Slashdot Mirror
The Iraq War, the Next War, and the Future of the Fat Man
An anonymous reader writes "The Stanford Law Review Online has just published an Essay by Yale's Stephen L. Carter entitled 'The Iraq War, the Next War, and the Future of the Fat Man.' He provides a retrospective on the War in Iraq and discusses the ethical and legal implications of the War on Terror and 'anticipatory self-defense' in the form of drones and targeted killings going forward. He writes: 'Iraq was war under the beta version of the Bush Doctrine. The newer model is represented by the slaying of Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen deemed a terror threat. The Obama Administration has ratcheted the use of remote drone attacks to unprecedented levels — the Bush Doctrine honed to rapier sharpness. The interesting question about the new model is one of ethics more than legality. Let us assume the principal ethical argument pressed in favor of drone warfare — to wit, that the reduction in civilian casualties and destruction of property means that the drone attack comports better than most other methods with the principle of discrimination. If this is so, then we might conclude that a just cause alone is sufficient to justify the attacks. ... But is what we are doing truly self-defense?'"
Why not spin off SlashPol now?
Dark Reflection
assassination by any name is just as illegal
so is torture and a war of aggression
It can be stretched to mean defense of any US interests abroad. How many military actions since WW2 have truly been about protecting the homeland from attack?
Were these ever about self-defense?
The Iraqis were NEVER going to attack us. The doctrine is a lie.
The Taliban / Pashtuns were NEVER going to attack us. The doctrine is a lie.
Al Qaeda was an is a huge threat and needs an asymmetric warfare response to its tactics.
Never forget that we adopted the Blitzkrieg and our modern army's systems from the Nazis all we needed to become the monster wee defeated was a president to fucking stupid to know that he was a fascist ( in the classical Mussolini definition ) and a people to complacent and stupid to know that we had been cooped from within.
I really hope to see the next war happened on american soil, with bomb falling everywhere and others country saying they attack the US to help them.
Try using that one in court...
Your honor, I shot my next door neighbour because I knew in a week's time he would start some shit.
There is no way this can be considered self-defense. Defense by definition is stopping an aggressor. This is executing people suspected of terrorism without trial.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
After all, they could grow up to be resentful teen agers that could vandalize my property. So I really had no choice but to slit their throats, chop them up into kibble and feed them to the hogs.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
I thought our Great Messiah (Obama) was going to bring peace around the world? What happened?
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
War gains power, profit, and political coin for those in charge and for their lackeys. The USA will have war without end, what voters want is irrelevant.
The americans will get a rude surprise the first time they try to use their new drone air force against another major world power.
Even Iran managed to capture one. You really think a first world nation can't jam the shit out of GPS and their comm links?
Let the yanks have their drones. It just makes them that much weaker, which honestly would be a good thing for the rest of the world, to eliminate their hegemony.
After all the hot air and general bullshit, at the end of the day, we, the human race, are sending flying guns into the air to indiscriminately, (yes, civilian deaths from drone attacks are plentiful and documented), kill people.
The world is insane, and no amount of bullshitting is going to change that.
You want to stop the madness? Then rather than building flying guns and giving them over to psychopathic leaders, try testing people for psychopathic tendencies and get rid of them before they ascend to power.
War, poverty and strife would come to an end.
Stuff that matters.
The morality is irrelevant. For the family of the "collateral damage" the US will be exactly the same as any other terrorist.
This kind of thinking will only result in MORE people thinking that terrorism is a legitimate way to combat terrorists. Guess what the result will be.
It is well that war is so terrible -- lest we should grow too fond of it.
Is anyone here naive enough to think that we haven't been targeting certain civialians overseas for years??? Does it really matter that it was a drone instead of a laser guided bomb or a sniper round??? This is a game that every government plays. The middle east and south america practically run their regimes with this method.
Nothing to see here, move along...
I did not read the article, but I love it how the original poster never mentioned casualties among the soldiers. It seems that their lives is simply not part of the equation for him. Are they dispensable ?
Is self defense. Any other ethics is plain not of this world.
Have you tried drugs? I hear drugs allow for extreme escapism.
If you don't want to read about the amazing things happening in the world today and the way technophiles and science geeks intersect with all of it, then you're in the wrong place.
Go hide elsewhere.
Could be a legitimate defense if you have evidence. Real or manufactured - keeping in vein with the article. ;)
Q. A fat man and a thin man are each hurtling down the cliff in your direction. If either one hits you, you die. However, you have a gun. What should you do?
A. Shoot the lawyer asking the question, twice.
And they worshipped the dragon which gave power unto the beast: and they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? who is able to make war with him?
And he doeth great wonders, so that he maketh fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men,
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Then the terrorists !!
Then the fat and especially ugly people !!
Then the skinny and especially ugly people !!
Then all republicans (we know they are all crooks) !!
Then all the democrats (we know they are all kommies) !!
Then everyone else !!
Ahh, finally, world peace !!
...that the reduction in civilian casualties and destruction of property means that the drone attack comports better than most other methods with the principle of discrimination.
relabel every corpse created as a "terrorist" or "enemy combatant," and bang! Less "civilian" casualties.
Winning the hearts and minds, one bullshit semantic after the next; the sad part? it fucking works.
What sheep we've become...
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
If it was one bullet, I would agree with you.
The problem is that we use rockets launched from drones. And those rockets take out an entire building when we are "targeting" one person.
The American occupation of Iraq was not a war. A war has two armies. A war threatens civilians on both sides. A war cannot be decided to be over on a particular date by one side. Please, stop referring to it a as war!
It is self offense maybe. It is not defense; as you said "those who WOULD kill you" so you are striking 1st and by definition that is not defense. If they declare war/intent then that is the beginning of an attack (although only formal) therefore you can take the defense. Yes, one could interpret "would" in other ways but we are in the context of modern insane geopolitics so that means "would" is purely presumptive and exaggerated or false.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
The question posed was whether it was really "self-defense." This is an important question because the UN Charter allows nation-states to take action in self-defense." Thus every tinpot dictator, power-mad army, or simply state that otherwise wants to use violence without the sanction of the security council--i.e. what would otherwise be an illegal war--claims that their attacks are motivated by self-defense.
So if the U.S. wants to be able to target people in drone strikes (or otherwise, e.g. Osama Bin Laden) in what would otherwise be illegal acts of war committed within the territory of a foreign nation with which we are not at war, we have to be able to justify it as self-defense. Otherwise, it's illegal. If it's illegal, nobody can stop it, but it still undermines the power of the United Nations to declare certain wars illegal--which makes it harder to respond to illegal wars in the future, easier for warmongers to justify aggressive wars, etc...
Of course, the flipside of that is that every time someone takes a warlike act, calls it self-defense, and gets away with it, that expands the boundaries of what "self-defense" means on the international stage.
At any rate, this whole debate is why the Security Council passed the resolution they did for the second Iraq war--it was deliberately ambiguous, so that the United States could claim the war was approved by the security council (and thus not illegal) and the other countries could claim that they had not approved the war; it was effectively a nominal nod to the power of the security council to decide which wars are legal.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
/-chan?
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
Follow the money, and it will become clear that behind the smoke and fog, government is a business designed for profit. The key difference between the business of government and a private business is (1) government takes their revenue by force, rather than persuasion, and (2) government doesn't claim profits, because they come under the radar through indirect channels.
There is no question that in the business of government, the more money one commands, the better positioned one is to leverage that cash flow for personal gain. Every last cent passing through their hands is leverage.
*kick*
How dare you attack my foot with your face??
Now I gotta defend myself!
*kick*
Who said it was a war? Isn't the troops in Iraq finishing up Operation something or another?
It's an operation; not a war!
Afghanistan is Operation Free.....or something or another and they're there to free those people from the Taliban, get Osama, and keep them from growing drugs. And we're doing all this with the blessings of the people on every side! Why the Pakistan people are just dancing in the streets that we're eradicating the Muslim Terrorist threat - heck, when we got rid of Osama in that Pakistani city, the locals were just outraged that we didn't do it sooner! Same goes for the government - Osama owed a lot of back taxes or something.
Our involvement over there was justified, necessary and has brought peace and safety to the region.
Got to go! Hannity is back from break.
IMHO, any preemptive military action is damned difficult to justify as self-defense.
However, I cannot agree with the stated argument that poses this question to start with:
From the summary:
Bush is blamed as the source in this essay, but he was just the most recent and blatant example since WWII.
Think about it...we can blame WWII on Pearl Harbor, but since winning that one, we started becoming more meddlesome globally.
Korean War(War on Communism)-we got run out
Vietnam War(War on Communism)-we got run out
Global(War on Drugs)-we are losing that one
Global(War on Terror)-we lost that one as soon as we declared it a 'War'
Not to mention Panama, but we did have one winning moment in the clusterfuck of Granada!
And we are continuing that decades old losing streak in the Middle East to this day.
Methinks there could be a pattern here.....
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
that way you will be sure that noone will try to attack you, in any future. Finally some reasonable use for all those nuclear warheads.
Okay, what military was it? Who's their Commander in Chief? Where is their version of the UCMJ published?
Or have you redefined "military target" to mean "apartment buildings"?
Here, why don't YOU define what is NOT a "military target" by YOUR "logic"?
No wonder this site is circling the bowl.
Funny, my grandfather used to say the same thing about the country too. His grandfather probably thought something similar. I've noticed that my parents are starting to have similar feelings recently. I'm sure in another 20 or 30 years I'll be saying the same. Though I hope we are all wrong.
*re-education session starts*
"Ignore the man behind the curtain."
"Do as I say, not as I do."
"Why are you un-American?"
*end session*
There, now you feel better!
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
For an example, read through some of the posts here.
There are people in the USofA who seem to WANT endless war.
As long as it is against someone far away and weak enough to never pose any real threat to them.
But send our military in? Hell yeah!
Kill people with drones? Fuck yeah!
Borrow money to do the above? Hell fucking yeah!
I spent seven months in Kandahar City as part of ISAF. I say this so you know that I have seen the ground truth, not just whatever story comes out of whatever news outlet you care to believe.
The Taliban were providing direct aid and sanctuary to the people who carries out the 9/11 attacks, and then refused to hand them over for prosecution - or indeed, to enforce any limits on their activities in any way. This makes that regime an active accessory to international terrorism and indeed a legitimate threat.
On top of that, I cannot imagine any group of people less suited to govern a nation than the Taliban. During my tour, a couple of Taliban chose to douse a group of Afghan schoolgirls with concentrated acid, killing some, and horribly disfiguring the others - for the crime of attending school. Not a Western-funded school; an Afghan-started, Afghan-operated school teaching girls to read. This sort of despicable and flatly inhuman act was Taliban policy. There is NOTHING good about the Taliban. They are bigoted narco-thugs who actively seek to erase any sign of civilization, law, and order in the attempt to eliminate opposition to their drug farming slavery campaigns. The Afghan campaign was, is, and remains a just war.
The crying shame of the Bush administration was that, instead of applying a full-court-press to Afghanistan following the initial defeat of the Taliban and seeing the country Marshall Planned back to some form of stability, they took their eyes off the ball to go adventuring in Iraq. This allowed the Taliban to re-invent themselves as an insurgency, rebuild, and become a destabilizing force that has slowed reconstruction to a crawl.
Although the world does not morn the passing of Saddam, Iraq was completely unjustified and the diversion of resources away from Afghanistan is, as far as I'm concerned, criminal. Afghanistan is NOT Iraq.
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
The big question is what will happen when the shoe is on the other foot? When another country decides that one of our citizens is a threat, do they have the right to level their home with a drone or cruise missile? If the neighbours get wiped out in the process, are they just collateral damage?
The situation in Iran and North Korea have been made much worse by the war in Iraq(and Libya as well). The Ahmadinejad government would not be NEARLY as willing to risk their domestic standing(which is getting worse as the oil embargo hits, as the government often buys popularity with oil revenues) if it thought there wasn't a lot to gain by pursuing nuclear weapons. However, after seeing what happened in Iraq when Saddam DID give up his WMDs, and what happened with North Korea after they tested a nuclear weapon, the regime realizes that the best way to protect itself was to pursue WMDs at all costs.
Bush picked Iraq out of his "axis of evil" precisely because they were the country that was least able to defend itself(at least in a conventional sense). He wanted to score a cheap political victory and he did so by starting a war he thought would maybe last 6 weeks. And more recently Gadafi, who ditched his WMD program, is now dead as well. The message to dictators is clear, want to stay in power? Get weapons. THe world is a far more dangerous place because the man-child of a president decided he wanted to play army.
Monstar L
A doctrine of pre-emptive strike allows anyone to do anything to anyone at any time. All you need is to instill some fear and get away (quite literally) with murder.
I've got lots of problems with the way Obama has continued Constitutional violations, but using drones has nothing to do with the Bush Doctrine. In fact, they're probably a better options for both sides since we don't have to deploy scout teams to get the localized, loitering recon that we used to. The smart bet has always been to go covert when it comes to dealing with terrorism. You can't declare war on 100 religious zealots hiding in the desert.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
I will go with a different interpretation. Although very similar to the "lying" option.
I'll say that they were "blustering" and "posturing" against a subject that the vast majority of voters would say was "not good".
My pessimistic point of view is that those people were doing so in an attempt to distract the public from other events (said events being less favourable to the person blustering) or to make themselves look as tough as their political opponents at the time.
More blustering and posturing. This time on Saddam's part.
I disagree with that. I still think it was the posturing and blustering that so many politicians involve themselves in.
The REAL question is whether the people making those statements were willing to take the political risk of committing the USofA's military.
Talk is cheap.
Soldiers coming home in boxes is very expensive.
I will disagree with that as well.
There were worldwide protests AGAINST our invasion.
The protests were so bad that almost none of our allies going into Afghanistan joined us in our Iraq invasion.
We sent 150,000 troops.
England sent 46,000 troops.
Australia sent 2,000 troops.
Everyone else sent a total of under 2,000 troops.
Talk is cheap.
Dead troops are expensive.
No one else believed the talk enough to risk the political expense of dead troops.
No. It was pretty clear at the time. As evidenced by all those countries that did NOT participate. Even though Iraq is a LOT closer to them (and would have an easier time striking them) than the USofA.
Is everyone honestly that upset that a scientist who specialized in the trigger mechanism for nuclear weapons working for a nation led by a holocaust denier was assassinated?
Moral cowardice. That's all this is. Nobody wants to imagine what could happen if Iran nukes Israel, so they're focusing in on something comprehensibly small. Killing this man may delay the development of a nuclear weapon by Iran, which may in tern save millions of lives.
I will not lose a moment of sleep if all of Iran's nuclear scientists are murdered. The alternative is worse.
oh nooos where i get my cash to pay fer anything....
I've quite possibly been around here longer than you have. Know what I think is screwing up this site?
People who continually insist that everyone else adopt their narrow-minded view that technology exists in some sort of social/ethical vacuum.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
We don't think to oppose the pursuit of criminals by our police. That's effectively what has happened to the terrorists. This is made much easier with the drone war because we don't take the same sort of causalities. We just play whack-o-mole with the terrorists. And assuming we can manage the politics, we can logistically sustain the campaign indefinitely.
I'm not saying we should or shouldn't. I think he's right in saying that if we don't oppose it soon it will just become an institution like the drug war. This thing that sits there and we do but we don't actually think about it. It just happens. It has it's own momentum, budget, and everyone just expects it to keep rolling along for various reasons forever.
It's possibly too late to stop it already. The CIA has built it into their budget and that is one of the harder budgets to penetrate.
I'm torn... I don't want to fight anyone or kill anyone. But of course I recognize that if people are going out of their way to kill me or people I care for then they must themselves be engaged and destroyed. The whole fat man thin man situation is somewhat confusing in that we're not really dealing with any fat men. It's all thin men... lots of them. It's a very target rich environment. And we're capable of icing them with a high degree of efficiency. But then there's blow back, reprisal, revenge... it just this endless struggle to balance an enemy's fear and hatred. I don't want to be hated. But I do want to be feared if only because I think it will make me safer.
Fear might not be the right term. Respect would be a better term. And i don't mean respect as in liked or admired. I mean respect in the same way you respect a tidal wave, the sun, or a mountain. You don't mess with these forces. They will break you if you don't respect them. That's how I want my nation regarded. Like the mountain, I don't have any ill will against anyone else on the planet. But don't mess with my people or I'm going to find a reason for you to change your mind. Lets just not go there. Everyone go to their little corners and swear peace. First bastard that breaks the peace gets pounded into the ground like a tent peg.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Anyone got any suggestions, since I know this is not going to get better?
How about, "Don't let the door hit your ass on your way out"?
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
But the question is why were the rest of our NATO allies so conspicuously absent?
If everyone (at the time) "knew" what a "threat" Saddam was.
My position is that the politicians who claimed to "know" were making those statements for political reasons (at the time they made them) and had zero intent of acting on them.
And the other politicians of the world also knew that those statements were self-serving political posturing which is why so few of them committed their troops to the invasion.
"But is what we are doing truly self-defense?'"
Hard to say, you would first have to agree that the jihadist were/are a real threat to start with, since American policy is tied to Israel it seems we have created a self feeding loop, Israel wants security but has inflamed tensions in the ME with land grabs and generally dysfunctional dealings with Palestine/Iran, we need ME oil but also are required to support Israel (at least from a political perspective), the ME wants American money for their oil but also has no fondness for Israel, the resulting "wars" generate huge profit for arms dealers and the American military-industrial complex.
So I don't see it as "self defense" but rather business as usual grown from years of strife and hatred with all the usual suspects (Arms Dealers, Despots, etc) profiting along the way.
Consider that al Qaeda has been marginalized on the battle field and is struggling to remain relevant ideologically, and you see the focus has shifted to grassroots efforts of orbital jihadist groups no longer truly aligned with al Qaeda but allies none the less, now consider what fuels these groups, how the grow their "brand" as it were, by pointing out the Israel/American connection and our use of high-tech weaponry against them, every time a drone takes out a wedding party (1 example) or an Apache chopper shoots up children the grassroots jihadist get a surge in membership.
Every violent act on our part is an addition to their propaganda machine.
It's a complex circle jerk, I see answers but none that will ever get taken seriously, for example drop the price of oil to $25 a barrel and Iran can no longer fund their atomic agenda, in addition moderating Israeli influence in the US government and allowing them to stand on their own with out "Big Brother USA" would create a paradigm shift in their behavior towards their neighbors and free us of the majority of our security concerns.
Neither of these methods will ever be taken seriously and business will continue "as usual" meaning grassroots terror cells will always be a low level threat to the USA and will allow the continuation of stripping our rights and dismantling our Constitution, and "The Powers That Be" wouldn't have it any other way, they now have the perfect formula for eternal war and the resulting profits made by war.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Last time I checked, The Fat Man[1] makes music, not war.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Sanger_%28musician%29
But is what we are doing truly self-defense?
To answer that question just ask yourself how people in this country would react if some other country started defending themselves in the U.S. the same way.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
How would US foreign policy change with a nuclear attack in Boston ?
Perceived threats would be addressed through aggressive force. Finally the Qu'ran is banned as a wicked work and tossed into fire pits around the world.
So as long as someone is a "known combatant" ... any strikes that include (or possibly include) him are okay by you?
And since you are a reasonable person, that must mean that anyone striking at any of OUR people who would be a "known combatant" is NOT a terrorist.
Even if such a strike killed lots of civilians ... ...
In a civilian situation
Say, like the WTC attack. You claim that it was NOT terrorism.
Interesting point of view you have there.
I think the Menendez borthers used that excuse, successfully at their first trial.
Yeah, the Taliban really sucks. It's always sucked. Sucked really bad.
Which reminds me of a funny story about them.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/west_asia/37021.stm
Seems that in 1997, they were visiting oil company friends in Texas while Bush was governor. Discussing building a gas pipeline with USofA help/funding.
Unless there is a profit to be made. Then they're friends of ours.
It's not self-defense unless HE'S COMING RIGHT AT US!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
For those who are historically unaware, the doctrine of anticipatory self-defense was NOT originated by the U.S. In fact, the U.S. was on the receiving end of the attack by the British known as "The Caroline incident" that established anticipatory self defense as a part of international law. U.S. Secretary of State Daniel Webster eventually agreed that nations must have a right to take pre-emptive strikes in the event that "necessity of that self-defence is instant, overwhelming, and leaving no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation".
This is "the Caroline test" used to establish the validity of such strikes under international law, and it's not a trivial standard, as you suppose - simply claiming a need for self-defense is a far cry from satisfying the Caroline test. While this arguably supports actions such as an Israeli bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities, it clearly would not support actions such as those Obama took in his recent attacks on Libya. Without a credible threat, it's pretty hard to reach the bar set by the Caroline test...
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
So, the Obama Administration is using unmanned drones instead of expensive manned jets loaded with bombs to take out people they consider a threat. I must admit that that's change I can believe in!
Good, inexpensive web hosting
There is NOTHING good about the Taliban. They are bigoted narco-thugs who actively seek to erase any sign of civilization, law, and order in the attempt to eliminate opposition to their drug farming slavery campaigns.
I was under the impression that the Taliban stamped out narcotics farming in Afghanistan, whereas the U.S. military has completely ignored Afghan poppy farmers.
I'm sure the taliban are/were assholes, but they certainly were not "narco-thugs".
The return of poppy farming to Afghanistan probably has something to do with the plutocracy's need to profit from the drug trade.
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
The word "WMD" is the only WMD I have seen in my lifetime so far
blah blah blah....America sucks and is evil...blah...blah...blah...Poor every other nation....blah...blah.blah...some more moral equivalence...AND..... SCENE.
Not quite sure why I bothered to read the comments of this article when I already knew what would be here...maybe /.ers are right, Americans are dumb.
funny how you all call them terrorists, loads of them have been patriots who became sick of invaders destroying their country. you (not only america) sit on your save fat asses fearing a few inbreed camel herders with ak47s in 3rd world countries. there was no fat man rolling down in irak until america tripped him.
How many military actions since WW2 have truly been about protecting the homeland from attack?
0.
Hello,
You can argue that precision drone strikes are immoral, but you can't call it terrorism as people commonly use the word.
"Terrorism" is an unfocused attack on people indirectly connected to the grievance. The goal is to instill fear of random mayhem in a populace. Precision drone strikes are more like assassination.
I just WISH "terrorists" would target more carefully. It'd be nice to see people who are at best indirectly responsible for whatever grievance (and who are often entirely innocent) left out of the fight.
--PM
Iraq War was a "thin man"? I think the term you where looking for was a "genocidal capitalist-imperialist murder rampage in order to create new markets". They don't teach the word imperialism at Standford Law?
FTA: probability p that the man we are targeting is the man we are looking for; and other intelligence tells us that there is probability q
My initial reaction was: whoa! so I guess they found something useful after taking all those marketing intelligence classes at the local MBA school.
You of all people should be able to recognize that my post's aim was to satirize the original poster's flamebait-loaded, hatespeech-filled post, by comparing his ideas to those of a serial killer nut-job.
And yes, suggesting murder of someone just because they pronounce their adherence to an idea IS motherfucking insane.
AND people making such suggestions should be if not closely watched at all times, then at least examined by trained professionals, both medical and by those in law enforcement.
Cause, you never know. He may be in the process of making room in the crawl space of his house.
TLDR: I was joking about him being much like psycho serial killer.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
But is what we are doing truly self-defense?
The United States doesn't even know the meaning of "self-defense".
They never in the course of history had to learn it.
[SHOW SOME LENIENCY TOWARDS