[symple]

War is the ultimate act of overt violence. Discounting examples from war is strange. What does it matter to the victims if a piece of paper somewhere declares it a war?

I can’t point to a single act that satisfies your criteria. The U.S. does not wage peacetime violence in the same way that terrorist groups do. We prefer to do the damage over time. We prefer to avoid headline capturing violence. But the victims don’t care and the point I made is not diminished by this. Our reaction to 9/11 was an overreaction. Lots of places have been devastated by U.S. actions and those people haven’t had similar overreactions.

2000 people weren’t killed in a single day in Nicaragua in the 80s. We did it over time and in a sustained way. The Nicaraguans don’t obsess about how this changed the whole world or desire to go on a 20 year killing spree in reaction to what we did.

[ethanbond]

It doesn't matter to the victims but it does matter to the frameworks used to make decisions going forward. If your argument here is, "wouldn't it be nice if there were no war?" Sure would!

[symple]

Our reaction to 9/11 was an overreaction. Lots of places have been devastated by U.S. actions and those people haven’t had similar overreactions.