Quote from: Power Hungry Midget on December 22, 2010, 05:39:51 pm
Is fighting a war of indepence justifiable? Is killing in name of freedom justifiable?
I think that these two questions are more important than wondering about the 'justness' of a war. A lot of the time the outcome of any given war writes the history, not the actual wars. And that's completely understandable... of course the winner will always believe that what they had fought for was not in vain. I'm not trying to take too relativistic of an approach, but I always get a little iffy when it comes to morals... and even if Plato disagrees, I think that when we talk about Justice, we're talking about morals to some degree.
Perhaps it would be better to frame the question as one of necessity? Nuclear proliferation comes to mind. As in, if it ever came down to it, should there be a war in order to prevent nukes from getting into the wrong hands? I would say probably yes. Because the consequences of a nuclear war far outweigh one that would be fought to prevent one.
Notice though that this poses only the choice between two wars, as if war was inevitable... which, is sort of implied in the original question. Additionally, the tricky thing about something like a "war of necessity" is that it's war fought to prevent war... But it's -- in my mind -- the only way to rationalize modern warfare. War fought for gain should be unacceptable, it's just that that gain may sometimes be very hard to notice.
Thats my two cents at least... What do you guys think? Is making war part of the human psyche? I tend to go back and forth on that one. There's the ideological side to me that wants to say "no! if only we could all learn to work together..." but then there's the cold cold rational side that wants to disagree. On a side note, a friend of mine who was in the Marines once told me at a bar "man, getting people to stop fighting wars would be like telling a man not to f***, you can say it.. but is he going to do it? Not unless you cut his balls off."