This is written from a Canadian perspective. I cannot say to what extent the logic applies to other countries, but would be interested in opinions. Paul
Here we are! Here we are! Here we are again!
We’re fit and well and feeling as right as rain.
Never mind the weather, now we’re all together.
Hullo! Hullo! Here we are again.
(Song by Frederick Wheeler, 1915)
Here we are again. The Canadian Parliament has voted in favour of sending the air force to Iraq to wage war against the Islamic State. This will be the fifth war fought by Canada since the end of the Cold War: the Gulf War (1991); Kosovo (1999); Afghanistan (2001-2014); Libya (2011); and now Iraq (2014). Since a few Canadian servicemen and women were also involved in Operation Deliberate Force in Bosnia (1995) and the invasion of Iraq (2003), one could even make that seven wars. This is an extraordinary total for a country which enjoys almost complete safety from external attack.
Not even the Canadian government pretends that it’s going to…
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Honor Ethics 
Laurie Johnson said:
Thanks for this. About this situation I keep thinking that the most effective strategy might be purely defensive–keeping terrorists out of our countries using the best intelligence we have at our disposal and allowing the radical Islamic factions to destroy each other. That is probably what they are going to do anyway. Sun Tzu also said that the best way to win a war is to win without fighting. But the reason you will never hear talk about Sun Tzu or other realists, and you won’t hear about this option is that, while it might be more effective in the long run compared to what we’re doing, it is a policy that is very hard to be proud of. Can you imagine either Canada or the United States making that argument publicly? It wouldn’t fly because of our self-perception as good and honorable people. So I think both reasons mentioned in this article are at play in Canada or other Western countries deciding to join in the war.
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dan demetriou said:
Thanks, Paul. The author writes:
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“The problem with this is that strategy is about applying means to achieve ends, but if honour is your end, you achieve it the moment you start bombing. Just by turning up, you have proven that you are somebody who fights evil and deserves your allies’ respect. After that, what you bomb, when you bomb it, how you bomb it, and whether your bombing achieves anything or not, is neither here nor there.”
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Set aside whether fighting Isis is the right thing to do etc. I just don’t see why the author thinks the demands of honor are discharged merely by fighting. Even an honor skeptic should allow that honor adherents usually accept “in bello” constraints on warfare—i.e., constraints on who, how, and when you fight. Indeed, the in bello constraints of honor-driven warfare are the thing even critics of honor usually grudgingly admire. But maybe I’m missing something…
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Paul said:
The point is that if your objective in going to war is to prove to yourself and to others that you are the sort of guy who stands up to evil and stands by his allies, then you have achieved your objective the moment that you start fighting. In essence, fighting is the objective. This makes strategy, in the Clausewitzian sense of using battle to achieve some political object, redundant, and bad strategy is likely to result.
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