Is war ever justified?

[TommyWillB]

It seems a bit odd to ask if war against Iraq is "justified"...

Two things seem self-efident to me:

• War is never "justified"
• Justice is not really one of the things our government/military even bothers taking into account when considering war.

[toast]

Locate your question in time, using first A-Bomb use as a pivot. Idea est:

- War before 1945 was conceivable (hence, 1939, even though 1933 would have been a better date).
- War after 1945 makes no sense (hence, Vietnam, just to take some well-chosen example).

[MDLarson]

Hey! Where'd ya get the idea for this poll? Ha ha...

[edX]

i guess i have to see this 2 ways. i don't see war as ever being 'right'. it's not an answer to any question that i know of. at least not for anyone who values life, human or otherwise.

but is it ever just? i think maybe it is. if someone declares war on someone else, then i think the one who is attacked first is 'justified' in fighting back if they choose. i wouldn't let anyone take a swing at me and just stand there to take the punch. that still doesn't make fighting right. it just means that sometimes someone takes unjustifiable actions that must be stopped in some way. what's right has long since left the picture at that point. the trick is to figure out how to keep everyone acting in a manner that is right before it gets out of hand.

with long hair and a beard, i must look like quite a threat to some. the airport security always seems to treat me as such. i seem to get 'randomly searched' every time i go in there. as bad as this is, i can live with it given the state of the world. but i almost fear they day they will shoot me first and ask questions later.

[Ugg]

I agree with Toast, war is an idea that is past its prime.

Not long ago someone told me that up until the Middle Ages or thereabouts, standard economic theory posited that there was a finite amount of wealth and that the only way to increase one's wealth was to steal from someone else. This idea soon fell by the wayside and wealth began to increase by leaps and bounds.

I believe that we are at a similar period in history. Rather than pour our energies into fuel cells and increasingly efficient solar cells we spend a lot of time and money "defending" and "protecting" oil. If we were to take all the money that GW plans to spend on a war in Iraq and spend it on research, I think we would soon see the demise of the oil run dictatorships. Indonesia, Nigeria, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, etc. are able to be the despotic nations they are because the west is willing to "overlook" their human rights violations in exchange for free access to their oil.

IMO waging war has always been and will always be about the desire for more economic power and therefore will never be justifiable.

[Satcomer]

Does anyone ever learn history anymore? I'll give everybody a little clue why some times war is the only way, WW I & WW II !

[edX]

yea, but weren't those the wars to end all wars? seems that concept doesn't really work. not to mention that in those wars, the bad guys were the ones who attacked first. so from that 'history lesson', i can pretty much surmise that the US becomes about equal to Germany during those wars if we decide to tell the world to stuff it and start a war. and then how much longer till the world decides they can no longer tolerate us? and thenhow muchlonger after that til GW shows that he really doesn't have any concern for human life, even his own people, and starts pushing buttons to show how powerful he is?

i can draw a list of 'what if's' just as long as those who support this war that make going into an even scarier thing than not. no war based upon 'what if' could ever be right or justified. it could only be insane.

[RacerX]

Originally posted by Satcomer
Does anyone ever learn history anymore? I'll give everybody a little clue why some times war is the only way, WW I & WW II !

I'm up on my history. Those wars were started by someone else. Someone invading someone else as I seem to recall in the case of WWII. In the case of WWI, it was the assassination of the leader of Austria Hungary by a Serbian.

Lets see, we are about to invade another country (just like what started WWII), and we are most likely looking to assassinate that countries leader (just like what started WWI).

Bush has no moral high ground in this. He wants to start wars without provocation. At least the real President Bush was acting to repel a country which was invading another. That, at least, was a just fight.

Iraq hasn't invaded anyone. We actually have been keeping Iran from invading Iraq (one of the reasons for not finishing the job originally).

Since Bush took power, we have turned our back on treaties, gone back and dissolved treaties, bullied our allies and now are starting wars as a preemptive measure (but only against countries that can't really fight back). Bush is not considered a trust worthy person (other than to Republicans it seems), and now the rest of the world doesn't trust the US or it's motives anymore. We live in some scary times.

If I have learned anything from history, it is that Bush has us on the wrong side. Any President that we have had in the last 30 years (if not in the entire history of our nation) would be a better replacement then what we have now.