luvluv

Heathen Dawn:

Would you like to clarify that statement?

I'm a Christian? Does that make me unjust? Would it be okay to kill me? Who gets to decide who is just and who is unjust?

Rusting Car Bumper

No. The question was "Whats a just war"?

I stated two vague ways in which there might be a just war.

A response was that "The Taliban would undoubtedly feel that their Islamic state was unjustly attacked by the US..." I was merely pointing out that such a fact doesn't change anything.

Obviously the Germans thought their continued war was justified after the Allies started fighting back. This revelation doesn't change the fact that the Allies advance into Europe was justified.

Obviously, if A commmits to war in self-defense against an agressor, then the agressor already believes their actions were justified otherwise they wouldn't engage in them in the first place.

Thus, I don't see the point of the comment I was addressing.

DC

JerryM

For DC:

The orginal question was "can war be justified?" (and how should it be waged?) I believe war can be justified, but my point is that any such justification, even though it may be perfectly valid, is also inherently subjective.

MadMordigan

So where does that leave us?

Learn to win.

Sarpedon

I take the zen philosophy of fighting: so long as you are unselfish, you may fight if necessary.

To put a finer point on this question, it seems to me that most wars of aggression have 2 components: A greed component, and an emotional component. I think that the twentieth century has shown rather conclusively that war is not profitable for a nation, though it is often still profitable for individuals. The way that they get a war fought is by appealing to the emotions of the individuals in a country. For example. If the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians was purely about land, land that had no emotional/religious significance, it could be solved. Land can be bought, people can be compensated, new, denser housing units can be erected, more efficient farming techniques could be used, etc etc. However, it is the feelings of the combatants that keep this struggle raging. Closer to home, the oil and munitions interests, as represented by the Bush administration is exploiting the feelings of fear and anger to further their war goals in the middle east.

Since a just war can be seen as the opposite of a war of aggression, the decision to fight must be made without greed or emotion.