Ah. Okay, I'll attempt to answer that. Gimme a minute here. Hmmmm....

Okay.

I have never forsaken my right of self-defence, and I do not anticipate doing so. Try robbing my house and find out about that.

If I were running a country and found my neighbours attacking my civilian population indiscriminately (?) what would I do?

Well, the first thing I would do (just as an immediate emergency response) would be to use my police and military to respond to such attacks (on my own soil or at the border areas) in an appropriate fashion. You and I might have different ideas on what's appropriate, I suppose...or maybe not...who knows? I would also try to detect and prevent those attacks before they occur.

The next thing I would do is try and find out why my neighbours are launching those attacks...and I mean REALLY try. Then I would try to talk to them about it, and see if something could be done besides killing each other...reach an agreement over the issues, in other words.

You suggest the idea of neighbours who "openly admit that their sole aim is your complete and utter destruction." That's a fairly unusual situation. Most people have many aims in life, not a "sole" aim.   Which neighbours do you mean? All of them or some of them? Does it mean every man, woman, and child among said neighbours or does it mean just certain individuals among them? I suspect it means the latter. How does one respond intelligently and effectively to that? One good way to respond, I figure, is to defend on your own ground rather than making indiscriminate attacks on other people's ground, but that depends on the exact military factors involved and all that.

It's a tremendously complicated matter, Teribus, and it cannot be simply answered. In fact, to answer it adequately would require a vast amount of time and references to the specific circumstances which concern you in having posed the silly damn question...and I might have to sit here for 3 hours writing...or 6 hours.

I'm not going to do that. :-) I'd rather do something that's beneficial to my life.

- LH