America Is Addicted to Fighting Undeclared Wars
Danny Sjursen
“No war is just except one which is waged after demands for reparation have been made, or the war has been officially declared and proclaimed.”—Cicero
Sometimes I wonder how we got here. I joined the army at seventeen, in July 2001, back when peace was the norm, duty in Korea was exotic, and a quick jaunt to Kosovo was just close enough to war to generate stories, but distant enough to rule out any real danger. Sixteen years later, launching fifty-nine missiles into a sovereign country—Syria—barely registers as war and only penetrates news coverage to fuel domestic political gossip. My fourteen-year-old was born in wartime and hardly notices the latest strike. Who can blame him? After all, when aren’t we bombing someone—Iraq, the “Islamic State,” Yemen, Afghanistan and Libya—so who cares? It’s enough to make you scream, as though you’re the only one who notices the lunacy. When did this become a country where Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham—two guys so hawkish they’d bomb Bermuda tomorrow at the slightest hint of an indignity—seem, even sometimes to me, to be the sober, respectable voices on foreign policy?
http://nationalinterest.org/print/feature/america-addicted-fighting-undeclared-wars-20535
