War. Is it ever justified?

[fusion]

Is war ever justified?

I don't think so. Well I'm a pacifist and have opposed almost every war the US has fought, because their has not been enough reason to Go mass murder people. :)

[alxian]

thank you for using that smilie.. i thought it was the funniest thing since the presidential address saying that the US was going to try to use clean nuclear power again without mentioning private community owned pebble bed reactors as the power source.

 

but to be on topic.

 

war

 

is it ever justified?

 

sure

 

when wars are philosophical and based on fighting ignorance and prejudice

 

as for real wars man against his brothers or nation against nations?

 

depends on what they are fighting for...

 

if its religious i won't touch its morale significance with a 60' pole (a very tall man.. lol)

 

if its for a resource.. well then i can see why nations would fight over land for resources rather than stupid unrealistic religious reasons (oops that was fairly unsubtle opinion wasn't it)..

 

but yes, two nations fighting over resources is as ancient as the land they live on, and its as natural as a pecking order hierarchy. alphas get the first right to a kill. there is little way of making that distinction in humans, since there is no way to assert dominance between the nations unless you do so by wars. in that case wars are natural. only though when fighting over resources. if you are killing your fellow man for religious reasons... my made up god is more powerful than your made up god (where religion is more an individual undertaking and not subject to nation enforcement/edicts in the first place) its just an excuse i think for proper civilized societies to outlaw organized religion. it won't be long before a crusade or jihad destroys a huge swath of humanity before people realize how dangerous its polarizing effects are between nations.. or neighbors for that matter.

 

so you'll say, fighting over a piece of land for the gold beneath it is morally o.k. but fighting for a peace of land that was given to you by a god you made up is wrong?.. yes.

 

the reason is what are you going to get from that arbritrary peace of land god gave you anyway? especially when your neighbor has been living on it since his nation was founded and doesn't believe in your god? nothing but trouble from both sides..

 

how then is the first example of war for resources just? well once the first nation has refined the resources they may or may not and most often will for the sake of profit use those resources to develop economies between both nations (the greed involved is simply human nature). in this case war can be good if that business relationship blossoms.

 

 

and yes.. the US must keep their noses out of other peoples #### but given they always have economic reasons to start or join wars then its partially justified that way.. as far as i can tell the US will never start a crusade... (besides of course 911... but thats another story for another day)

[Tim_Lou]

of course some wars are justified:

wars of people defending themselves when being attacked.

 

It is a natural response and should be justified.

 

(well... thats the argument there, is a war for defending? or some self-interests? war in Iraq can be seen as a war to defend humanity of the future... or a war about oils, money, and revenge.)

[pgrmdave]

hypothetical:

 

Assume a leader, who rose to power by scapegoating a group of people, who then becomes a dictator, and destroys human rights, to the point where it is impossible for anybody within the country to depose him. He then begins to murder those people.

 

Is it wrong to invade the country to force a regime change? Or is it more moral to sit back and watch as people are murdered?

[Tim_Lou]

it depends on what kind of "regime change" is being made, whether not it is going to be "worse", or "better".

for worse I mean that the change doesnt gain support from the majority of the people in that country, for better i mean that the change goes with the people's will in that country.

 

"Or is it more moral to sit back and watch as people are murdered?"

In my opinion, yes, there is no necessity for one to intervene with others.

[Tim_Lou]

its about the debate of "war brings peace". Is war necessary to obtain peace? or does peace maintain itself?

[pgrmdave]

  Tim_Lou said:

"Or is it more moral to sit back and watch as people are murdered?"

In my opinion, yes, there is no necessity for one to intervene with others.

 

At what level does this break down? Would you stand by as a person next to you on a train was murdered? Would you do nothing as a minority are oppressed?

 

This is similar to my ideas on zero-tolerance. Violence MUST exist as a last resort to deal with unreasonable people. It should never be desired to harm another, but it is sometimes necessary.

[zadojla]

  Tim_Lou said:

"Or is it more moral to sit back and watch as people are murdered?"

In my opinion, yes, there is no necessity for one to intervene with others.

That's easy to say if the victims are in Sudan or Rwanda. Suppose the victim you choose not to defend is your mother, or daughter?

[Buffy]

  fusion said:

Is war ever justified?

I don't think so. Well I'm a pacifist and have opposed almost every war the US has fought.

Some of our wars have been wasteful. I think we did a better job in Yugoslavia than we did in Iraq: and those were marginal wars. As a dirgression, I like to point out to my conservative friends that actually Clinton's team proposed invading Iraq on humanitarian grounds, but the Gingrich Congress said "No nation building!" Now of course that there's no WMD, its okay to do nation building...

 

We all know that WWI was started by megalomaniacs, imperialist idiots and was stopped by the good ol USA (by Wilson, after Wilson ran on a platform of "he kept us out of war"), and WWII was of course the ultimate in stopping evil (I'll point you all to Philip K. Dick's Man In the High Castle for a good exposition of what we avoided there!).

 

Unfortunately, we forget to separate the action from the people we have do our dirty work for us from Lt. Col. Bill Kilgore ("I love the smell of napalm in the morning!") to Lt. Gen James Mattis ("it's fun to shoot some people") to Sergeant York or Audie Murphy. War, unfortunately, is definitely like making sausage.

 

Enjoy your freedom...a lot of people died for it.

 

Cheers,

Buffy

[sanctus]

  Buffy said:

 

Enjoy your freedom...a lot of people died for it.

 

Cheers,

Buffy

 

 

Not again. The last people who died for my freedom were the US/Russians freeing Europe to stop WWII and there was no other solution at that point. The problem is that the world should have reacted pacifically before Germany got that big.

 

Apart from that (as I stated in the priests/believers in the army thread) there is no one who died for my freedom. Already I asked but I never got an answer, tell me who died for my freedom (in the last 60 years)?

[sanctus]

Alxian, you are sort of saying that war for resources is justified as it in human nature, that means that you would agree that

if India dropped an atomic bomb on Pakistan to get Kashmir (a region full of resources) that would be justified;

with the invasion of Iraq (for resources: oil)

with most of the wars in Africa (religion is used as an excuse, generally it is for resources)

 

I guess you agree that your statement doesn't really hold seen from this perspective, but if you think your justification holds please tell me how?

 

I also do not agree on the fact that if something is in human nature it is justified. It just explains (or better is an attempt to explain) why something is like that, but it doesn't justify it. To justify something you have to show that it is a good action (natural isn't equivalent to good,eg the Tsunami was natural).

[pgrmdave]

  Sanctus said:

there was no other solution at that point.

 

And that's my point - War is a final solution, but if it must be used, then it is justified.

[Fishteacher73]

So a Machiaveliian revalation? If it works, its ok? (Just pointing out that with out a rigerous framework that truely runs the option prior to war, that any war is unjustified by success).

[Buffy]

  sanctus said:

Not again. The last people who died for my freedom were the US/Russians freeing Europe to stop WWII and there was no other solution at that point.

 

The problem is that the world should have reacted pacifically before Germany got that big.

Actually, the world did try to act pacifically all the way up to and including the invasion of France (after negotiating furiously through the invasion of Poland and the "liberation of the German peoples of Czeckeslovakia"). Neville Chamberlain rose and fell splat on "peace in our time." While Hitler famously blamed the western powers for all of Germany's ills due to the "unjust" Treaty of Versaille ending WWI, the main reason Hitler rose to power--other than his incredible charisma--was the horrifying economic hyper-inflation and depression in Germany in the 1920s which was mostly self-inflicted by the Kaiser and his cronies. Hitler was planning conquest of Europe back after being thrown in the pokey for the Beer Hall Putsch in 1923 and started writing Mein Kampf. WWII was on auto-pilot after that and no amount of talking pacifically would have stopped it. Similarly in Asia, Japan felt that due to the fact that they "needed" natural resources that they did not have and that their inferior Asian neighbors needed their guidance, they started invading Korea, China, and then the rest of south-east Asia far earlier than what most of us consider the "start" of WWII. Of course, what happens in Asia doesn't effect us so why should we care?

 

  sanctus said:

Apart from that (as I stated in the priests/believers in the army thread) there is no one who died for my freedom. Already I asked but I never got an answer, tell me who died for my freedom (in the last 60 years)?

There's this little thing called the Cold War. No, not many people died, but there actually were many. Mostly nameless "spies" on surveillance missions shot down over eastern europe or undercover behind the Iron Curtain. Stalin died before he actually had the means to lauch nukes in a coordinated fashion, and with the exception of Kruschev (who had problems with the hawks in the military and was eventually overthrown for being "soft" on the west), it was only NATO's massive forces, McNamara's Mutually Assured Destruction and a handful of spies that kept most of western Europe being nuked and 100,000 Soviet tanks from rushing through the Fulda Gap.

 

Now that's probably the last war that directly affected you in Switzerland, with the possible exception of some spillover ugliness that could have spread if the Serbs had been allowed to follow Hitler by succeeding in ethnically cleansing a unified and pure Yugoslavia. However, there are some of us bleeding heart liberals who actually agree that we should help out people who are suffering their own conflicts that do not directly affect our own lives. The majority of people in the US who are for doing something in Darfur right now are Democrats! There's lots of interesting arguments about when the line is crossed and such action is justified, how the action should be carried out, etc., and I won't join that discussion, but there's definitely a grey line, and to keep my own Karma in the plus column, I'm not one to sit idly by and watch other people get massacred when I could help.

 

Cheers,

Buffy

[Stargazer]

It must be a matter of opinion whether a war is justified or not. Some think war is justified to acquire resources, or to gain territory, or to spread a religion. How silly. Too bad we're so occupied with drawing lines on a map, and saying "ok this is ours, this is yours... until we try and take it."

 

However, I am sure that everyone would benefit much more if we stopped the entire thing we have about killing each other. I mean, it's really not that fun. Unfortunately, I don't see a global massive disarmament anytime soon. I wish we could realise that war is utterly unnecessary, and that we can all share this planet in peace, and that we could focus our creativity and our resources on improving the lives of everyone, instead of simply trying to come up with new methods to kill even more people. How can there be justification to avoid doing something like that?

[motherengine]

well if you want to go on living like you do wars like the second world war are certainly justified. if you are willing to risk the comforts and conveniences that you have grown into then, for you, war should never occur. unfortanately other people might strongly disagree and then comes a time to kill for pacifism. as george romaro wrote 'that's the trouble with the world...people got different ideas concerning what they want out of life'. war is what happens when governments disagree [the civil war being the exception to this rule and personally i think this particular war was very necessary socially speaking] and this is why too many ingredients can spoil the broth. but pacifism seems to me to be an island for those who simply cannot tolerate mass brutality rising up in an ocean of conflict. nothing wrong with enjoying the sound of the surf and yet refusing to go swimming. just watch out for the tide. :)

[Fishteacher73]

I think it is erroneous to consider war as an inevitable in the human condition. Over time man has slowly made social strides to be more productive as a whole (Not that we haven't made great strides in waging war). If we are to sit content and just say, "Oh well, war is just one of those things..." it always will be. As rational person, one must abhor war. (I see no way to glamorize it or rationalize it. Not that currently it sometimes is the only option). We must strive to produce a society that does not resort to violence. Just as we have worked for any of the causes to better mankind. Abolition, Female suffrage, democracy, etc. These are all ideals that were contradictory to "THE WAY IT IS" dogma of the times. I think it is a disservice to humanity to not try to move forward.