I Say “Preventative,”
You Say “Precipitive;” Let’s Call the Whole Thing…?
or
When Does Anticipation
Become Instigation?
A just fear of an imminent danger, though
there be no blow given, is a lawful cause of war.
-Francis Bacon, “Of Empire” Essays
(1625)
Introduction
It’s easy to lose scope in the midst of a war. From within, a conflict
can seem interminable. Michael Walzer, seeking to re-establish
perspective, notes, “War is only a temporary rupture in international society
and it is a recurrent rupture. For both these reasons, it ought never to
be a total rupture.” Over the millennia, disputants who’ve sensed the
advantages of the limits that are rules have refined guidelines which we’ve
come to know as the Just War Tradition. These refraints aim at making war
slowest to come, mildest in character, quickest to end and slowest to
return. Because after all the killing is done, we still have to live with
one another.
One of the counsels to keep arms’ arrival at arm’s length is to be long suffering;
not to fight ‘just because,’ but only when there be just cause. Common
wisdom is that a just cause exists when an opponent has already - or is on the
verge of - committing a transgression which can only be answered - or
interrupted with - resort to force. The latter situation is the focus of
pre-emption.
It’s a good rule of thumb to be slow to take insult, loth to see assault in the
offing, because an abundance of anticipation tends to spill over into
instigation, and then not only is the feared situation at hand, but by our own
hand. The erring presumption of violence
precipitates inadvisable wading into a Rubicon which swift, confusing current
steals footing and threatens our advancement toward some hoped far shore, as
well as blocking return to the relative solidity of the diplomatic road too
recently abandoned.
However there’s also prudence in acting earlier rather than later, checking an
opponent’s movements before their designs gain time’s gift of overwhelming
momentum. Occasions when this counsel has been sacrificed bolster the
cynicism that ‘nice guys finish last.’ The
moral high road has not always proven to be the road to success.
In short, the various goals of the Just War Tradition don’t always compliment
each other. Arriving later, conflict may enter ravenous and be hard
persuaded to leave. Conversely, in hopes of keeping it mild we might have
to invite it sooner. Minimizing war doesn’t occur through maximizing any
of its individual aims, but optimizing them in tandem; artfully juggling (in
the case of pre-emption) just cause, proportionality of ends and reasonable
hope of success.
The example which looms largest in my mind is
As is often said, timing is everything. The pre-emptor, painfully aware that
“a stitch in time saves nine”1 but also that anxious measures
squander treasure, sits on the fence between dragging his heels and rushing in
headlong. Not so much wanting to throw the first punch as just wanting to
avoid receiving it, they’re left wondering how far forward-leaning we can be
without falling on our faces. At what point do we cross the fine line
between anticipating a conflict at the hands of another and instigating it by
our own?
Proponents of pre-emption hold that we can, in good conscience, lean so far as
to throw (perhaps even land) a blow of our own before an opponent has landed
(perhaps even thrown) one of theirs. This paper is an exploration and
espousal of that opinion.
The Argument Against Pre-Emption
A monument to William Tecumseh Sherman in view of the White House portico echoes
Hugo Grotius when it instructs, “War’s legitimate object is more perfect
peace.” In the sculptor’s use of ‘legitimate’ I read ‘moral.’ Pope
Pius XII further noted, ‘Justice is the servant of Peace.’2
Justice personified holds aloft a set of scales. The symbolism of that
instrument is rich. While they don’t literally bring peace, what they do
effect is synonymous; a state of balance, equanimity, which is visible for all
to see, no matter where they stand.
The scales, as initially cast, are empty and at equipoise. An injustice
is one’s removal of or heaping on of a tipping weight, driving another to seek
recompense for diminished or encumbered station. (Any second, answering
act, if in kind and quantity, has the potential to be balancing.3
Accordingly, the self-congratulation of those who would be morality’s champions
is never, “We’re Number One!” but always, “We’re Number Two!”)
Aggression is such an imbalancing act – the unprovoked attempt to deprive
others of freedom, of behavior or thought, by the threat or the taking of blood
or treasure.
Keying in on the term “unprovoked” in that description brings to mind the
concept of first use of force. By its primacy in the material matters of
war, first use of force appears as doppelganger to aggression.
And, as pre-emption champions that first use of force, it falls under the pall
of suspected injustice.
A simple argument provides few fronts to attack, and such is the case here.
As definitions, the first two premises are couched conservatively enough to
avoid argument. The third, product of the two, inherits their
strength. The sixth claim is equally unassailable, since pre-emption
simply does, in fact, commit one to first use of force.
If the argument has any Achilles’ heels, then, the candidates are claims four
and five. As number four, if proven false, promises greatest impact
(eliminating five as an inference) it gets the nod.
Is first use of force synonymous with aggression, equally guilty as an inherently
provoking practice? Complicating the question, as matters of opposition
involve multiple parties, there are at least two first uses of force which must
be measured against aggression’s standard.
A world of difference separates the aims of the agonizing, reluctant fearful
from those of slavering, would-be conquerors. But while pre-emption isn’t
the bald-faced aggression the architects of the just war tradition surely had
central in their sights when they framed the prohibition of first use of force,
it doesn’t fall far enough from that tree to avoid condemnation by
association. While its intent isn’t to commit injustice but to avoid it,
not to perpetrate some theft but to prevent one, the chronological compression
of activity which comes with pre-emption has two people’s opposing behaviors
tripping over each other in a race to each be the first expressed and squeezes
the two so tightly together in a moment as if to render them judicially
indistinct.
In the potentially fast-paced unfolding of an aggressive act, unraveling the “action-reaction-threeaction…”
snarl to determine where guilt lies and who it lies with requires us to
chronicle the life cycle of an aggression, drawing out that action and slowing
it down in hopes of capturing, frame by frame, what in experience is only a
blur of motion. Only by doing so can we hope to discern the various
stages in the evolution of an offense and assess the truth of the suspect claim
that aggression-the-unjust first takes the stage at the sponsoring hand of force.
Lifecycle of an Aggression
By my reckoning, there are five successive steps which populate the path to
aggression. At its near end, the timeline which terminates in enmity’s
concrete expression begins with enmity’s opposite (affinity) or, at the least,
its absence (indifference). At this first stage, an other’s
feelings run the gamut from concern for our well-being to apathy, neither
positive nor negative; being cognizant of another’s situation but not regardful
of it.
From there an other’s state proceeds to the forming of an ill will.
This isn’t to be taken as an inclination or likelihood by the ill-willing to go
out of their way to harm another, but at the same time, in the event
they see another in trouble, there’s disinclination to go out of their way to help.
At this stage, the ill-willing don’t seek, aid, or even necessarily act to
remove themselves from the path of another’s misfortune, but that’s not to say
they wouldn’t delight in it should it come.
Next is the forming of an ill intent. Arriving at this point marks
the transition from a desire to see another adversely affected into
desire to be the effecting agent. And not simply a desire, but an
inclination to that end; the nascent swells of an impetus, forming a will to
bring it into being.
After that comes the throwing of the blow, the conversion of mental
energies into physical ones. If intention is engine, this stage is
transmission, gifting outwardly observable animation to what, prior, was in
doubt if not indiscernible.
Full fruition comes with the landing of the blow, the culmination in
expression of what was, up to this point, always still merely inchoate.
Those are the five time frames in the descent from being regarded least to
being least regarded. The final four, representing steps down from the
status quo, can be expressed with a shorthand slang of, “You’ve made me angry,”
“I’m going to hit you,” “Here it comes…” and “…there it is.”
Each a stepping stone in an ever-degenerating situation elicits status
quo-seeking behaviors by a second party. The term “counter,” rather than
“response” or “reaction” is used to describe these, because those carry
connotations of precedent physical occurrences which beg the issue.
Further, the names of these counters have been appropriated from the language
of jurisprudence out of a belief that moral war - in its essence the opposing
of bad behaviors by actors on the global stage - is “merely” an agent of
jurisprudence writ large.
The first of these counters is “habilitation.” At its most, it
consists of efforts to develop fellow-feeling in another, a fostering of mutual
good will. At its least, it aims at gaining sufficient familiarity to
minimize misunderstanding and establish credible assurances of
non-interferences by us, in exchange for equal consideration from others.
I take habilitation to properly come into play at the point another has
achieved, at the least, indifference, and lose efficacy at the point ill-intent
has formed.4 It isn’t viable prior to indifference, because,
as this two dimensional layout is of a cycle of aggression,
apathy-indifference will be preceded by the rift which brought us to blows, and
attempting the quiet work of habilitation while still enmired in the heat of
exchange or sought recompense would be premature.
Conversely, it has no place after ill-intent arises, because at the point an
other has set the goal of hitting you, the time for keeping them from entering
a frame to nurture that notion is past. As example, there’s risk in
holding out your hand to a growling dog. And, insofar as there’s little
percentage in extending it to one who is already barking, habilitation may even
be past the point of any utility by the time another has formed an ill will.
Next in the series, “deterrence” consists of efforts to dissuade an
other from developing the impetus for action, from nursing a general discontent
into a specific opposition. Initially, it strives to keep others from
forming an inclination to do us harm. Failing that, it seeks to
motivate them (positively or negatively) to not act on the inclination.
At the earliest, deterrence comes into its own at the point an ill-will is
formed. It would be out of place before that time, because before that
point there’s nothing tangible to be turned from, nothing even potentially
opposing to be opposed.
It may even be premature up until the point an ill intent is formed. In
the absence of dark inclinations, encouragements not to develop any might be
viewed as veiled threats and have unintended consequence of spurring an other
from dormancy to action.
At the point a blow is thrown, deterrence’s usable life expires. Once an
other is engaged in action, encouragements not to become moot. There
would be limited utility, for instance, in phoning the Russian Premier and
informing him there will be consequences for his actions, when his ICBMs are
ten minutes into their polar flight.
The successor to deterrence is “incapacitation.” Whereas the work
of deterrence is to dispel an other’s desire to harm, incapacitation seeks to
remove their ability to do so. Either counter, if effective, will ease a
situation, since neither desire nor ability by itself constitutes a
threat. But incapacitation, being the more invasive conduct, is held in
reserve.
As perhaps emulated by deterrence, incapacitation has no place before an
other’s ill intent exists. Summarily removing an other’s means to aggress
is likely to foster their desire to do so, no matter the will they bore us
previously. Surely fear of the threat from the fifth column, in the wake
of
At the other extreme, a blow landed is the definitive pronouncement of
incapacitation failed. Tackling the running back once they’ve entered the
end zone merely demonstrates one’s frustration at that.
It’s not even likely incapacitation has utility once a blow has been thrown.
That’s closing the barn door after the horse is out. Consider taking away
someone’s ability to throw a rock at you after one has left their hand.
In the event it fails to find its mark, you might still have opportunity to
remove their ability to repeat the process, but as for the missile in
flight, that opportunity’s flown.
Where incapacitation fails to check an unfolding occurrence, “deflection”
is looked to. At the point one is already being struck at, last best
thing is to not have any of the attempts strike home. Least desirable
position, the last resorted to in hopes of frustrating a foe’s ultimate aim, it
does nothing to diminish their drive or capacity to act.
Deflection must wait for a blow to be thrown to find purpose. If, for
instance, one anticipates a punch and begins a counter too soon, at the moment
the fist arrives the blocking arm is past the point of negating it.
Hesitation, though, is equally hazardous. Only in cartoons is it humorous
to watch Wile E. Coyote’s parachute deploy seconds after he impact the bottom
of a ravine.
If deflection is unsuccessful, the only remaining recourse is “punishment;”
repayment of, or, more accurately, exacting of payment for that which has been
taken in the commission of an aggression; recompense.
To say punishment is the only recourse after a blow is landed isn’t to say our
only recourse to it is at that time. Again, couched in broad terms to
avoid defining the issue out of existence, punishment is applicable anytime
after an unprovoked offense has occurred. Certainly after an antagonist’s
blow has landed and the greatest possible evidence of an aggression is
available. Less obviously but no less surely, at the point that blow has
been thrown. And, if intent has the power of prescience, at the point one
of those has been birthed.
The point where an intent to aggress is formed is a watershed of sorts.
The counters which precede, it, habilitation and deterrence, have the potential
to be accomplished with just a look, a word. They’re not yet the matters
of arms which constitute force. But all counters beyond that point
are. As such, they’re the true focus and deserve amplification.
To distinguish them, deflection, occurring in the process of another’s
aggression becoming manifest, aims at nullification, freezing the
offense in configuration. Punishment, at least that occurring in the
post-impact phase, if matching in kind and quantity, constitutes retribution.5 Incapacitation,
if occurring in the time frame indicated, before another’s first use of force,
is pre-emption.
All parties’ possible first uses of force are now laid out for viewing, and the
heart of the frustration is made graphically clear. What leaves
pre-emption an itch we can’t easily scratch is our tendency to view behavior as
bifurcated, an indivisible marriage of intention and action. But if this
whole dissection of an aggression is accurate, that union’s been riven by
incapacitation, which has firmly entrenched itself between the alpha and omega
of another’s behavior, carving out Time Frame C. Given the limits of an
otherwise adequate nomenclature, by which everything is neatly tagged “before”
or “after,” this “trans” phenomenon defies easy classification. Like
electromagnetic energy in the realm of physics, which plays the field between
the otherwise mutually-exclusive categories of particle and wave, a cautious
reading must treat pre-emption likewise; as occurring both after action
of another (is begun) and before (it is done).
That complexity’s captured by the two action counters that are at play in this
timeframe, incapacitation and punishment, pointing, as they do, in opposite
directions.
Like its predecessors habilitation and deterrence and its successor deflection,
incapacitation is forward-looking, aimed at preventing justice’s scales from
leaving their level orientation at another’s hand.
Punishment, in contrast, is backward-looking, responding to another’s previous
offense, working to return the scales to level once they’ve been thrown out of
kilter.6
Between them, they offer two ways to explain (and possibly exhonerate)
pre-emption.
At this point a return to discussion of justice will be helpful. Its
scales were used to broach the argument against pre-emption. They also
serve to introduce the counters to those arguments.
There are two ways to enjoy balance in our collective behaviors. One is
to return the scales to a level condition once they’ve been tipped, by return
of what was taken or removal of the thing heaped on.7 The other
is to prevent the scales from being upset in the first place, by denying the
person who is seeking to relieve us of something or impress something upon us
the opportunity to do so.
The detractor’s claim that first use of force is an instance of aggression,
imbalancing injustice, is a claim that it can’t serve in either of these
capacities, as a leveling influence to right the scales of justice in any
way. In essence, the opponent of pre-emption is denying the viability of
punishment or incapacitation within Timeframe C, presumably arguing that, at
the least, they should both be advanced one frame to the right.
Answering those criticisms comprises the counter-argument in defense of
pre-emption.
The Argument from Principle
Why claim that pre-emptive use of force can’t serve as an agent of
punishment? Because as mentioned earlier, proportionate punishment,
retaliation, is the seeking of replacement, in kind and quantity, for that
which has been that taken, or removal of what has been piled on.
However when we try to shoehorn retaliation into Timeframe C, it seems
oversized by half, given that the offense being repaid hasn’t fully
occurred. Punishment in full is premature and, worse still, to some
degree speculative. Pre-emption brings war’s first fog.
To give that criticism its due, retaliation in Timeframe C is only promissorily
so, pre-payment for what is coming rather than repayment for what has occurred,
putting the pre-emptor on tenuous ground. What guarantees that
promissory note, assuring us, in the time before another’s intent has been made
manifest by outwardly visible signs, that attack truly is on the horizon?
What makes its imminence eminent?
If anything, the belief that an intent to aggress, at the point it’s drafted,
before displayed, will mature into an expression of aggression, that intents
are pregnant things and will ultimately birth acts. Such is the force of will,
which behavior-the-bifurcated enjoys before it assumes the force of physics.
And while Sir Isaac Newton crafted his first law of mechanics in the context of
physics, it has equal application in all discussions of force, the concrete and
intangible alike. The tendency of bodies (and intents) in motion is to
maintain a straight-line path. The tendency of intentions is to put
bodies in motion. Inclination to act, in the absence of any opposing
force, will come to fruition, and the intent to strike, barring any
blockage, is a foregone contusion.8 That conviction gains
momentum as another’s aggression looms ever larger.
As evidence of this thread running throughout a behavior, take an example from
domestic criminal law - murder. Soliciting, attempting, and committing it
are all crimes. The mere asking of another to murder a third party is an
offense. The apparatus for punishment,
acknowledging the subtle sublimation over time of a behavior, operates on a
graduated scale, building over the three time frames in which (I claim) it is a
viable counter, with solicitation being a lesser crime than attempted murder,
and an attempt less heinous than a completed homicide.9
Sadly, we do have to concede that, no matter how high the probabilities are
piled up, the argument from principle will always be, at best, an inductive
one. The phrase “it’s likely things would have been this
way,” no matter how loudly uttered, will never carry the finality of a
deduction’s quiet “it’s impossible they could have been otherwise”.
It’s a frustrating limitation. By their action, the pre-emptor consigns anticipated
events to the scrap heap of counterfactuals, erasing another’s pending
footprints with their own, the evidence which otherwise would have exhonerated
their actions. Having inverted the one-way flow of time’s traffic by
putting effect before cause, the punishment they suffer is inversion of the
principle of innocent until proven guilty, such that they will ever bear the
burden of proof. Until some deus ex machina such as Tom Cruise enjoyed in
Minority Report finds its way into our hands, an ability to fashion windows in
the door to the future, the case for pre-emption will always reside in the
shadow of that doubt.
The Argument from Practice
Why the claim that first use of force can’t serve to prevent pending
harms? Again, it’s a question of timing. Opponents of pre-emption
can agree with its advocates that prevention doesn’t gain purpose until
another’s aggressive intention comes to light, but the skeptic of justified
first force holds that until first physical steps to give the action form have
been taken, intent doesn’t exist, or, what’s the same thing for every second
party, for the purpose of setting a course of action, every third one for the
purpose of adjudicating, can’t be proven to exist.
While there’s little harm in bringing the inevitable early, the pre-emptor
makes real what was in no way foregone. Rather than mitigating, perhaps
preventing something already in progress, they precipitate what hadn’t yet and
wouldn’t necessarily have begun.
The temptation to focus on behavior’s physical expression is
understandable. The heart of morality, intention, residing in the
inscrutable heart of others, leaves us wanting something tangible, unequivocal,
to point to. The most defensible position for those who would prosecute,
be exonerated, or be exonerated in prosecuting, is to point to acts as the manifestations
of intentions. The circumstantial case that alone can be built is
strongest when some body of evidence can be presented. The inverse of the
writ of habeas corpus is at work here. Without the presence of a body (of
other’s prior aggression) the pre-empting defendant isn’t easily acquitted.
There’s no tidy Socratic argument to dispatch that criticism, only observation
that sometimes in the time before another tips their hand, our instincts,
hopefully our best ones, tell us events are already in motion and our options
have dwindled to the point that what happens to is no longer negotiable,
only when.
While we praise the blindness of justice, we lament our own. So we do our
best and hope we’ve read all – and read correctly – the few signs available,
and come to the same conclusion that all others, in their best moments and with
the added reflection of remove they enjoy, would have.
And we try to avoid the temptation to let the future adjudicate the present, to
Monday-morning quarterback the calls made by the referee who, at the time,
wasn’t privy to the instant replay and the locker room disclosures of all the
players. Much as it galls our thirst for certainty, pre-emption is
properly (and proper) in the eye of the reasonable deliberator, not the
omniscient one.
So arguments against pre-emption have been made, and hopefully answered.
The critic’s contention is that first use of force cannot serve in a justifying
capacity, either to mend or forfend another’s rents in the fabric of society.
Their ultimate position requires they establish both claims.
I maintain pre-emption can serve in both capacities, and my stance requires I
succeed by half. If one or the other of the counter-arguments is
persuasive, the remainder of the critic’s assertions fall like dominoes.
First use of force, either to punish or prevent aggression, perhaps both, is
justified. And, as pre-emption is in the employ of at least one of those
purposes, it follows that it is justified.
Conclusions
The two arguments outlined above are attempts to answer the questions, “What
does it really mean to intend to do something?” and “How can we know when
another is doing it?”
One’s a question of ontology, the other an issue of epistemology. I call
them the arguments from principle and practice respectively, because gaining
satisfactory answer to the first is a function of how well we conceive the
mental processes taking place within us, and to the second is a matter of how
well we perceive the events going on all around us.
As to principle, undervaluing the weight of intentions leads to
misplaced accountability in cases of pre-emption, misattributing to one the
transgressions of another. Focusing primarily, or worse, solely on the
experiential component of our and others’ behavior limits our deliberative
diagnostics to a simple chronology of events, which cannot, with its single
dimension, capture the full complexity of predictive, human affairs. A
rote transcript of occurrences, being oblivious to the intents which underlie
them, doesn’t admit entertainment of an essential point, that first use
of force is not always unjust because first injustice is never the use
of force, rather its serious entertainment.
Regarding practice, rightly assessing the point to which another’s
behavior has progressed is the most crucial and difficult aspect of timing in
every phase of war, perhaps most of all in the prelude. Pre-emption’s
advocates and detractors wield this criticism in equal measure. The one accuses the other of authoring a host
of ills. The other counters they’ve
merely edited another’s ill-begun work.
The one claims the other has plunged us into the unavoidable. The other replies they’ve simply attenuated
the inevitable.
The tightrope walked by the pre-emptor is the fine line stretched between the
dimly glimpsed situations a potential opponent might occupy, hoping to discern
whether they currently inhabit a state of benign apathy or enmity growing
material. Bending over backward to assure just cause - if fears be warranted - usually does not
foster (and likely diminishes) reasonable hope of success. On the other
hand, anxiously stretching to grasp success threatens our moral footing.
The straight and narrow is called for, as too far in either direction risks the
fall of either our immediate protection (our ability to meet force) or our
lasting protection (our principles).
We hope our communications will bring us ever back from the precipice, we hope
our judgements will keep us from it in the first place.
As far as the consequences of not getting this all right, principally
speaking, what’s at stake if we lack a common conception of pre-emption (and
by that I mean an appreciation of who’s doing what and when, as laid out in
exploded view earlier) is wrongly calling a “counter” an “aggression” and
‘justicing’ each other to death in an impossible quest to return those scales
to a position of balance they already enjoy.
Practically speaking, what we risk if we fail to properly assess, to be
exhaustive in our attempts to rightly read others’ minds and know their true
proximity to or distance from violence, is - worst case, granted - starting
down the frenzied, ever-tightening spiral of beating the other to the punch
which, with each iteration, is more assuredly coming, until we’ve devolved
beyond hitting the other guy before he hits us, to hitting him before he even
thinks about it.
On the uncertain ‘play’grounds of our earliest days, erring on the side of
caution sometimes had us sitting in the Principal’s office. Erring on the
side of exculpability sometimes had us suffering the bully’s fists. The key observation is that the word “erring”
was present in both sentences. As in tightrope walking, over-corrections
aren’t. Thus the imperative that we get it right.
Endnotes
1 Benjamin Franklin
2 citation not yet located
3 The utility of the metaphor might be
called into question by some. Consider Martin Luther King Jr.’s echoing
of Immanuel Kant when King said, “The means we use must be as pure as the
ends we seek.” ‘Answering in kind and quantity’ smacks of returning ill
for ill in order to render two contenders ‘even-steven,’ and Mr. Kant’s credo
of “Do no evil that good may come” sets all like-minded at odds with that
notion.
In light of Mr. Kant’s admonition, what’s in question is whether the means must
be as the ends in order for the ends to obtain, whether the machinations of
justice, perhaps demanding an eye for an eye and rendering two half-blind in
the process, fall short of the ideal peace to be found in returning both to
fully-sighted status.
I’m sympathetic to that tug. However I take thousands of years of
recourse to violence as expressions of doubt as to the possibility of gaining
remuneration for the fungibles that most losses we suffer constitute. At
the same time I take the reluctance which has attended our resorting to force
over those thousands of years as testament to a universal desire to realize
such a world.
4
The convention of solid and dotted lines: solid ones denote the most
effective/least contentious timeframes for a given counter. Dotted lines
represent peripherally viable/questionably relevant timeframes in which to
engage in a behavior.
5 (if exceeding in kind or quantity,
it stands as vengeance).
6 If
it doesn’t sit well to think of counters running in two directions, consider
punishment as also forward-looking, simply far
forward-looking; a secondary deterrence.
Whereas deterrence, incapacitation and deflection are concerned with
heading off today’s transgressions, punishment – by validating the threat of
consequences – looks to preclude tomorrow’s.
7
This is the ideal course, the least disruptive, being return to the initial
configuration, a bonafide undoing of a wrong. In biblical terms, rather
than an eye for an eye, this would constitute a return of the wronged
individual to full sight.
If return to or removal from the affected pan isn’t possible (as is too often
the case, given the fungibility of most of the things taken from us), the only
recourse for levelling is to effect a new balance, by placing or removing
something from the other pan – the eye for an eye which unfortunately renders
two half-blind.
8 If
that claim sounds overblown, it may be because in daily speech we’ve long made
intent do double-duty. We rightly use it to mean ‘aspiring to bring about
a situation’ and wrongly, as merely ‘desiring that it come into being,’ to the
extent the full proper import of the former has been diluted by their
mixing.
9 If
nothing else is persuasive, perhaps the above leaves me consolation of a
rhetorical question. If the conventions crafted through the ages
reflect such a complexity in domestic interactions, is it realistic to hope
that international affairs could offer tidier solutions?