1/10/2006

Overanalysis of Simplistic Yet Telling One-Liner

"If a war is worth killing over, it should be worth lying over."

Discuss.

2 comments:

Mike Maller said...

I'll take a shot.

Our basic groundwork consists of two undesirable actions: killing and lying.

The object at stake is the war itself, or so it is stated. I was going to go into more detail on the thought of the previous (very short) paragraph, but this struck me as being more important. We do not war for the sake of War. Fighting on a large scale is just too much trouble. There are armies amass and keep amassed, and populations to rally. There are great screwings with the national economy. Foreign policy is shaken up, and in a real and immediate way, things you have are endangered. No country or multinational entity (an idea this new age brings back to the fore) fights just to fight.

The use of the word "war" in the line, is, at best, ill-thought out, and at worst lacking in insight.

Mastiff said...

I'll grant you that "war" is not the object.

Perhaps the sentence should be reworded as "If something is worth going to war (i.e. killing people) over, it's worth lying over."