Dover and Just Wars

Just in case you don't already read Fred Clark's Slactivist regularly (which you should, and not just for his tour-de-force marathon dissection of Left Behind, either), head over and look at this:

Appreciate that Franks' notion of the "Dover effect" only makes sense if one believes that war is an option -- a choice that a supposedly fickle and weak-willed public may choose to stop choosing.

If this were actually the case -- if a given war really were optional, then it would also be a war that we should not have been fighting in the first place. It would be, in other words, an unjust war. And, therefore, it would be a war that a just nation cannot win -- a war for which "victory" is not one of the possible outcomes.

This is true regardless of public opinion. No amount of public support can make an unjust war winnable.

And just as an unjust war is unsustainable, with or without public support, so too protest against a just war tends to be unsustainable, with or without success on the battlefield.