There are all kinds of wars. There are the grand, philosophical wars against ideas like poverty and drugs. There are violent enterprises like Afghanistan. There are bloody clashes between tribes polities.
Then there is my own personal war against poachers.
At this point, you might be thinking something like, “Well, isn’t that a little dramatic?”, but consider the facts of my own little war. People who have been told directly by the property’s owner–my mother-in-law–that they do not have permission to come onto her property do so anyway and do so armed. Further, they take the step of killing animals,wild ones in this case, on her farm that they have no right to kill.
Now, some might say that this is a law enforcement matter, but I say that if home or land is one’s castle and estate, then an armed incursion is tantamount to an invasion. It was not too long ago in our society, and it still is true in many today, that such an action was a death warrant.
Of course, I am constrained by the nature of my own beliefs and the ethos of our society to keep things as civil as one can when one’s home is being invaded, but I find that my instinct is to respond like people have for millennia when their homes and property is being threatened by another. A lot like our forces in Afghanistan, I am constrained as to when and how I can respond, yet I must continue to respond, or I give my enemy the upper hand.
I can assure you, however, that they will not prevail. They may not care that they are trespassing on private property and hunting illegally, but I do, and it is my desire to prevent them from having their way that will ensure that they eventually get caught and prosecuted.
Fortunately for them, we live in a civil society and that makes it a civil kind of war.
DLH
