What is in a war?

ARTICLE: New Virus Spurs Experts to Rethink Definition of Pandemic, By David Brown, Washington Post, May 31, 2009

This reminds me of the way we've down-defined wars (1000 deaths over 12 months, which is only 3 deaths a day!)

I'm watching Ken Burns' "The War" and you see these bomber runs over Germany and we'd lose 800 airmen--just that one mission, that one day.

Now we have pandemics where we lose a dozen people a week--worldwide!

And "quagmire" wars where a really catastrophic day is double-digit deaths--for the entire force.

Not complaining. It's a good thing, but fascinating how we cling to terms despite the qualitative changes.

Comments

[joe Michels]

Interesting post. Not all of us fall for the hysteria produce by the main stream news media. It is good that our wars don't produce 10s of thousands of deaths. I'm glad that we get concerned when there are only a thousands of deaths. There is no reason to throw bodies at wars when other means can achieve the goals.

It does seem that the wars will talk longer to decide. And that is why I find comparisons of WWII to Iraq silly when I hear them. WWI took 4 1/2 years for the US, but took 400K plus dead. Iraq going on 7 years with only 4K plus dead. Big difference. Yet we hear about how long with war is taking compared to WWII.

There is no sense of perspective coming from our news media. This will have a lasting impact on our country.

[William R. Cumming]

Okay so let's develop a war metric when organized violence involved by nation-states? Also a metric for Pandemics when deaths exceed say 1000 a week? And let's examine the causes of each factor leading to 10,000 deaths a month worldwide and come up with a new term. Should not the engagement in Iraq just be labeled "the organized opposition to the occupation forces"?

[Tom Barnett]

Actually, wars today are a lot shorter than they were in the mid-20th century, when they averaged 7-10 years. Now, classically defined wars of high intensity last about 30-60 days.

The low-intensity stuff goes on forever, but if you define it low enough, then most major cities undergo constant warfare. The definitions get pretty silly, by my standard, then, because we're simply exploiting the concentrations of humanity caused by urbanization.

But Iraq is a good example. After the recognizable war ended in five weeks and the Saddam regime was gone, who exactly were the combatants and what do we recognize as declarations of war? War is chaotic, but that doesn't make all chaotic situations the equivalent of wars--as we have understood the term historically.

And no, the opposition to the occupation forces were not organized per se. Just a lot of fellow travelers all working at various purposes. If they were organized, who then was the leader?

[Javaid Akhtar]

The Media is expanding relentlessly ..feedstock is getting smaller ( how many times do we see an angry man ' burning a flag /book /picture while 20 newsphtographers scramble over each other to catch the spontaneous moment of revolution.Maybe we just have a natural level of fear/paranoia that is catered for by the media and fewer /smaller wars will just have to be made to fit.

[outback]

Here's an example I use with students:

Take the dead at WTC: 2800

Multiply by 10: 28,000

Every day for a year: 10 million

For six straight years: 60 million



That's what happened between 1939-1945 in the Second World War

[Tom Barnett]

Outback,

I may have to steal that for a column.