The dumbest of human endeavors. The whole concept is stupid but survival instinct drives us to wage war against those we percieve to be determined to destroy us.

If my house were surrounded by beasts determined to eat me, I would first choose to try to scare them off and finally ignore them in the hope they would go away. If they did not go away, I would try to kill as many as I could from the safety of my home. It is safe to assume that being well armed I would finally succeed. My choice would then be whether or not to pursue them and destroy them. My natural inclination would be to figure they learned their lesson and would not return.

This would probably work unless for some reason my comfort depended on something they had in their domain. If it did I would be willing to sacrifice a measure of comfort to avoid conflict. I would certainly not take the option of destroying them in a way that would also destroy the resource, since that would make no sense whatever. I would be confident that sooner or later they would kill each other off or evolve into a more reasonable beast.

If I could choose that would be my choice for international policy. I would trade with trusted friends and totally shun those who want to destroy us. I would suffer whatever inconvenience to deny them our market.

I have been reading some books on war and the common theme is the futility based on different value systems. One of those books is the pretty bad anti-war novel Armor by John Steakley. The story is pap but the premise is an interstellar war with antlike insects that attacked earth first. The long war on their home planet describes the futility of fighting an enemy that shares none of our values. The enemy has no regard for life, does not understand punishment and may not even know why they attacked us to begin with.

Why continue to squander resources against a formidable enemy that is intelligent only in a totally incomprehensible way and might never trouble us again. The implication is they could be quarantined without total war. I would quarantine the Middle East in that way. I would shut our borders to them with full confidence that the ROW would follow suit in due time or the ROW would bring them around on their dime.

Diversity is great as long as it is the diversity of common goals and values. Those who do not value life, truth and honor can go to hell as far as I am concerned.

I reserve the personal right to sort them out as I see fit as long as the sorting serves my survival and does not require their destruction.