War? What war? This isn’t a war, even though the U.S. president and his administration keep referring to it as such. Leaders of other nations around the world, including U.K. prime minister Keir Starmer, in his statements to the British Parliament, along with media outlets across and far beyond America, are all calling it a war. But it isn’t? A prize will be awarded to the first collegian who correctly answers this question: When is a war not a war?
The winner is unlikely to find the right answer via ChatGPT or a Google search. Some congresspersons have fuzzy answers that may or may not be technically correct. If asked 15 months ago when Joe Biden was still president or 18 years ago when Barack Obama became commander in chief (some of them were in Congress at the time), their answers would have been different. Surely, if those same elected officials were presented the same prizewinning pop quiz question when they themselves were undergraduates, their answers would have been different than those that are being conveniently furnished right now.
I am not a scholar of war; it is outside my domains of expertise. But as I have always understood it, wars involve two or more countries (or in the case of the American Civil War, the North and South) engaging in a deadly fight that involves significant gunfire, ballistic missiles, bombs and/or strikes. They ruthlessly kill each other’s citizens, including innocent children and other civilians. Homes, schools, hospitals and other property get destroyed, leaving mounds of war-zone rubble behind as catastrophic reminders. Sometimes, entire regions are destabilized.
Leaders command militaries to avenge their opponents, then their opponents fight back. More people die. It keeps going for a while, sometimes for years or even across generations. Terrified civilians who live in torturous fear of being killed recognize that they have been dragged into something much bigger and far deadlier than a bar fight between two drunk dudes that will end within minutes. Combined, combat and cleanup typically cost billions. Survivors’ lives are forever changed.
Again, I am no war expert. It is entirely possible that what I just described is completely off base. Perhaps our U.S. and world history instructors taught my peers and me inaccurate information about what constitutes war. It has been decades, but I do not recall them telling us that the definition depends on whom you ask or the political party that those persons represent. I do, however, remember learning at some point that the U.S. Congress is supposed to authorize our country’s engagement in war. One clue for pop quiz takers: If it walks, quacks and wreaks havoc like a war, it is likely a war, even if it commences without congressional approval.
“We’re doing very well on the war front,” U.S. president Donald Trump declared at an event in Washington this week. “Somebody said, ‘On a scale of 10, where would you rate it?’ I said, ‘About a 15.’” According to this transcript on the Pentagon’s website, earlier that same day, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said this: “The terms of this war will be set by us at every step.” To justify the Trump administration’s disregard for congressional approval, many Republican policymakers are using different language to justify and define the terms of what the U.S. is doing in the Middle East.
In a nationally televised interview with ABC News anchor Linsey Davis, House Foreign Affairs Chairman and U.S. Army veteran Brian Mast (Republican of Florida) refused to answer a question about whether our country is at war. “The United States of America is conducting a very specific operation. It is absolutely combat operations.”
Similarly, in a CNN interview with Jake Tapper, Congressman Mike Flood (Republican of Nebraska) would not explicitly admit that the U.S. is at war and instead reduced it to “a significant military operation.” Also, Senator John Kennedy (Republican of Louisiana) told Tapper, “It’s like pornography—it’s undefined, you know it when you see it.”
In his ABC News interview with Rhiannon Ally, Representative Tim Burchett (Republican of Tennessee) stated, “I’m not going to have a problem with it until we start putting soldiers on the ground there. I worry about that. I think that could turn into a quagmire. But what we’re doing right now, to me, ma’am, is avoiding a war.” Ally reminded Burchett that just last summer he called fellow GOP lawmakers “war pimps” for wanting to attack Iran, which he was opposed to at the time.
The U.S. Senate voted 47 to 53, defeating a resolution to limit Trump’s power to engage in war without congressional approval; one Republican voted for the resolution and one Democrat voted against it. The next day, the war powers legislation also failed in the House by a 212-to-219 vote.
The overwhelming majority of leaders elected to the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives are college graduates. This will likely remain the case for a very long time, maybe forever. It is important for current students who will someday represent constituents on Capitol Hill to know what war is, what war does to countries that are engaged in it and what role Congress is supposed to play in authorizing U.S. participation in wars. Understanding that none of this should depend on which political party is in power also is essential in the preparation of future congresspersons. In addition, they and their classmates must know what past wars were about and the real reasons that America engaged in them.
In its 2018 “Teaching Hard History” report, the Southern Poverty Law Center found that only 8 percent of high school seniors surveyed knew that slavery was the central cause of America’s Civil War. Nearly half thought it was about taxation. Such illiteracy is guaranteed to worsen as many colleges and universities are being threatened for engaging with so-called divisive concepts in classrooms. Teaching the full historical truth about slavery and the Civil War is likely to be mischaracterized as divisive. Likewise, using “Operation Epic Fury” right now as a real-time case study to engage collegians in debates about when a war is not a war probably would invite political scrutiny and staunch opposition from conservatives. It shouldn’t. How else will students learn?
Regarding the pop quiz and prize, I welcome thoughtful responses and rationales from undergraduates across the country. I am seriously open to being persuaded that what is happening in the Middle East right now is something other than war.
Shaun Harper is University Professor and Provost Professor of Education, Business and Public Policy at the University of Southern California, where he holds the Clifford and Betty Allen Chair in Urban Leadership. His most recent book is titled Let’s Talk About DEI: Productive Disagreements About America’s Most Polarizing Topics.
