On Sep 6, 6:56*pm, Hawke wrote:
On 9/5/2011 2:58 PM, wrote:



On Sep 5, 3:42 pm, *wrote:

I call it advice, aid, and direction. I don't call it participation.
When you participate in a war you will take casualties. They come with
the package. If you can avoid casualties altogether I find it hard to
argue that you are really in a war, at least according to my
understanding of the word.

Hawke

So *if we launched nuclear weapons into Iran and killed all of their
military, destroyed their infrastructure so badly that the government
collapses. *In short making it impossible for them to mount any sort
of defense, much less an offense so that we suffered no casualties.
Then that would not be a war, because we did not have any
casualties.

Right. What you describe above is the destruction of a country to the
extent that it cannot fight back. I wouldn't call that a war.

Exactly what is your definition of war?

Generally it's when two nation states' military forces fight with each
other. But "war" can be anything you want it to mean, just about. Take
the movie the War of the Roses. It was about a couple fighting with each
other in their marriage. Is that a war? How about the Lincoln County War
that Billy the kid fought in? Was that a "war". I don't know. You can
use the term war anytime anyone fights over anything. When I say a war I
usually mean two nation states' fight with their armies. But you can
extend it to any kind of fight if you really want, even calling a
football game a war. Is it? Not to me. War is a serious conflict
involving fighting by large groups and both sides inflicting damage on
each other.

Hawke

So when one side inflicts damage on the other , it does not count.

Dan