What's the goofiest, weirdest reason you've used to justify a plot hole in your story?

I'm currently making a fantasy thing, and I found myself employing a really weird line of reasoning to justify why the two main realms of this elven society aren't at war yet, or at least in a worse state of disrepair than they currently are.<br><br>Mentally ill, cruel people on both sides have started cultivating magic-hating demons in the mountains. Both sides have the same problem and it's incredibly egregious, to the point that the peaceful left and right realms are pretty much neck and neck as to who's in a worse state.<br><br>a) because the right side is legally required to follow a specific breed standard to be in the military, which makes them, in theory, stronger and harder to kill, but in reality isn't the best thing to breed into an elven warrior, so every year more of their men are dying, and their leaders are still debating whether they have the luxury to either change their minds, or to start breeding for quality again, because the numbers are so low that they can't sustain what they have without the standards.<br><br>b) because of an upsetting national tragedy several years ago, the left side has banned their magic users from fighting. The left side is more magically inclined than the right side, so this has meant that their soldiers are privately seeking magic and keeping a close eye on the political climate in the hopes that laws will change soon.<br><br>That's the reason why they haven't gone to war yet. Because of the demons, and because they're equally, massively preoccupied. Sure, every once in a while one side will commit something inexcusable, and the other will commit something back. But they're not at war.<br><br>The tragedy that inspired this ban was called "The Night of Ethereal Cries". One night, a left-side commander named Elara (who was the daughter of a left-side royal, and had been born with magic) was leading an expedition against the right side, and the right side captured one of her men and tried to turn him, and the left side found out and tried to get him to fight back, so the left side started bombing the right side from the air, and the right side started bombing the left side from the ground, which you would think would level the playing field, but the left side had two (recorded) magic users with the ability to create small airplane-sized portals.<br><br>The left side were desperate to get their friend back as soon as possible, and so they called in both magics at the same time. Ethereal Cries devastated a mile in every direction, and utterly destroyed about five city blocks. A lot of people died, and a lot more were wounded or left with PTSD.<br><br>The right side had taken care to ensure the prisoner was in the middle of the city, surrounded by as many civilians as possible. They had deliberately made sure to do so for the purpose of preventing the left side from launching an attack with air bombing, and so the result was the single most devastating thing that happened in the war to date.<br><br>That incident happened about eleven years ago, and it directly sparked a movement to ban magic from war. It's already been through a couple changes. It used to be a full ban, but now it's just restricted in that it can't be used on anything greater scale than person-to-person combat.<br><br>I justified the story-based need for this law by saying that the leaders, at least, are well aware that this law is a deciding factor in whether or not the war escalates, and that it's meant to be a temporary thing. They passed the law to give themselves time to decide, and every time they get close to making a decision, something happens and they panic and extend the law again.