Violence

[Fisherking]

You should not equate War and Murder.

Murder is the killing of someone who has no means to resist. War involves combatants trying to kill one another. Murder occurs when the unarmed are killed but is incidental to the conflict.

Killing is not murder. Murder is just a type of killing.

[Fisherking]

It is not a War if both sides don’t have a means to resist the other. Call it what you feel fits.

Iraq and Afghanistan were more occupations than wars. The resistance was not really an organized army.

[Husar]

This whole resisting thing is awfully arbitrary Fisherking.

As far as I'm aware, murder is planned killing, regardless of whether the victim is carrying a gun, a knife or nothing. Otherwise you could let many murderers in America off or give them a lower punishment because they "only" killed someone who had the means to defend her/himself because the victim had a gun in the drawer... Even worse if someone is a copkiller as cops always have the means to resist.

Even in war I find the definition extremely false as Geli Cube already pointed out. What about ambushes, mine fields or dropping cluster bombs on infantry whose guns can't even reach the bomber? Do they have the means to resist or does the SAM station on the other side of the country count as such because it happens to "wear" the same flag?

Was 9/11 somehow a more "justified" killing or not murder because some guy in the WTC was armed and thus had the means to resist?

Going by your definitions I could also say Iraq and Afghanistan were murders and your use of "occupation" is just a euphemism in an attempt to cover up what happened before the actual occupation. Iraq sort of had an organized army until the USA bombed their infrastructure and took the organization aspect away as far as I can tell. And they had no chance to resist that.

I basically agree that war is an incredibly arbitrary legal concept, when our army went to Afghanistan, our whole nation debated whether this should be called a war or not since our politicians hesitated to call it that. In the end they did but it shows that there is no clear line there.

[HopAlongBunny]

I am kind of surprised at the turn this topic took.

Clausewitz picked the duel as his metaphor for war. A duel or a series of duels the end result is the same: one living (victor) one dead (vanquished). Where does this fail to meet the definition of murder?

Just because "Clausewitz sez!" doesn't make it so...do you have a better metaphor?

[Fragony]

I am kind of surprised at the turn this topic took.

Clausewitz picked the duel as his metaphor for war. A duel or a series of duels the end result is the same: one living (victor) one dead (vanquished). Where does this fail to meet the definition of murder?

Not so sure you understand the metaphore he was using, beaten, not vanquished. For Clausowitz it wasn't the destruction of an enemy army that was important but making the situation so dire for the opponent that they simply couldn't win. For Clausewitz war was an extention of politics

[Fisherking]

This whole resisting thing is awfully arbitrary Fisherking.

As far as I'm aware, murder is planned killing, regardless of whether the victim is carrying a gun, a knife or nothing. Otherwise you could let many murderers in America off or give them a lower punishment because they "only" killed someone who had the means to defend her/himself because the victim had a gun in the drawer... Even worse if someone is a copkiller as cops always have the means to resist.

Even in war I find the definition extremely false as Geli Cube already pointed out. What about ambushes, mine fields or dropping cluster bombs on infantry whose guns can't even reach the bomber? Do they have the means to resist or does the SAM station on the other side of the country count as such because it happens to "wear" the same flag?

Was 9/11 somehow a more "justified" killing or not murder because some guy in the WTC was armed and thus had the means to resist?

Going by your definitions I could also say Iraq and Afghanistan were murders and your use of "occupation" is just a euphemism in an attempt to cover up what happened before the actual occupation. Iraq sort of had an organized army until the USA bombed their infrastructure and took the organization aspect away as far as I can tell. And they had no chance to resist that.

I basically agree that war is an incredibly arbitrary legal concept, when our army went to Afghanistan, our whole nation debated whether this should be called a war or not since our politicians hesitated to call it that. In the end they did but it shows that there is no clear line there.

We can forget the legal definition for a moment. That varies from place to place. This is just the original meaning of the word.

Murder need not be planed and the victim can defend themselves but have insufficient means to overcome the attack so that they are basically undefended. An unfair fight. Such as a man overpowering a woman or a child.

When a man kills another in a fight in the US it is usually termed “Man Slaughter” but that is also a legal definition.

Execution is just state sponsored murder. Legal murder, if you will.

[Husar]

We can forget the legal definition for a moment. That varies from place to place. This is just the original meaning of the word.

Of which word? War? You may be right but the reality today does not suit it any more in this case. Or if it does, many "wars" of the past few years were just mass murders.

Murder need not be planed and the victim can defend themselves but have insufficient means to overcome the attack so that they are basically undefended. An unfair fight. Such as a man overpowering a woman or a child.

Is that a legal definition or your definition? Because it seems rather mislead to me and the merriam webster seems to agree with me:
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/murder

1: the crime of unlawfully killing a person especially with malice aforethought

When a man kills another in a fight in the US it is usually termed “Man Slaughter” but that is also a legal definition.

Really? It's not a legal dictionary, but again it disagrees:
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/manslaughter

the unlawful killing of a human being without express or implied malice

The way I understand it and the dictionary seems to support that, murder is when you plan to kill someone and do it, manslaughter is when ya situation deteriorates and you push someone and he breaks his neck. Whether the other person is a man, a woman or a child or whether the other person has a gun in a holster does not really come into it unless the other person was threatening you with violence in which case it may be self defense depending on actual circumstances.
I don't know how US law defines it with all the different degrees but the general usage of the terms that I have seen so far fits the dictionary definitions.

Execution is just state sponsored murder. Legal murder, if you will.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say with this but that's why civilized countries stopped it, yes.

[Fisherking]

You are not going to divorce Politics from Military Might. The military is the servant of political will, vested in the Executive Branch.
War is a political policy. If you find that it is too frequent then we need to find more stable and less aggressive politicians.

[Kadagar_AV]

Well yeah. I don't mean to literally forget about war as an instrument of policy, because that would be inviting disaster. But certainly it would be ideal if it were understood by every American that we enjoy an incredible advantage, nobody can seriously hurt us, and there are better ways to approach this anyway. We could easily withdraw from the world stage militarily (aside from the UN, and we could simply scale back and offer up the same amount of troops as European nations do). The threat and promise of reciprocity would benefit us in the long run way more than this active way of trying to clamp down on the whole world.

Such a policy track would require politicians, economists, and common voters to exhibit way too much common sense though. Too many people would have to swallow their pride for it to ever work.

[Husar]

You could privatize the military and the whole war-making thing. That way wars wouldn't be decided by lazy warmongering politicians but by upstanding investors and stockholders who just want to make a huge profit.

[HopAlongBunny]

That goes to the heart of what Eisenhower was warning about in his speech. Instead of an abstract fear placed at some time in the future, I think he was illustrating a process and a mechanism already in place.

It dovetails so nicely into "national pride" and "place in the world" that private control of public space becomes essentially invisible (so long as it remains within the shroud American Might)

It also has implications for the servant/subject relation of politics/war. Indeed who serves whom?

[Fragony]

Anti-violence! The 4th of may isn't just Starwars-day but also our memorial day for those who died. This was last year but it's pretty impressive how the country falls completily silent for two minutes

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eds5t2WEPxs