The War of the Word "War"

war1 [wawr]–noun
1. a conflict carried on by force of arms, as between nations or between parties within a nation; warfare, as by land, sea, or air.
2. a state or period of armed hostility or active military operations: The two nations were at war with each other.
3. a contest carried on by force of arms, as in a series of battles or campaigns: the War of 1812.
4. active hostility or contention; conflict; contest: a war of words.
5. aggressive business conflict, as through severe price cutting in the same industry or any other means of undermining competitors: a fare war among airlines; a trade war between nations.
6. a struggle: a war for men's minds; a war against poverty.
7. armed fighting, as a science, profession, activity, or art; methods or principles of waging armed conflict: War is the soldier's business.
8. Cards.
a. a game for two or more persons, played with a 52-card pack evenly divided between the players, in which each player turns up one card at a time with the higher card taking the lower, and in which, when both turned up cards match, each player lays one card face down and turns up another, the player with the higher card of the second turn taking all the cards laid down.
b. an occasion in this game when both turned up cards match.

These are just the first eight of 21 definitions that dictionary.com gives for the word war.

The word war gets used in many different ways. The most obvious is to think of physical battles that armed forces engage in. But what about the idea of war? Our government likes to use this term to describe a new agenda against bad things: the war on drugs, the war on terrorism, the war between the left and the right, etc. Basically, this is our goverment's way of offering relentless dedication to an area that is important to us citizens.

The perfect pop culture example of this is the movie "Traffic". The whole movie is about the war on drugs, but seen from each side of the war's fighters. The audience witnesses the newly appointed drug czar, whose daughter turns out to be an addict. We meet the drug dealer disguised as a Suburban family man, and watch as his family life is torn apart when the drug bust goes down. We learn what it is like for the employees of the drug business, the junkie best customer, the politicians who attempt to stamp out drugs, and the families of all these characters.

No matter what the type of war, it affects countless people. Be it violent or not, war always has primary and secondary characters, and its consequences spread much farther than what is seen at first glance.