You make a valid point here. But it’s not nearly as clear cut as you make it sound.
In Colombia from the 1980s through the early 2000s the FARC and the narcos (to the degree they were separate entities) were at least as powerful as the *de jure * national government across wide swaths of the countryside. In some provinces FARC’s writ ran rampant and the national government was simply absent.
Nobody in the US or Colombian government entities fighting those forces thought they were at war with a sovereign government. Neither did the foreign affairs punditocracy observing the conflict. FARC was universally thought of as bandits or guerillas or even terrorists. But not as a government. Despite their intermittent claims to governmental legitimacy over “their” territory.
Colombia is far from alone in that. Similar situations have, do, and will exist in many partly and wholly failed states.
The fact some bandit groups in some places and times have some minor indicia of government does not make them so. Not morally, not legally, and most of all, not factually.
Yes we are. Our armed forces launched a significant attack on their armed forces on their territory. That means we are actively at war with them. No amount of spin can change that.
The word “war” means whatever people decide it means.
It’s been at least 20, and probably 40, years since “war” was widely considered to be a simple binary thing where the first time one entity’s weaponry was deliberately used against another the two nations were locked in war unto regime change.
By directly (albeit trivially) attacking the armed forces of Syria the US has absolutely done a warlike thing. For about the 37th time in the last 5 years in Syria alone. Not to mention what we’ve done in Libya, Iraq, Somalia, Yemen, and Afghanistan.
Would the world be a better place if this shit (and the shit of the Russians, Chinese, EU/NATO, NK, Iran, Israel, Saudi Arabia, etc.) wasn’t happening? You bet.
Does running around claiming “this is war!!” add anything to the reasoned debate? Nope. In fact it detracts.
And for almost everyone (outside a the world of Pentagon spin doctors) the armed forces of one country invading another and attacking their armed forces would clearly be an act of war.
I am not being hysterical, or even saying it is necessarily a bad thing (a country using chemical weapons against civilians does not seem an awful reason for starting a war with them) . But we shouldn’t sugar coat it or indulge in doublespeak. It was as unambiguous act of war as you could can.
Having a well defined end point, where you can say war X ended with the treaty of Y, is a luxury you only get with formally declared wars. When we as a country decided to abandon the concept of formally declared wars we decided we are OK with wars that drag on indefinitely.
Looks like we’re still at war in Korea. Armistice was signed, but the war is not over. Hence the large standing of troops at demilitarized zone. Granted, we were at war via our UN commitments, and there were Cold War entanglements, but the war, itself, persists.
Technically it’s not over. In retrospect it is safe to say yes, in practice the Korean war is over (were it to start again, it would be inaccurate to describe it as a continuation of the 1950-1953 Korean war, rather than a second Korean war). But that it is only possible to say that as a historian with the benefit of hindsight
The same with the recently started war with the Syrian regime. Only history will tell whether this will be an isolated incident (like the 1986 attack on Gaddafi) or a decades long slog like our current war in Afghanistan. By deciding not have formally declared wars that is what we are agreeing to as a nation.
But you really aren’t saying anything. Calling something “an act of war” is just blather, unless actual war follows. It hasn’t yet.
Are you aware that we had American troops on the ground inside Syria for some time now? I would think that qualifies as an invasion, too, but it’s functionally meaningless, unless the nation being thus invaded, responds by fighting to drive the invaders out, or otherwise opposes them.
What I at least am trying to get across to you, is that nothing has actually changed, as you thought it did when you started this thread. The US has been bombing and otherwise fighting in Syria since 2014 at least. This latest attack was perhaps the first on Syrian regulars that we know of, by American fired missiles, but we have been directly supporting “insurgents” with weapons and other things against those same forces for years.
Other “acts of war” with no functional meaning such as you suggest have included
the raid on Pakistan to kill Bin Laden;
the invasion of Grenada under Reagan;
the mining of Nicaragua’s harbors;
shooting down an Iranian passenger jet (accident)
And probably more I can't recall right now.
What I would certainly support you on, if you wanted to take this in that direction, is that we are in danger of classic “mission creep” in Syria with this. Especially since Trump still has no clear policy in place regarding Syria, with one part of his own administration contradicting another about it. One is even talking about Regime Change, and that sort of talk has repeatedly been followed by American invasions.
We’ve already gone from a long standing opposition to Assad, to helping people inside Syria fight Assad, to bombing who we hope is ISIL in Syria, and now to firing punitive missiles at an airbase under Assad’s control.
Maybe this is why Trump USED TO oppose attacking Syria.
Of these only one of these is unambiguously an act of war, though all of them could be interpreted as such, by the nation being attacked. If it an of the US had been the victim of any of them (maybe with the exception of the Iran Air Flight 655 incident), they would have ABSOLUTELY considered themselves at war.
But to say the invasion of Grenada wasn’t a war is ridiculous double speak. It was absolutely, a short war, which the US won. It absolutely has functional meaning to call it what it was, a war.
The operative word there is “actively”. Since there is an armistice, it can’t be “active”, so, no, we’re not “actively” at war in Korea. We were before the armistice, but not now.
Exactly my point. I think it’s safe to say we are not currently at war with Vietnam. When did we stop being at war? Paris accords? When we withdrew our ground troops? The Case-Church amendment? The Fall Of Saigon? Even as an historian with the benefit of hindsight it is hard to say, even harder at the time.
With an undeclared war you don’t have the luxury of saying this war ended with the “Peace Of X”. We, as a society have decided we are ok with that.
The fall of Saigon happened 2 years after we left. But you’re just making up the rules as we go along, and I notice you didn’t address any of the other “wars” we supposedly were involved in.
As long we don’t keep firing at Syria (Assad, that is) and they’re not firing at us, then we’re not at war. Our missile strike certainly was an act of war, and it could have led to war, but at this point it doesn’t appear that it will. lt might still, but so far it hasn’t. At worst, we might say it’s too soon to say. But if we had to make a declarative statement, we would say we’re not actively at war. None of the normal conditions of what is generally considered to be war is present.