“in the real world, ‘international law’ which is not observed by all participants is a suicidal sham and a charade”
Easy to say in a country that forces its kids to memorize a nonsensical speech about government by the people, etc., perishing from the earth written when nothing whatsoever of the kind was at stake. I can see the argument for, say, China, France, and Russia during WWII. But somehow the US would’ve died had ot we deliberately targeted civilians, forcibly transferred populations, and executed soldiers for the crime of being on the losing side? Is that a serious assertion? You might as well argue Obama should have unlimited dictatorial powers in an emergency to “save capitalism from itself” on the off chance communist revolutionaries beat us to the punch. (Don’t scoff; respected intellectuals have argued the exact same thing for FDR.)
We haven’t been in an existential war since 1812, and even that wasn’t purely defensively as it was halfway a war of conquest on our part.
out of proportion to WHAT?
Well obviously Lincoln’s screed was lamenting the loss of what was trying to walk out on it. If such a land ends up occupying a phone booth, is that squat?
Granted, many of the territorial wars do not mean nearly as much in hindsight as they did “when.” It would have been far better if McCarthy’s folks had kept their stuff up than for the US to get into the Vietnam War. Because the war of memes in the end is what mattered the most.