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Council Member
I've got to agree with Steve on this - it's certainly a point of concern leaving off any partisan considerations.
In some ways, it's an excellent lead in to discussing definitions of "war". Does a war have to be state vs. state (the old, post-Westphalian assumption)? Can you have a "declared" war against a non-state actor (personally, I would say that you can)? If so, what is the status, under international conventions, of the members of that non-state actor?
Most of our thinking on these questions isn't really well developed - we've spent the last 4 centuries assuming that "war" refers to state vs. state despite evidence to the contrary. Politically, and by that I mean it in terms of political semantics, we need to really rethink our definitions and their implications. I don't think that tis is so much a case of party politics as it is a case of general political discourse.
Sic Bisquitus Disintegrat...
Marc W.D. Tyrrell, Ph.D.
Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies,
Senior Research Fellow,
The Canadian Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies, NPSIA
Carleton University
http://marctyrrell.com/
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