Is there EVER a valid reason for a country to go to war?

[JeffreyWilliamson]

This spirited conversation got me wondering, aside from a country being directly attacked by another, is there ever valid justification for a nation to go to war?

The rise of a global menace like Hitler? Brutal human rights violations and war crimes, such as the Holocaust? Neither of these situations involved the US being attacked by the Germans but I doubt anyone would seriously say that stopping the Nazis was wrong. If we had not been attacked by the Japanese, would it have become immoral for us to join that war, or would it always have been immoral for us to sit it out?

What about the American Revolution? Our people were oppressed to a degree, but nothing like we have seen in modern times. Was it wrong for the States to wage war on the British, or was it a nobel cause?

If terrorists operating under the support of one nation attack another, is the attacked nation justified in moving against the government sponsor?

Is there ever any situation where it becomes immoral to NOT stand up and do something, even if a nation has not personally been attacked, (the Holocaust example)?

[nini]

1. yes

anyone who thinks war can always be avoided is naive. This doesn't mean it should be the first option though.

[Posteritatis]

11. It should definitely be at/near the bottom of the options pile

(Short of a direct attack on a country or its allies, of course.)

It's too complicated an issue to just boil down to one universal answer from on high saying "no," not that there won't be a lot of that. I think it can be avoided a hell of a lot more often than it has been the last several decades, but I'm also a fan of R2P and don't believe there are situations that trump "I can do whatever I want to 'my' people in my borders." There's some governments on this planet which are simply an obscenity, as the Taliban were, and just like at the sub-national level there are going to be times occasionally where violence is the "best," or perhaps only, option to remedy or get clear of a situation.

Others will disagree, of course; I've always remembered a 'great' thread on here a few years ago where a few people were saying that the US should've stopped the Pacific offensive in WWII the moment the Battle of Midway was won. Takes all kinds, I guess.

[boobooday]

2. Direct attack is the only reason I can think of

Anything else is at best a slippery slope, at worst a crime.

[JeffreyWilliamson]

5. If we were not attacked by the Japanese...

Would it have been okay to sit out WWII?

[boobooday]

10. There might be other ways to imagine that scenario

Many were aware of Hitler's intentions long before we got directly involved. Our own country turned away Jewish refugees. Perhaps if we had acted on the humanitarian crisis he created before the war escalated, we could have avoided direct military involvement.

[JeffreyWilliamson]

22. If we could have made a humanitarian impact

but he still started marching across Europe. Say he didn't round people up, but still managed to invade his neighbors, would it have been justified without the humanitarian angle?

[boobooday]

26. Once again, he was appeased early on, which allowed him to march

But given that our allies were directly attacked, I believe this would still fall under my original conditions.

For example, if Canada or Mexico were directly attacked, I would support helping them defend themselves, in our own interests.

[atreides1]

3. Look up Lend-Lease

Technically speaking the US was already involved in WWII, before being attacked by the Japanese.

Lend-Lease (Public Law 77-11) was the name of the program under which the United States of America supplied the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, China, France and other Allied nations with vast amounts of war material between 1941 and 1945 in return for, in the case of Britain, military bases in Newfoundland, Bermuda, and the British West Indies. It began in March 1941, over 18 months after the outbreak of the war in September 1939.

The Japanese attack allowed the US to enter with its military forces.

[whoneedstickets]

4. Under a collective security agreement...

..If two or more states are joined in a collective security pact then responding to an attack on one is morally justified (in the same way responding to an assault on a fellow citizen would be). This is the general position of international law which expressly recognizes collective security agreements as keys toward creating lasting peace. There is also ample empirical and modeling evidence to substantiate the normative claim.

[Harry Monroe]

6. Only to defend oneselves

[hughee99]

13. Not to defend others? n/t

[JeffreyWilliamson]

24. My thinking as well...

What if someone can't stand up for themselves, but another nation sees what's happening and has the ability to act.

[Harry Monroe]

44. Good point

But...America will only do this to act in their own best interest, not the interest of the country being attacked. This has been the way it has been done throughout history. I wish we could and would be the defenders of others even though it may not be in our best interest, but I don't see that happening.

[anonymous171]

148. The people must rise up on their own and overthrow their own tyrants.

Otherwise their culture shall not change.

[treestar]

7. In modern times, only if there is genocide going on

Going after Al Qaeda may seem justified, but "war" as a means of doing it doesn't seem quite right, IMO.

[Phoonzang]

8. War is neccesary sometimes.

I don't really see the point of WWI, but in instances like WWII, we should have gone in even earlier, but we had to be dragged in. Going to war to defend others and stop atrocities is justified. As for the American Revolution....who knows? Maybe if we had lost, slavery would have been abolished in here in 1838.

I'd say attacking Afghanistan was completely justified as well. The government at the time (Taliban) were harboring the individuals who committed an unprecedented act of terror and refused to give them up.

[JeffreyWilliamson]

12. That's my take on it as well.

Never really got why we jumped into WWI. We should have gotten into WWII earlier. Another poster upthread mentioned the Lend-Lease program. FDR was able to do that, but he was operating against overwhelming public sentiment to stay out of it, at least until Pearl Harbor.

[Posteritatis]

17. WWI was a Maximum Brain Failure for all involved

The First World War in general's pretty much the opposite of something like the sequel as far as regards moral ambiguity; the big tragedy about it is that for all practical purposes there was no point to see.

[Phoonzang]

I see it as kind of a catharsis for Europe...

They had all those new and deadly weapons, all those huge armies just sitting there, a series of entangling alliances, and a tremendous amount of tension between the great powers. They just HAD to let it out. After all they hadn't slaughtered each other in large numbers for almost a century (besides the Crimean War).

Of course they had no idea what they were getting into...they thought it would be over relatively quickly and they could march through the streets victorious and celebrate.

[Posteritatis]

28. Fair enough

And "clearing the air" was one of the things people talked about at the time. A lot of them probably thought it would be a (comparatively) civilized sort of thing like the Napoleonic War, though I imagine those guys hadn't been paying much attention to the Crimean one. WWI could have been avoided after Ferdinand's assassination, except for the fact that everyone more or less did the worst possible thing. Most of the leaders at the time mentioned how out of control everything felt, and they were right.

Of course, wanting to get into the first pan-European war in a century to "clear the air" is kind of a maximum brain failure sort of moment. ;)

[Rosa Luxemburg]

21. the US role

the US and others eg. UK, France etc has had a role in 'manipulating' other countries for their own good whether it was reaping gold, oil, keeping pipeines open, keeping communists out or in, slaves etc. Arranging coups, false flag attacks etc.

[JeffreyWilliamson]

25. In many ways those actions

directly led to September 11th and the Taliban. The USSR had a hand in setting up the conditions as well.

[WeDidIt]

9. Here was a valid reason for a nation to go to war...

[JeffreyWilliamson]

14. I'd say that qualifies.

But what if a nation is not attacked?

[Jennicut]

15. If other countries had acted sooner with Germany then maybe some of the

atrocities they committed may have been stopped sooner. The problem is where to we say we want to intervene and where do we draw the line. Not an easy, black and white answer. However, getting bogged down in regime change (like Iraq) is not a good way to go at all as we can see.

[JeffreyWilliamson]

20. I think we all have a pretty good idea

that regime change for its own sake is not smart. Well, I say all but I really mean us here. There are still a lot of dense people out there that I run into every now and then that think Iraq was a good idea.

[Posteritatis]

35. "for its own sake" is a big point there (nt)

[patrice]

16. When it can accomplish certain clearly defined, historically, & mutually shared goals and when those

who fight have historically been and currently are Free/Aware enough to make fully informed decisions about any and all alternatives, past, present, and future.

[Avalux]

18. Let's exclude the American Revolution, The colonies did not have sovreignty -

they were not their own country.

So I can think of two extreme reasons - IMMINENT attack - we KNOW an attack is coming and attack first; and aiding an ally as we did in WWII. If we had not stepped in, Germany would have swept all of Europe.

[JeffreyWilliamson]

27. The Revolution wasn't the best example on hindsight.

Because of your very reason--it wasn't a case of two sovreign nations. The WWII scenario works better in asking the question.

[Posteritatis]

34. It'd still be at least somewhat relevant

In that instance it was the case of non-violent protest versus violent revolution, which isn't that different from the case of diplomacy/economic measures/etc versus international war when you boil both down to the basic idea. In each the question's still "when do you cross the line?" and "can you cross the line?"

[LakeSamish706]

19. I would say that WW2 was certainly a valid reason for a country to go...

to war. If the US had not entered that war, the whole of Europe more than likely would have fallen to the Germans and history would have been much different.

[4lbs]

23. There seems to be evidence that quite a bit of the country in the 1930s/1940s was still enamored

with it's European heritage.

Even after 1941, German POWs held in the US were treated humanely while Japanese-American citizens were rounded up into camps.

German POWs were even treated better than African-American citizens. They were allowed nearly all the comforts of a "regular" US citizen, being right next to people at the "whites-only" areas, while our own African-Americans were still treated poorly.

So, with that, I don't think much of the country had a stomach to deal with Hitler any time soon. In fact, the atrocities of the Holocaust and concentration camps weren't discovered by US ground forces until they reached deep into Germany in 1945. Hitler was that good at keeping things concealed from everyone except Russia.

[JeffreyWilliamson]

31. American's have always had a way of that kind of double way of doing it.

Take for example a Revolution and the concept that "all men are created equal", started and originated by slaveholders.

[4lbs]

39. Yes. Although, to his credit, Thomas Jefferson put the abolishment of slavery in his original draft

of the Declaration of Independence.

However, it was soon removed, because they felt that keeping it in would cost them the support of the southern colonies/states. Losing that support, they feared that not only would the remaining northern states be weaker, they would also be faced with fighting not only the British but the southern states who actually tended to support England more often, since they had a thriving trade with the mother country.

[Posteritatis]

43. Is that draft viewable anywhere? (nt)

[4lbs]

47. Yeah, Jefferson published the original draft in his autobiography.

http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/AMERICA/DECLAR.HTM

Here is the paragraph that was removed:

"He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivatng and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of INFIDEL powers, is the warfare of the CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce. And that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people for whom he also obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes committed against the LIBERTIES of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the LIVES of another."

[Posteritatis]

54. Ouch! Keeping that in probably would've altered some things over time.. (nt)

[Posteritatis]

42. I'd read something about that a couple of years back...

The general idea that the likelihood of our going to war against somebody - or otherwise being hostile - connected to whether we thought of them as people or not. It's harder to kill a person than a non-person, you see, so you're more likely to be willing to get into a fight with someone whose humanity you deny.

Keep in mind I'm talking in broadest generalities below.

If you go very far back (or not quite so far back in the case of, say, some of the remaining neolithic guys in South America and Southeast Asia/Australia), the family/village/very immediate tribe were the only people. If you ran into others, they were just that - others - and it was usually somewhere between alright and "necessary" to harm or kill them.

As time went by, people started gathering in larger groups than the size at which you could know who everyone is necessarily; 'people' became everyone living in your town or city, which meant the guy at the opposite end of the city was still safe to be around, but the folks in city across the valley were still suspect.

Time goes by again, "people" became anyone in the kingdom/state, despite it being sometimes pretty large and containing quite a few people you likely wouldn't ever meet, never mind know well. There's a nice, transparent example of this one historically - a Germanic tribe/nation/etc known as the Alemanni; their name literally means "all the men."

Basically, each time the circle of peoplehood goes up, the odds of fighting inside that group go down. There's exceptions, of course; the Romans' most hated enemy was more often than not the Romans, the Greeks would buckle down together against outside threats even though they fought one another constantly; European kingdoms fought a lot amongst one another even as the "people" concept was trying to expand to "Christendom" rather than "France" or the like.

It's only really been since WWII, though, that we began running into serious attempts to expand the concept to large swathes of the species, or even the entire human population. We're pretty damned fortunate that started showing up with (maybe because of?) the development of nuclear weapons. There's some headway being made on it - as much as people in the US or Canada or Europe might snark endlessly at one another in impressively childish or inane ways, the idea of actually going to arms amongst them is pretty much an entirely alien concept now.

In that concept - and I'm not excusing this! - quite a few American historical actions make somewhat more sense. At the time of the Revolution, blacks were non-people in the eyes of most of the revolutionaries, so a lot of them would honestly not have seen the hypocrisy in saying "all men are created equal" while considering a slave to be only 0.6 of a person. In WWII, someone elsewhere in the thread mentioned the treatment of Japanese versus German people or descendants; by that point Europeans were sorta kinda in the peoplesphere while Asians weren't. (Also, to be fair, the Germans were returning POW courtesies to western, if not eastern, allied troops for the most part, which Japan wasn't.)

If the whole idea holds true - and I think it does, at least in the broad strokes - it's probably a good thing. It would both make it less likely for us to pick a fight with the neighbors (or eventually anyone), and it would also impose higher standards on us for making that decision in the end.

[JeffreyWilliamson]

48. Very well reasoned observation there...

Thanks for contributing this. And as the concept of peoplehood encompasses more and more, do we reach a point at all when we can become inclined to go to war against those that do not recognize the full humanity of others? For an example, the Taliban.

[Posteritatis]

51. Found the book, woo

Gwynne Dyer, "War: The New Edition," published in 2005. (Red cover, not black; the black one's from the eighties.)

I'm not sure if we'll reach that point, and there'd be some problems getting especially close to it - the personhood would have to be mutual, and bringing it to the point of war against all of those who deny some peoples' humanity would potentially get into some pretty frightening confrontations I'd rather not think about - but I think we'll get there eventually. Maybe a bit sooner if there's someone parked in the White House who doesn't just divide the world into two mutually incompatible camps; that's got my optimism going for once.

Of course, whatever the inclination about those sorts of people, actually bringing out the weapons should still stay the last resort. I'd rather see most regimes reformed or peacefully deposed than violently, and I'll never be able to enjoy the fact that sometimes violence is the only option.

[ieoeja]

46. German-American citizens were rounded up into camps too.

And Japanese-Americans were released shortly after the war ended, while German-Americans were held for quite some time while we tried to figure out what to do with them.

The difference is the volume of knowledge on the two cultures. The FBI was told to figure out which Japanese/German-Americans should be interred. They did a pretty good job of weeding out German-Americans who would side with Germany. But the people doing this did not understand Japanese culture. And "undetermined" at that time meant you were sent off to the camps.

So while Japanese-Americans in the camps trying to enlist fellow internees to support Japan were routinely turned into the authorities, the German-Americans openly held pro-NAZI rallies and celebrated Adolf's birthday.

[ddeclue]

75. German Americans were never discriminated against to the degree that Japanese Americans were..

because of the racial factor and the fact that German Americans had been far more assimilated into American culture at the time from the mass exodus from Europe into America during the 19th and 20th centuries prior to the war.

Another reason was that Americans had prior experience in a recent war with Germans but none with the Japanese.

Another reason was simply that the Japanese had attacked us in a spectacular fashion in a sneak attack on December 7, 1941 while Germany really hadn't done so. (Although to be fair German u-boats had sunk a number of American freighters and even the Navy destroyer Reuben James prior December 7th.)

This is not to say that they weren't demonized but their property wasn't seized and they weren't sent in large numbers to isolated camps in the desert as the Japanese were.

[Thothmes]

81. As were some Italians

[Bragi]

29. The topic is called "Just War Theory"

Just war theory is a branch of military and political philosophy.

It's a quite interesting area, and highly relevant to discussion of the President Obama's policy on the Afghanistan war.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_War

[JeffreyWilliamson]

33. Interesting stuff, thanks for the link...

More recently, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, in paragraph 2309, lists four strict conditions for "legitimate defense by military force":

the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain;

all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;

there must be serious prospects of success;

the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power of modern means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition.

[SoxFan]

74. Additional resources on Just War theory

http://ethics.sandiego.edu/applied/military/justwar.html

[WHEN CRABS ROAR]

30. War is old thinking, but we have been conditioned from cradle

to grave to fight, it is now time to change that thinking, we are simply to interconnected for war to be a solution. We have a huge problems coming at us and it will take the whole world acting as one to solve them.

[cali]

50. pffft. humans are aggressive and territorial critters.

it's about instinctive drives at least as much as conditioning.

[wyldwolf]

32. yup

[Hepburn]

36. Yes.....

...attack on our shores or installations; or

a treaty for defense by which we are bound to defend another nation.

[JeffreyWilliamson]

40. What about a nation that needs to be defended

but has no such treaty with us?

[BlooInBloo]

37. Of course... Oh, wait. You bait-and-switched, turning it into *pre-emptive* war...

hahaha - you almost got me.

[JeffreyWilliamson]

41. Not really...

Take the Japanese out of the WWII equation. Say Pearl Harbor never happened.

Hitler storms across Europe. I don't know if that technically fits in the pre-emptive category. I guess it could, but the magnitude of what he was doing was so huge.

[DRoseDARs]

38. Yes, there are such reasons. That's why the Founders wrote Art.1 Sec.8 C.11 of the USC.

They wanted a debating body, Congress, to have the power to declare war instead of one man (or woman) as President to have that power. In 1973, Congress reaffirmed this enshrined principle with the War Powers Act, limiting the President's ability to commit US forces to combat without Congressional support.

[denverbill]

45. Personally, I think 'regime change' is a very valid and compelling reason.

I disagree 100% with the way Shrub and his buddies went about it though.

One nation and one person is not enough to judge which regime 'needs' to be changed. If every democracy in the world (or maybe a 75% majority) votes in the UN and proclaims that regime change is needed, that would be validation. Or perhaps a trial of some sort in an international court with representatives of all nations pronouncing the verdict, which would give the leader or regime a chance to defend itself.

If Bush had done that with Saddam, and gotten most of the rest of the world's democracies to agree with him, and not sold the war based on lies and trumped up evidence, I would have supported the war. Lacking that the war is unjustified, especially given the fact that there were no WMDs found and thus no imminent threat.

And with international support should come international troops and funding, a predetermined plan for the post-war reconstruction of both government and infrastructure, and a massive information campaign to attempt to convince the opposing army to surrender, so that as little death and destruction as possible accompanies the regime change.

I disagree with the people who claim 'threat of imminent attack' is a valid reason, because it's impossible to prove. There should be an agreement by all nations that no nation's army can move into the territory of another without automatically being declared war upon by all the other nations in the world. If a country knows that every other country in the world will declare war on it if they attack another country, there would be no grounds for an attack based on an imminent threat because any nation stupid enough to attack another would be destroyed.

[JeffreyWilliamson]

49. That's a very interesting proposal...

Kind of a world mutual security pact. Along with that would have to be some mechanism by which other nations could intervene if something were happening like a genocide within another nation's borders. I can see a potential draw back to the idea. Suppose as part of this pact, a majority of nations would have to agree to intervene to stop a genocide within one nation's borders. What if the vote failed to pass, or what if one or more nations blocked the vote somehow, allowing the genocide to continue.

If the violence escalated within that country's borders, and another nation decided it had had enough and moved to intervene, would this mean that the international community would be obligated to invade the nation that had come to the rescue? How can the proper "outs" be built into the concept?

[denverbill]

90. Well, here's an example.

Iraq starts an ethnic cleansing of it's Sunni minority. Saudi Arabia gets wind of it and brings it to the UN. The UN dispatches a police investigative unit to Iraq. The investigative unit doesn't find any evidence of atrocities. If Saudi Arabia goes ahead and invades to protect the Sunni minority, then yes, the world has to intervene against SA. There really isn't any choice if there is no solid proof of any wrong-doing by the Iraqi government. The legal way of dealing with problems needs to be the only way. Otherwise, it's little different from vigilantism, where the Saudis are taking the law into their own hands.

I just can't conceive of a situation where it could occur that in the above example, if the investigative team did find evidence of wrong-doing or something suspicious going on, where a majority of countries would not vote to either keep police there to monitor or investigate more, or to actually take action.

I think a trickier case might be something like Iraq today, where there is a lot of sectarian violence, but where it's difficult to pin the blame on the state. In a situation like that, you couldn't justify overthrowing the regime without evidence, but you could request the government to allow armed troops into the area to quell the violence and give the minority someone they could trust to report problems to.

It's probably just a pie-eyed dream though. Realistically, this would only work on smaller countries. I could see even discussing the idea would make China jittery, and I don't think most democracies would be willing to automatically invade Russia if it's forces invade Georgia or Chechnya.

[JeffreyWilliamson]

111. Very well said...

We could also perhaps write into the initial mutual treaty an obligation to defend against something like genocide whenever clear evidence was produced. Maybe it would be possible to write it in such a way as to remove the option for a vote at all when certain, very high standards were met. In that way there would be a sense of obligation on each nation's part from the outset. That may also serve as a very strong deterrent as well.

Your final point goes without saying. Something like this would only really be possible if we could ban nuclear weapons, and find a way to ensure that no one nation could budget more for their own military than all others combined, (and I'm looking at us when I say that).

I don't really think it's all pie-in-the-sky if enough people are willing to work towards it. If it were to work out in the end, it would certainly be better than what we have now.

[harun]

52. If oppressed, war is valid.

[LittleBlue]

53. Direct defense is the only reason. And if everyone adhered to that

there would be no more wars, since there would be no more belligerents.

[JeffreyWilliamson]

55. And if we stuck by that as a firm rule...

There may be no remedy for an oppressed people to free themselves since they may never get any help.

And how far shall we go to adhere to that? Deciding to stay put and only move if it's in our own defense does nothing to stop the Hitlers of the world from doing whatever they please. Perhaps later when everyone else has been invaded, and those aggressors come for us, we can let ourselves be comforted by the fact that we stuck to our principles.

[LittleBlue]

56. Let those people fight their own fights.

If they are oppressed, may they kill their oppressors. It's not our fight.

[Posteritatis]

58. Should France and the natives have stayed out of the American Revolution? (nt)

[LittleBlue]

61. From a French perspective, no.

Their immense debt lead to a destabilization of the country, and ultimately to the French Revolution.

From our perspective, we enjoyed many victories on their dime. But practically, our Guerrilla warfare tactics might have won the war eventually without French assistance, since that war incurred a huge debt on Britain, also.

[Posteritatis]

63. I disagree but I respect that kind of consistency; fair enough. (nt)

[LittleBlue]

65. What exactly do you disagree with?

Now I'm curious, because aside from my one speculation (that we would have won the war eventually), the rest of my post dealt with historical facts.

France should not have entered the war, from a French perspective. It ultimately brought down their government, and in doing so spread the shadow of Napoleonic warfare (huge casualties) across Europe.

[joeglow3]

70. Do you apply this logic only to war?

Would you stick up for a kid getting punched in the face by an adult? Would you stick up for a black or gay person who is being beaten?

[LittleBlue]

78. Yes I'd stick up for them, but that is a police action.

I fully support policing actions. Just not military.

I think I see where you're coming from. I support the rights of locals to determine their own fate. When they are oppressed, it would be nice if an outside body had the moral authority and accepted legitimacy to intervene. Alas, there is no such body. It seems that every time we get involved in foreign affairs, it is more likely to support the oppressors (China, Pakistan, Israel, Saudi Arabia) or to overthrow legitimately elected governments or movements with popular support(Iran pre-1979, Venezuela, Vietnam, South America in the 1980's).

I don't trust the government, not even under Obama.

[JeffreyWilliamson]

59. And so if they are so oppressed that they cannot have any hope of stopping it...

Then you would not in any way feel morally obligated to save them if you could? Yes or no.

[LittleBlue]

64. I want them to be free, but realize we don't have the ability to

free them without imperial ambitions and little support from the locals.

Tribal cultures with a high degree of religious fervor do not accept invading powers.

[JeffreyWilliamson]

67. But what if there was a new way of thinking...

In which we did not attempt such a thing for imperial ambitions. What about doing something because it's the right thing to do?

[LittleBlue]

69. It is not possible. Humans are too greedy for this kind of thinking.

Even if they were, the locals would never see a post-colonial invading force as anything but bad. They would resist no matter the circumstances.

[JeffreyWilliamson]

76. Now.

Humans are too greedy right now for this kind of thinking. That may not always be the case.

[dbmk]

94. Thats a specific reservation to a general question

The general question is "What if they want and need our help?".

The question was not whether you saw the war in Afghanistan as just.

[Two Americas]

134. not so

This is American mythology. Setting an example of self-defense and not being aggressive, makes it easier and more likely that we would be of value to oppressed people, not less.

Starting with "we might need to intervene, and sometimes it is justified" always reinforces aggression, sets that example, and leads to more oppression and makes genocide and tyranny more likely, not less.

I think you are fishing around looking for an excuse and a rationalization for aggression, providing "we" - the supposed "good guys" - are the ones who are being aggressive.

The most effective and efficient opposition to Hitler came from the Danes. Had all followed their example, the Nazis would have been stopped cold and millions of lives would have been saved.

The US didn't defeat the Nazis militarily, the Soviets did. The US repeatedly turned its back on the growing refugee problem leading up to the war.

The US rained down murder on civilians for years in both Germany and Japan, for little if any military advantage. It was vengeance and bloodlust.

"We" were not the "good guys" in WWII.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

130. No, defence of others is often a valid reason.

If massive crimes against humanity are being committed in a country then going to war to stop them is often justifiable, even if your national self-interest is not threatened.

Stopping the Serbian ethnic cleansing of Kosovo was the right thing to do; sending troops to Darfur to stop the ethnic cleansing there would have been the right thing to do.

[dcindian]

57. No there is never a good reason. But there are reasons

My question to you then is. Would it be legitimate for more liberal and free nations to attack our nation to force their ideal of society on us?


Will there come a date and time when an alien life form will be in the right for destroying our world because we are so backwards?


Who's right is right? Who's wrong deserves annihilation?

[JeffreyWilliamson]

60. Just to toss out an obvious one...

Hitler's wrong deserved annihilation.

Should a more liberal nation attack our nation because we are pretty backwards in a lot of respects? No.

But what about in the case of someone like Robert Mugabe? Or the Taliban? That's not a cultural difference we're talking about. It's not a difference of opinion about social policy. It's a question of brutality.

[dcindian]

68. So basically it is defined by you are right and everyone else is wrong?

Odd that is exactly why Hitler got as far as he did.


Wouldn't it be a better situation all around where the use of war or the destruction of people was frowned on and not a legitimate tool of directing society. It takes such a small turn of mores to turn the Taliban into American corporate greed.


Didn't what Al-Qaeda do to the twin towers amount to exactly what you are calling for? They see American aggressive use of force to pervert their sense of morality much as you see their societies use of force against women.

In a matter you are legitimizing what they did on 9-11.

Edited to add:

What we allow to happen to the gays is brutal. What we did and are doing to the Iraqi people is brutal. What we did and often allow done to the people of color in this nation is brutal. What we do and are doing to detainees is brutal. Torture is brutal. Putting people to death is brutal. Abortion is brutal.

All reasons to annihilate?

How many Americans should die in your little war?

[JeffreyWilliamson]

73. I'm not presuming that it should at all be based upon my opinion of right and wrong...

But I do think that we as humanity can together have a legitimate opinion of what is right and wrong, and Hitler is again the perfect example. Aside from our neo-nazi population and I'm sure some Republicans, I doubt you'll find anyone who doesn't understand on a fundamental level that what Hitler did needed to be stopped.

You make a very valid point however in that "wrong" can be a matter of perspective. This is where we need a more robust system within the UN or something in place of the UN altogether that functions more as a global federal system, not run by a Security Council where each member has veto power, but a real Assembly with some kind of teeth.

We absolutely must have a system at the global level to identify and prevent atrocities, where a majority of peoples can identify problems and agree on a course of action within a certain framework of verification of evidence, and then if they must, use a combined force of all nations to act with a universal voice for human rights. Imagine a world in which a genocide in Africa is occuring, an Assembly is called to order, and after verifying the evidence and settling on a plan of action, that crap is stopped.

We'll never see it in our lifetimes, and that's very unfortunate. Humanity will have to get over its imperialist ambitions, grow up, and be ready to strive for something more.

[dcindian]

80. Yes but I believe there must be a better way then bombing a nation.

Of course what Hitler did was wrong. Letting things get to a point where he had legitimacy with the population was the point of error, not in bombing the heck out of Germany before he did anything. If it was the latter then we only trade one atrocity for another.

I agree we will never see any global system of intervention and if we see some perverted system of it then we are in worse trouble then letting it be as is. I think where we disagree is where that intervention needs to take place.

[BzaDem]

85. YES. Yes, yes, yes.

There IS a difference between right and wrong. The attitude that "there is no actual right and wrong" is one major cause of conflicts. Al-Qaeda was wrong. What the Taliban do to women is wrong. Hitler was wrong. It is not a matter of perspective, and these are not gray areas. This is not a matter of different senses of morality. War was a legitimate tool to get rid of Hitler (I'm pretty sure almost everyone here agrees about this).

The view that each country can have their own sense of "right and wrong" completely independent of what anyone else things is a dangerous philosophy.

[rockymountaindem]

100. +1

I'm all for evaluating different perspectives, but all too often that denigrates into apathy and an unwillingness to make tough (or even easy) moral judgments.

[Posteritatis]

103. +2! (nt)

[eridani]

114. The US fucking well did not thinkt that what the Taliban was doing to women was wrong

--when imperial tool Zalmay Khalilzad (currently ambassador to Iraq) wrote his 1997 WaPo op-ed saying that the Taliban was promoting "stability" in Afghanistan, and was not nearly as bad as those anti-American Shi'ites in Iraq. In the 80s, your tax dollars paid for the religious whackjobs fighting the Soviet union, and also for pro-jihadi textbooks written in American universities.

[JeffreyWilliamson]

116. You are correct...

But that doesn't excuse our allowing the Taliban to do it now.

If it was wrong then, it is still wrong now.

[eridani]

118. All our attempts at stopping them have involved bombing the shit out of civilians

This does nothing but intensify the war of each against all, which women always, always lose. Any possible effective way of stopping the Taliban would require allowing Afghanistan to call the shots, which our imperial bullying policy will never permit.

[JeffreyWilliamson]

120. Let me be clear, we should not bomb the shit out of civilians...

But let me also be clear, if we abandon Afghanistan to settle the problem on its own, the Taliban, currently within an hour or so of Kabul, with its weak government, will march into the city and the slaughter will begin anew.

There is no easy answer here. I chose to err on the side of human rights. If you think that women will lose if we stay and try and protect Afghanistan, and perhaps try to push the Taliban back, what exactly do you think the benefit for women will be if we leave instead, and allow them to live under the Taliban?

Do you think Afghan womens' lives will be better under the current Afghan government, or the Taliban? And I'm not trying to suggest that the current government of Afghanistan is perfect in any way, just that it's far, far better for women than letting the Taliban overthrow it, (which is exactly what will happen if we leave), and re-institue their brutal Sharia law.

[dcindian]

123. do you think Iraq was worth it?

It follows many of the guidelines you have put out.

[JeffreyWilliamson]

125. No, it wasn't...

And if you'll read my responses in the related threads you'll find that I have spoken against, and indeed at the time protested, the Iraq war.

[eridani]

126. The current goverment consists of warlords who are no different from the Taliban

OK, slightly less puritanical and a lot more corrupt. Sharia law is already reinstituted. We are not currently "protecting" anybody but investors in pipelines and 5-star hotels. The war has always been about imperial domination, and stopping it will stop feeding the most fundy social elements.

Just leaving isn't enough, of course. We should fund NGOs with programs that directly involve locals. http://www.rawa.org/index.php--these people for years snuck into Afghanistan to run literacy programs for women.

For much less than we are spending now, we could buy the entire opium crop for much higher prices that would go directly to farmers, and then use it making heroin medically available from doctors on demand as they now do in Switzerland.

[JeffreyWilliamson]

129. Okay, so we turn over local issues to NGO's...

Let me ask you this--suppose an NGO sets up a school for Afghan girls, and the local Taliban in the area punish the girls from going to that school by pouring acid on their faces. What security will you be willing to guarantee? Is it enough to say that we did our job because we set up the school? If you aren't willing to commit any security at all, then what's the point of setting up an NGO at all, considering what will happen if we pull our forces out and only work through those NGO's...

The Afghan police forces won't step up and defend the students because even they live in fear of the Taliban. What force do you recommend we use to make sure the NGO's work, if not the military? At what point does the line blur so much that we have to step in, or are you of the opinion that the line can never blur enough?

Are you okay with the knowledge that if we leave, we are effectively handing Afghanistan over to the Taliban?

If not, what specific actions would you recommend in order to curb the violence that the Taliban will exact against the Afghan people, and don't just say "diplomacy", I want specifics.

How, specifically, do you propose stopping the torture against the Afghan people if we leave and let the Taliban take over?

[eridani]

136. Security can be defensive only,

Hunting the Taliban in the mountains and bombing civilians is stupid. A multinational force, including Americans, for the purposes of defending projects only would be fine. It was only since our 2001 involvement that Doctors Without Borders was forced out of Afghanistan, after having survived the Soviets, the warlords and the Taliban. That tells you all you need to know about our current policy.

We'd also have to guard drop-off points for opium, as the current profiteers wouldn't like my proposed program much.

[Danger Mouse]

95. So Hitler should have been allowed to slaughter as many Jews as he wanted?

Sorry, but there IS absolute right and wrong...in very few cases.
Genocide is an absolute wrong.

[dcindian]

121. you just don't get the point.

No where did I say there is no absolute wrongs.


That my friend is exactly what you and the other warmongers are saying. I am saying that your twisted set of mores are used the same way by others to also legitimize the annihilation of life.

[JeffreyWilliamson]

124. I'd use the word "pervert", not "legitimize"...

I understand that you are not saying that there are no absolute wrongs. But you must realize that you just called a poster who used genocide as an example of a clear evil as a warmonger.

Can we get away from using those types of terms?

[Two Americas]

138. he was

And the ruling class in the United States was deeply complicit.

[dbmk]

98. Sure, Al-Qaedas war is justifiable. To them.

Their morals just doesn't coincide with mine. Or plenty others.

Morals are not equal. Mine are supreme.

And when someone acts sufficiently contrary to my morals, intervention using the oppropriate level of force is justified.

Lucky for me, it seems I share large parts of it with a strong and sizeable portion of the world.

[dcindian]

122. Yes a large part of the world thinks that civilians should bear the brunt of the actions of

a government. I hear Al-Qaeda is hiring.

[endarkenment]

62. About the Holocaust example..

we did not get into WWII over the attempted extermination of the Jews nor did we do much of anything explicitly to stop the ongoing extermination programs. The disruption of these programs was a result, a by-product, of our military efforts against Germany, but were never part of our military planning.

Germany declared war on us after Pearl Harbor (Dec 11.) We had previously declared war against Japan (Dec 8.)

To answer your question: self defense. Self defense might include 'coming to the aid of your friends'. It also includes 'keeping the planet's trade routes safe and secure'. In extreme situations where a genocide is unambiguously in progress international intervention might be justified. In these situations it rarely is the case that anyone does anything.

We were and are justified in going after Al Qaeda in self defense. That does not justify the occupation of Afghanistan nor (obviously) the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

[JeffreyWilliamson]

66. nor (obviously) the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

I think it's safe to say we ALL agree on that.

[BzaDem]

87. Then it all comes down to the definition of unambiguous.

If the leader of the country says there is no genocide, should everyone just let them go on their merry way?

In reality, there is no easy or hard and fast standard. Almost everything is ambiguous at some level.

[endarkenment]

91. Well sure - words have meaning and facts are important

you can't just toss out the phrase 'genocide' because you don't like this or that government and they are doing bad things, it really has to be an attempt at extermination of an entire group of people. No obviously just because that nice Mr. Hitler says 'no genocide here' we should not take his word on it, then again just because somebody does claim that 'this is genocide' doesn't mean that it is.

The idiocy we witnessed with Iraq could easily have replaced WMD with genocide, and the case for that in Iraq (w.r.t the Kurds for example) would have been more substantial than the case that the Taliban are committing Genocide in Afghanistan.

[ddeclue]

71. The American Revolution, the War of 1812, the Civi War (for the North), World War II, and Korea

were highly justified and righteous wars in which either a moral principle was at stake or our nation was attacked.

The war in Afghanistan is justified as a continuation of the war that started in 1990's with the first WTC attack in 1993, the Khobar Towers attack, 9/11 and subesequent al Qaeda attacks. A "general" war against an abstract noun "terrorism" is not justified but a defensive war against al Qaeda IS justified since it saw fit to attack us.

The war in Iraq was never really justified based on any real moral grounds but rather upon a series of lies designed to induce fear. It is perhaps possible that the Iraq war could have been justified upon the basis of ending tyranny and preventing a genocide but that was not the case made nor was it proven that there was an ongoing case of genocide in Iraq at the time of our attack.

The First Gulf War was more about oil but was somewhat justified in that it threatened our vital national interests and those of the Western world generally and in that Sadaam was a worse dictator than the royal Kuwaiti family.

The Vietnam War was not really justified in that it was a clear attempt to continue the French colonialism there rather than recognize Vietnamese independence. It was misguided real-politik that brought it about.

The Indian wars, Spanish American War and the Mexican American War and the various incursions of US forces into Latin America during the last portion of the 19th and first portion of the 20th Centuries was obviously about American empire and were by far the most unjust wars America has ever fought - they went against the basic principles that underlie this nation - self-determination, liberty and equality.

The First World War is kind of an odd duck in that it is on its face justifiable in light of the sinking of American shipping and the deaths of Americans on the high seas from German U-boats and due to the various intrigues between Mexico and Germany that theoretically threatened US sovereignity but to do so ignores that US munitions manufacturers were supplying weapons to the British and that there was no real neutrality on our part.

There are various other quasi wars and military actions but these are the biggest ones.

[JeffreyWilliamson]

79. That's an excellent summary. n/t

[Thothmes]

82. Could go along with your selections except

why was the war of 1812 justified?

[eridani]

115. It wasn't. The Brits slapped our pinkies because we invaded Canada n/t

[Hippo_Tron]

143. 1812 has to be looked at through a 19th century lens

Early 19th century warfare and 20th/21st century warfare are different matters because of the differences in destruction. World War I was the first time that modern weapons were used on a large scale and it completely changed western civilization's views about war. The idea of war as a last resort is a 20th century notion because simply put the wars of the 19th century and before just weren't as destructive.

Now that isn't to say that war was a fairytale in the 19th century. People were still killed maimed, etc. But it was still different. Generals still rode into battle with their soldiers and the army wasn't so much poor people fighting rich peoples' wars that it is today. That changed somewhat by the mid 19th century.

As to what 1812 was about, it was ultimately about the Unite States establishing itself as a serious sovereign power that Europe (particularly Britain) could not mess with. By 20th or 21st century standards that's not an acceptable justification for a war because wars are too costly and because there are other options. If you want to show your power in the 20th/21st century you test fire missiles or show off your space program. In the 19th century those options didn't really exist.

So was it justified? Probably not. But it was more justifiable in 1812 than it would be in 2009.

[SoxFan]

72. Yes

http://ethics.sandiego.edu/applied/military/justwar.html

[Two Americas]

77. self defense

That is the only valid and morally defensible reason, and is always a valid and morally defensible reason.

People have a right to defend themselves. Denying that right does not lead to peace, it leads to enslavement, and that increases the likelihood of violence and war.

Confusion about this is the reason why the anti-war movement has failed over the last few years, in my view. The position that "war is bad" is not solid. The problem is aggression, not war. If the Iraqis and Afghans had submitted to us and not resisted, there would have been peace. Our opposition to the recent wars should be based on the fact that the US is the aggressor.

Whether or not there is violence when people are resisting domination is is the hands of the aggressor. Since we live in the most powerful and most aggressive country in the world, it is somewhat disingenuous for us to lecture others about "peace" without addressing who the aggressor is in a situation, and without acknowledging the right to self-defense. In places where the US dominates, the violence goes on every day as culture and communities are steam rolled out of existence by US capitalist interests. That is not "peace." Why should the US government be basing its foreign policy on protecting business interests? That is a question that we need to be asking.

The US government is, and has been, first and foremost defending US business interests overseas, and that means that we have a military defending and promoting the needs and desires of the few here - and we need to remember that those same few are also preying on the American people - and acting as the aggressor.

[leftstreet]

101. ^^Excellent response^^

Everyone should read this

[Two Americas]

106. interesting, isn't it?

People's unwillingness to face or tell the truth about their own country, and about the political and economic system, leaves them without a solid foundation for discussing this, without an accurate and useful framework that would come from a sober and unflinching view of reality, and that then leads to all sorts of illogical and convoluted thinking.

I have watched the last few days as people struggle to come up with plausible justifications for killing civilians, holding people in detention, denial of due process and habeas corpus, aggressive war and every other sort of abomination. All because they are unwilling to tell the truth about the country now that "their" politicians are in power.

[JeffreyWilliamson]

110. You're missing something in this though...

And that is that sometimes there are such horrific situations going on in the world that someone has to step up to the plate.

I agree with everything you've said so far. Most people really do not every take the time to sit back and really think about America's role as an aggressor.

America has a very nasty chip on its shoulder to be sure. We need to realize this fact, and we need to realize that our motivations in times past have been wrong, evil in and of themselves, and led us to commit violence in the name of patriotism.

However there are certain situations in which we, or other peoples with our abilities, should step in to right an abhorrent wrong. The example I would use would be a genocide. Suppose there is a nation with a brutal junta wiping out an ethnic population, just because they can. Suppose this ethnic group is in virtual slavery, and has no hope or means to rebel on their own. What if no one else will get involved, because they're too distracted with what matters only to them.

In such a situation, should we allow a debate over our own self-goodness to stop us from ending the genocide? Should we allow it to slow us down, knowing full well that every moment that passes is another thousand human beings slaughtered. Should we use force to stop it, even though some will be killed to save many?

I hope that if you've read my postings in these debates that you haven't left thinking that I in any way advocate killing civilians, suspending rights, or waging aggressive war against people. I can understand how that may have been taken away by anyone who has only taken a quick look, because I have been advocating stopping the Taliban from retaking Afghanistan.

That's why I started this thread, actually. I wanted to strip away the specific regional debate and find a deeper area of grey and really parse out what we all think in common, and where we disagree.

Should we take the opportunity to reflect on what our nation has done, and how its agenda has damaged other peoples? I think "yes". Should that make us ask serious questions about what exactly is our motivation in intervening somewhere? Again, "yes". Do we need to account for the pain that we have caused" Also, "yes".

Should we abandon those that cannot defend themselves and genuinely, desperately, need us most? I think the answer is "no", on moral grounds. I know that wreaks of idealism and trusts the better side of our humanity, but I'm a Humanist, and that's at the core of my own philosophy. I deeply believe that humanity is better than we give ourselves credit for, and better than what we currently aspire to be. I believe at my very core that we should work to better the lives of society as a whole, and that sometimes it's required of us to take a stand for humanity's sake, especially when no one else will.

I want to thank you for your posts here. This is the kind of debate and discussion I had in mind. Your posts here have been informative, thorough, and very thought provoking, and have made me think about an aspect of this that I hadn't taken the time to consider before.

[Two Americas]

117. I have thought about that quite a bit

I agree with you that sometimes there are such horrific situations going on in the world that someone has to step up to the plate. But that cannot be the United States military. Our government is on the wrong side. Before we could go around saving others, this would have to be a very different country. It is an illusion that power could remain in the hands it is now and that we at the same time can somehow be the good guys. It us a dangerous and deadly illusion. Let's deal with the tyranny here, that is the tyranny that threatens the world. You don't see the tyranny here, don't see that this is the nerve center and headquarters for tyranny international, because you are part of the palace guard. You serve the killing machine and are given some security and peace and well being - such as it is - in exchange for your compliance and obedience. So it seems nice and benign, and we can fantasize about America as the good guy. That is an illusion.

The United States does not so much have a chip on its shoulder, rather the government has been hijacked by the wealthy and powerful few and the military does their bidding and advances their interests.

As individuals, we can go join up and help other people fight tyranny, as people did during the Spanish Civil War. Keep in mind though, that if you do that, your own government will oppose you. Always. But it would be time better spent to organize opposition here, among your own people and fight for them. Then the people here - not the rulers - can help those abroad.

A lot of this hinges on what people mean when they say "we" and "America." The activist community is dominated by people who unconsciously betray their loyalty to the upper class by how they use those two words. They say "we" did this or that, or "America" is this or that when they mean the rulers.

If you think of America as the people, identify with that "we," with the working people, and then ask "should the workers here unite and battle against tyranny and give aid to and stand in solidarity with other oppressed workers around the world?" My answer is yes. That is how you overthrow tyranny and stop genocide.

If, on the other hand, by "we" and "America" you mean the rulers and the Pentagon and the corporations, and ask should we encourage them to intervene around the world, or expect them to be overthrowing tyranny or stopping genocide, the the answer is a resounding "no." They are on the other side from the people, here and abroad.

[JeffreyWilliamson]

128. Once again, I find myself agreeing with everything but one point...

And that is the exception of using the United States military. It's hard to explain, but I absolutely agree with everything you are saying, except with one point, and even then only under certain circumstances. That point is that when all else fails, and there are no other options, we should be willing to use our military force to rescue people.

Perhaps the difference is that you are recognizing what the United States government is with its motivations, in reality, and I am hung up on what that government can, and should be. It's hard to explain, but I think that our disagreement here may be not so much based upon what justifies war, but our perspective of the government behind it in general. You obviously have a very clear grasp of the reality of now, while I'm operating from a philosophy of what should be.

Perhaps that's where I'm mistaken, in that I'm evaluating these things on a moral level but not a real world level.

Our conversation here has given me a lot to think about, and once again I want to credit you for that. Regardless of whether or not I come back later with a change in opinion, this conversation is the very essence of what I was trying to achieve in this thread.

[Two Americas]

133. thanks

On a moral level, doesn't my "self defense" post address that?

The next question you are asking - is it morally justified to intervene to protect another. Yes, it is.

Should we be willing to use our military force to rescue people?

Again, if we don't define what we mean by "we" and "our" we are at sea and it is hard to discuss.

"We" - the US government and the rulers - are not using any part of the government to rescue people in New Orleans or Detroit, in fact are hostile and contemptuous and indifferent to the plight of people right here. "We" - the US government and the rulers - are openly hostile toward poor indigenous people who are trying to rescue themselves and their families by coming here to work.

Would Morales or Chavez be justified to use military force to rescue us? Depends on whom we mean when we say "us" doesn't it?

Forgive me, but I think you are starting with a foregone conclusion and then trying to build a case to support that conclusion. You use "we" in the hope that the rulers and you and I are on the same team, and then ask these questions in the hope that this "we" can somehow be seen as the good guys.

There is a privileged class in this country, into which all showing signs of verbal and analytical skills are coerced, who are given a certain amount of status and material well-being in exchange for controlling the national political discussion. Until and unless one does that - and we are largely oblivious to this process as it is uncomfortable and disorienting to look at - one will be an outcast and treated as a criminal. In the activist community, and DU, that class is disproportionately represented and dominates the thinking and the discussion.

It is our job, as the "house Negroes," to work our asses off coming up with convoluted rationalizations and justifications for the ruling class, and then to aggressively force those on the discussion. We must come up with some way to conjure up some "we" - make it seem like the rulers and the people are on the same team - and then look for ways that this "we" can somehow be seen as the good guys.

If you refuse to do that, you run the risk of being cast out of the inner circle of intellectuals and "winners," of losing your job, of running afoul of the authorities. We, as the few who have verbal and analytical skills, are so steeped in the denials and illusions that we have great difficulty seeing this. We know on some level that something is very wrong, that our skills have been co-opted and corrupted - this is often experienced as dissatisfaction with the various white collar professions and jobs, and also a futility and frustration with political action, and as stress from the frantic pace and the fears and anxiety of maintaining status and security. Bur we don't connect those with politics, so we remain impotent and confused.

Start talking like this around blue collar people, and they know exactly what you are talking about. They see "America" and "we" as their family, friends, neighbors and co-workers, and say "they" when talking about the war, the bailout, and the various other actions by the ruling class.

Start talking about this around white collar people, and people get emotionally uncomfortable. They fear being seen as "crazy" or "radical" or "unrealistic" and "impractical." Their identity is threatened. They fear being socially ostracized. They fear where that thinking could lead.

[IGotAName]

107. Well said. nt

[Lilith Velkor]

135. I haven't seen much confusion about this in the anti-war movement

Sure, you have your pacifist religious types that show up at protests, but many, probably a majority, understand that people have a right to defend themselves.

It's just that "people" includes Iraqis and Afghans, and a lot of Americans don't want to hear that. So the message gets dumbed down and full of appeals to emotion.

Do you think people in the movement don't give the average person enough credit to be able to get that?

[Two Americas]

137. here is the problem

Here is the problem I see, and this is certainly not a blanket condemnation of all anti-war activists.

There is an unexamined class bias from the activists toward the general public.

The activists generally mean the ruling class when they say "we" and "America." That is the first problem - two different definitions of "America."

Then there is a contemptuous attitude among the activists toward the people in the general public, and the activists blame the people for the aggressiveness of the ruling class.

[Lilith Velkor]

144. Yes, I do see the contempt

In fact, I'm guilty of it myself, and should figure out how to check that somehow.

And I have experienced the class bias often, on the receiving end.

I don't quite get what you're saying about identifying with the ruling class, though. Pretty much everyone I know in the movement, regardless of caste, has had their door busted in by the Feds. (Luckily, they didn't bother with my family, but I believe that was because I was a guest in a state mental hospital while most of it was going down.) It was quite a teachable moment for class consciousness, I tell ya.

[Two Americas]

145. pro war blue collar people

What I see with many blue collar people is a simple and fierce loyalty to family, friends and neighbors, and a willingness to serve and defend that, even though they know that it is - and has always been - a matter of "a rich man's war and a poor man's fight."

That is much closer to class consciousness than the thinking of many relatively upscale activists ever is.

One example of class bias -

Several hundred thousand poor people of color have been rounded up in illegal paramilitary raids and thrown into detention and denied due process by Homeland Security.

Yet when one doctoral candidate from Sweden, a white woman, was relatively mildly harassed by Homeland Security and denied entry, we saw far more outrage expressed here over that one incident than we ever see about the larger problem that affects hundreds of thousands of poor people of color.

Another example -

While hundreds of thousands of immigrants were in the streets marching, I saw people posting here saying "when oh when will those stupid sheeple wake up and take to the streets?"

[Lilith Velkor]

146. That last part infuriated me

In 2003, there were huge, huge protests in DC. At one of them, a friend of mine got hit with a cattle prod in front of cameras from EVERY SINGLE MAJOR NETWORK.

Not a single one aired a single second of that footage. None but Al-Jazzera, and well, they don't exactly count.

[anonymous171]

149. /thread nt

[Captain Lance Bass]

83. Flying passenger airlines into our skyscrapers.......

killing all aboard and innocent Americans at work in those buildings...is a valid reason.

It maybe just me but watching my fellow Americans jump to their deaths from 80 stories up rather than burn to death makes a me a tad bit grumpy.

[endarkenment]

93. a valid reason for what exactly?

al qaeda's saudi financed attack on us so far has resulted in two wars, one against Iraq and one against Afghanistan. The latter was at least justified to begin with on the grounds that al qaeda was getting support from the Taliban regime, now it has morphed into another failed nation building occupation mission never over. The former was total bullshit from the start. We've never actually explicitly declared war on al qaeda, nor have we done anything about the saudis. Why is that?

[IGotAName]

108. Your response is meaningless.

The fact that the Iraq War was unjustified has no effect on the justification for invading Afghanistan.

Nor does the fact that the inept and corrupted Bush Administration led the Afghan invasion lead one to a theoretical stance against doing so.

[endarkenment]

131. Your reading comprehension is impaired.

The attack on us in 2001 by al qaeda was used as justification for two wars. As I stated, the original war against the Taliban government of Afghanistan was credible as they were providing a safe haven for the group that attacked us, al qaeda. However, within months, that war became not an effort to eliminate the organization that attacked us, the organization that under a principle of self defense we had a just case to wage war against, but instead a doomed mission to create a secular nation-state acceptable to our european-american sensibilities. That mission continues today, has no remaining connection to the events of 2001, other than 'we broke Afghanistan too', and is just as miserable an exercise in imperial folly as the totally unjustified war crime we committed to the west in Iraq.

We continue to not do very much at all about actually destroying the saudi wahabi sunni led jihadist organization known as al qaeda. We continue to not even have bothered to declare war against them. We continue to coddle Saudi Arabia and tolerate Pakistan despite their continued probable collusion with al qaeda, while occupying Iraq for no good reason at all, and continue a failed mission in Afghanistan long after the justification for that operation fell apart.

I responded to an assertion that our actions after 9-11 were just. I continue to want to know what, other than the initial attack against the Taliban regime, fell into the just war category.

[Two Americas]

119. for what?

A valid reason for what?

[Peacetrain]

84. Yes there is

[InAbLuEsTaTe]

86. Only if in self defense after being attacked first (assuming you didn't provoke that attack).

[Solon]

88. Self defense against another state, or to defend an ally against an aggressor are the situations...

that should involve the military, beyond that, no. In the case of Al Queda and Afghanistan, the problem is the law of unintended consequences, while Al Queda was supported by the Taliban, they were independent of it as well. Military action is a scythe, an axe, when a scalpel is needed in situations like this, this was and is a situation where law enforcement should step in, NOT the military. We are not going to sign a peace treaty with Osama Bin Laden, and let him or anyone else in his organization go their merry way, nor would we accept his organization's surrender, even if he were capable of surrendering it, which he's not, he doesn't control a nation after all.

This is like fighting the Mafia with the National Guard here at home, it simply doesn't work, look at what happened in Afghanistan, we captured a shitload of Al Queda operatives and innocents, but frankly that hasn't done anything to break the organization, because its so decentralized. Osama Bin Laden and his group packed up an moved to Pakistan, and now, fear and fanaticism is gripping that country to such an extent its destabilizing the marginally secular regime that happens to also have its own nuclear stockpile.

Not to mention all the other terror groups worldwide who have been strengthened by the actions of the Bush Regime, Al Queda was able to extend its influence into Iraq and many other nations as well. If we bomb a few other nations, we will truly end up fighting a multi-generational war that we will ultimately lose, because it was a foolhardy endeavor in the first place.

[MrSlayer]

89. Hitler declared war on us after we declared on Japan.

It's not like we just decided to jump in there against him. We may well have done nothing about Germany if things had happened otherwise.

The American Revolution was perfectly justified as well. At what point have we been oppressed more by anyone in modern times? When have we had taxation without representation and the like since?

As for your terrorist question, yes, going after the state sponsor is justified but you better damn well have proof of what you claim before you do anything.

I'm not for attacking anyone who has not attacked us or our allies. Questions of morality are subjective.

[dbmk]

92. Even if not allies by treaty

..., can oppressed populations not be said to be allies in humanity?

There are and will be cases, where there are powers capable of intervening in the oppression of a group not capable of ending it themselves.

It degrades our own humanity not to act to the best of our ability to stop it.

[Hippo_Tron]

96. Only if the outcome of the war is uncertain

Otherwise war is the result of a failure of diplomacy or rational thinking.

[Posteritatis]

102. *Un*certain? (nt)

[Hippo_Tron]

104. If the outcome of the war is certain then it's stupid to fight the war

[dbmk]

127. Well, the war could still be "valid" as per the OPs question, could it not?

Whether it was smart or not, seems to me to be beside the question.

[Hippo_Tron]

132. Not in my view

If the outcome of the war is certain then the politicians who choose to fight the war are getting people killed for no reason. As far as I'm concerned there is no justification to fight a war in which people will die for no reason whatsoever.

[Danger Mouse]

97. I think war is justifiable in three cases.

1. A direct attack or imminent threat of a direct attack.

2. A direct attack on an ally.

3. Evidence of genocide.

[IGotAName]

109. Agreed- I would add "ongoing or imminent" to your third case. nt

[WinkyDink]

99. The American Revolution wasn't "our people" vs. the British; we were all British citizens; hence,

"revolution" and "Declaration of Independence".

[TheKentuckian]

105. my four

1. Life-Obviously you have to defend the lives of your citizens.
2. Liberty-Life is of minimal use without self determination to live it.
3. The Pursuit of Happiness (this is both where it gets sticky and is used most often because one hates to muck around with the first two much). This is the sketchy part but one that I'd argue is still worth fighting for in certain circumstances. One body that takes a course of action which will actively endanger your ability to live as you please is at a point effectively a threat to your person.
The problem with this is we end up turning it into a reason to confront communism and wars on drugs. Some would add terror but I'd certainly reserve the right to bust that shit up when it presents it's self as an organized threat. Otherwise fear will over take most people and we trade freedom for security in a big way.

4. Rinse and repeat for allies.

[Cash_thatswhatiwant]

112. yes n/t

[eridani]

113. Going to war to stop bad things from happening elsewhere--

--I'd say it depends on whether it was possible to do that without fucking things up even worse.

Human history provides no actual examples anywhere of "humanitarian" intervention. Sometimes it's a side benefit of aggressive power used to advance the aggressors' interests, though. The two modern examples are India's invasion of East Pakistan to facilitate the breakup of its rival, which had the effect of stopping the slaughter of East Pakistanis (now Bangladeshis), by West Pakistan, and the invasion of Cambodia by Vietnam to assert control over disputed areas of the Mekong delta, which had the effect of removing Pol Pot from power. In the latter case, the US howled about how there was no justification for aggression ever, no matter any beneficial side effects, and immediately began supporting Pol Pot indirectly through China.

[Hippo_Tron]

140. Kosovo was a humanitarian intervention

Sure there were US interests at stake but there always will be whenever we intervene. Moral imperative alone isn't a justification to commit US blood and treasure to a conflict because if it were we would be committed to intervene in every humanitarian conflict, which clearly we cannot do.

[eridani]

142. That's pure crap

The major attacks by Serbia on Kosovo civilians were AFTER NATO destroyed Serbia's civilian infrastructure (almost no actual military targets were involved) and in response to the NATO attack.

For imperial bullies to designate innocent little lambs worthy of their protection in order to advance their project of military domination is truly sickening. In this case, US mercenaries had aided and abetted Croatia in doing an exactly identical mass slaughter and ethnic cleansing of the Serbs of the Krajina, so it's not like our foreign policy establishment gives a shit one way or another.

[ShadowLiberal]

139. Actually the US was 'unofficially' fighting in WW2 before Pearl Harbor

Before the Japanese bombed pearl harbor we were having an undeclared navy war with Germany. Germany didn't like it that we were trading with their enemies, and helping the British with policies like loaning weapons and such to 'any nation that the US deems the survival of vital to US interests'.

As for your question, Hitler was a crazy and dangerous lunatic that we should have taken out sooner. With how rapidly the axis powers were turning on allies and conquering them it must have been difficult to sleep at night, fearing that they might invade your country next, especially if you lived next to one of the Axis powers. If the US had just sat back and done nothing then the Axis powers could have gotten so powerful from taking over so many countries that even we wouldn't have been able to stop them if they decided to invade our homeland.

Other wars that are justified are hard to think of, other then fighting against an oppressive government. So you could argue the revolutionary war was 'necessary', or 'justified'. The revolutionary war though was caused more by British incompetence then anything though. I mean for a few centuries they mostly ignored the colonies and didn't tax them, gave them benefits like their soldiers coming to fight for us when we needed them. Then one day the British suddenly decided "hey wait a second, there's a bunch of taxable revenue in these colonies, they don't vote for us members of parliament, so none of us disagree".

It would be like having a kid, and letting them do whatever the heck they want for years as they grow up from a baby, never teaching them discipline or to behave, and spoiling them a whole lot. And then when that kid becomes teenager suddenly telling them "you will learn to behave and follow all of these rules". It just wouldn't work out, you can't expect them to not rebel against such a dramatic shift from 'yeah do whatever you want', to strict discipline.

[bridgit]

141. yes

[anonymous171]

147. Self-defense against an agressive enemy. nt