olite71
03-14-2007, 04:28 AM
With all the debate (mmmhhh?) on this forum about the Second Gulf War, something guyone said about D-Day got me thinking about "Just War Theory". Is any war justified, and if so, which wars are examples of a just war and why, and which wars are unjustified and why?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_war
http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/ethics/war/index.shtml
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/war/
There are plenty more links at the bottom of the Wikipedia article.
P.S. Please try and not fight (i.e. flame) on this one. I really don't think it's appropriate on this thread! Have a good look at the links before just blurting out the first thing that comes into your mind. (That's right TFan, I'm looking specifically at you!) For example, if you think the Second Gulf War was just state clearly why, and try to back it up with evidence.
This is a complex question. If you measure "justice" in saving actual lives, then almost no war is a just war--because it may just be true that going to war ends up burying more people than does staying out of war.
If you measure justice by the imposition or the removal of a certain political system, then it is easier to "justify" a war. But justification may like beauty be in the eye of the beholder. Lenin of course would justify the war in Russia from 1917-20 because it resulted in imposing his political system over the old empire and transforming it into the soviet state.
But would others call the war just? And if not--would you call the tsarist system that preceded it just? Hard to call that corrupt system just, if you believe in the political theories of Montesquieu, Hobbes and Locke.
I like General Sherman's quote that "war is hell." This is certainly true, and perhaps even an understatement. Maybe we should call no wars truly "just" but all relative degrees of hell.
The ones with the least degree of "hellishness" perhaps could be called the most just.
Anyway---if I were to assume that there were such a thing as a "just" war, then I in my definition the war would have to be commenced with sincerity--that is to say, those that declare the war should for reasons that are clearly disclosed to the fighters such that the goal of the fighters is to achieve the desired result of those reasons.
This is a necessary, if not sufficent, ingredient in a "just" war, if there ever were such a thing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_war
http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/ethics/war/index.shtml
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/war/
There are plenty more links at the bottom of the Wikipedia article.
P.S. Please try and not fight (i.e. flame) on this one. I really don't think it's appropriate on this thread! Have a good look at the links before just blurting out the first thing that comes into your mind. (That's right TFan, I'm looking specifically at you!) For example, if you think the Second Gulf War was just state clearly why, and try to back it up with evidence.
This is a complex question. If you measure "justice" in saving actual lives, then almost no war is a just war--because it may just be true that going to war ends up burying more people than does staying out of war.
If you measure justice by the imposition or the removal of a certain political system, then it is easier to "justify" a war. But justification may like beauty be in the eye of the beholder. Lenin of course would justify the war in Russia from 1917-20 because it resulted in imposing his political system over the old empire and transforming it into the soviet state.
But would others call the war just? And if not--would you call the tsarist system that preceded it just? Hard to call that corrupt system just, if you believe in the political theories of Montesquieu, Hobbes and Locke.
I like General Sherman's quote that "war is hell." This is certainly true, and perhaps even an understatement. Maybe we should call no wars truly "just" but all relative degrees of hell.
The ones with the least degree of "hellishness" perhaps could be called the most just.
Anyway---if I were to assume that there were such a thing as a "just" war, then I in my definition the war would have to be commenced with sincerity--that is to say, those that declare the war should for reasons that are clearly disclosed to the fighters such that the goal of the fighters is to achieve the desired result of those reasons.
This is a necessary, if not sufficent, ingredient in a "just" war, if there ever were such a thing.