, the war in Iraq was one of 'choice' because Bush chose to go there, even though it was not 'necessary'. Or, the war in the Balkaans was 'necessary' because Clinton had to go there and therefore did not have any real 'choice'. See how this works?
UPDATE: Chris Cross has a great take on this. Exactly what I was thinking!
Posted by: Rusty at
11:27 PM
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Easy question! A "War of Necessity" is any military skirmish that can be rationalized to the benefit of the Democrat party. Of course, the above definition depends on the meaning of the word "is"...
Posted by: Publius at August 05, 2004 05:03 AM (P7OIl)
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Heck, you could make a REAL strong argument that not even WWII was a war of necessity. After all, we could have very easily let Imperial Japan control the Pacific and let Germany run wild over Europe--neither of which would have effected the security of the US much at all...
In short--every war is a war of choice--but that fact alone doesn't invalidate the choice.
Posted by: Christopher Cross at August 05, 2004 06:56 AM (WrswG)
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