Ok, I will up front admit that the title is a bit misleading. It is not so much the concept of war as the word that I want to discourse about.
War, other than the band and the card game is not a word that generates a lot of entertainment value. It is the concept of one group fighting another over something when political meansto settle it failed. As the concept of war evolved it gained some rules. And it became a tool of politics. When ambassadors and emissaries fail, when negotiations fail, war is a means to affect resumption of negotiations.
So, when a government fights an idea or a non-governmental entity that is not attempting to become a government in its own right should they win, is WAR, the proper term to use.
I posit that it is not. A government cannot negotiate with poverty. Drugs have no official ambassadcor with whom terms can be agreed. Criminals do not set up embassaies to which a government can send an envoy to set up treaties. And in the sense of criminals, I do not just refer to thugs who steal, rob, rape and murder for personal gain, but those also who do it in an effort to influence a political landscape with no real care towards the general populace.
I am somewhat concerned by the misuse of this word (and in general the co-opting of various otherwords so that they only mean one thing, usually negative, when there arfe several and various meanings - tho as noted war only can be negative). By applying it to such causes as we work to ameliorate poverty, help people with addictions to drugs and its attendant crime, employ our resources to lessen the means and conditions that lead to criminals being able to operate orthe efforts to making terrorists understand that they cannot and will not effect any changes other than in their own living conditions through their acts confuses people into believing that there is an end. That someone will wave a white flag, surrender and life will get better. We can lessen the effects of these and other such but because humans are as they are, there will always be those who are struggling to rise above just eking out at mere survival; those who will seek to lose themselves and hopefully all of their cares & troubles in the addiction of their choice; those who will look to gain something that is not theirs thru the expedient of crime and terrorism...be it at an individual level as crime affects victims or larger populations thru the coordinated efforts of some to destroy.
I am done.
