Lethal force against the Dakota Access Pipeline protesters would be justified

I am sorry to hear about Con's lost text. I will explain a little more fully why a declaration of war would be a just proportional response, as Con requested. The protests against the pipeline had little rational basis, not the claimed threat to water and not the claimed burial sites. Each such explicit argument is provably ridiculous. The primary motivating force, not at all hidden, is the ideological belief that the descendants of the white American colonists have no right to the land and that the land rightfully belongs to the Native Americans. The Natives see themselves as foreign to the colonial American government and not bound by such laws, much like Con has already expressed in the first round. This means the illegal agitation can not be expected to stop with this recent victory. They will very likely attempt to obstruct the new DAPL route when it is chosen, because it is geographically and economically required to cross the Missouri River upstream from the Standing Rock reservation south of the river(3), and the Standing Rock tribe is expected to be equally convinced that their water is at risk at such a crossing. And, after that, they will instead be emboldened to find another project to agitate against as though they own land that does not legally belong to them (except with imaginative interpretations of the law much like Con has previously expressed). Why wouldn't they? When they are in the thousands and when they have many external American allies, then they are demonstrably immune from the law. The pipeline construction delay is expected to have a significant expense(1), but, if the indigenous agitators succeed in stopping the pipeline from completion, then such an act would most certainly be a great expense to the American economy. The pipeline would mean that the costs of refining oil are greatly reduced, as thousands of trucks (and rail cars) driving hundreds of miles would be no longer needed to transport the crude oil across the country to refineries. The DAPL would make the oil industry in the Bakken region cost effective and globally competitive, resurrecting many of the thousands of jobs(2) that were recently lost due to the drop in oil prices. The pipeline would also greatly benefit the landowners in the region where the oil exists. As I have already argued, a declaration of war would not be an excessive response, but it would favor the individual safety of the peaceful protesters. A response on that level is the only appropriate response, as a continuing surrender will greatly cost the general American economy (as I have argued in this round) and the trifling actions of law enforcement are demonstrably ineffective. Con has offered no alternative but an implicit one: the continuing surrender of the American state, as he has argued in the first round that no part of the 122,000 square miles of the land of the (obsolete) Fort Laramie treaty of 1851 belongs to the American federal government nor any other non-Native American. If that is really what motivates the illegal obstruction, and, again, the Standing Rock tribe agrees with Con on this point(4), then war against such Natives is more than plainly justified, as very many wars have been rightly fought over far lesser land claims. I wish Con the most acuity with his final word on the matter. (1) http://www.snopes.com... (2) http://www.economicsgroup.com..., "An employment increase of nearly 33,000 job-years." (3) http://www.nytimes.com... (4) http://standingrock.org... "The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe stands by its right to self-government as a sovereign nation, which includes taking a government-to-government stance with the states and federal government entities. Having signed treaties as equals with the United States Government in 1851 and in 1868, which established the original boundaries of the Great Sioux Nation. The tribe staunchly asserts these treaty rights to remain steadfast and just as applicable today as on the day they were made."