There is no honor in war and there are no winners in war.

[Skidmore]

Beyond self-defense, war should be off the table as a solution for any problem. There is not honor in inflicting death and destruction on others and creating circumstances in which your own are exposed to the same. War is not a noble act, but a destructive one. It deals death and misery to the defenseless and destroys the land. Its utilization as a tool by leaders creates a class of citizens charged with the task killing upon demand for the reason of the moment. I would argue that it is a tool for cowards. People who are not willing to face someone and actually talk to arrive at common ground.

[madokie]

1. War is an admission of failure

through talking all problems can be solved, through war can only be made

[scarpa43]

6. That is too black and white

Making no parallels to anything that is happening today, are you saying that when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor we should have talked about it?

Maybe if we had made more of an effort to understand Hitler and let him talk about his feelings the holocaust would not have occurred?

If I was Dictator X considering attacking a country that I knew would not respond with military action my main concern would be coming up with a name for the newly aquired province.

[madokie]

9. by the time the acts are commited the time to talk is way past

[winter999]

2. Would you say that in 1946 that

the USA, England, France, China, Australia, Indonesia, India, USSR, Canada, Egypt, etc. all lost?

[Skidmore]

4. I would say that the whole world lost. That WWII progressed to

the point that only overwhelming death and destruction would exhaust the engines that fueled it is a sad statement on that era. WWII was a great war because of its scale. Sheer numbers. What was learned from it? Apparently, not much. And, those nations were defending themselves, they weren't out actively seeking to clobber others before they were clobbered. How many little people need to be decimated for those in power to justify their ideologies or to hold onto their political agendas? That peoples allow the Neros, Hitlers, Bushes, Taylors, Papa Docs, and any number of vicious ideologues to come into positions of power at all is mindboggling.

[The2ndWheel]

3. War is a force that gives us meaning

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/War_Peace/War_Gives_Meaning.html

And yet there is a part of me that remains nostalgic for war's simplicity and high. The enduring attraction of war is this: Even with its destruction and carnage it gives us what we all long for in life. It gives us purpose, meaning, a reason for living. Only when we are in the midst of conflict does the shallowness and vapidness of our lives become apparent. Trivia dominates our conversations and increasingly our news. And war is an enticing elixir. It gives us resolve, a cause. It allows us to be noble. And those that have the least meaning in their lives-the impoverished refugees in Gaza, the disenfranchised North African immigrants in France, even the lost legions of youth that live in the splendid indolence and safety of the industrialized world-are all susceptible to war's appeal.

WAR AS CULTURE

I learned early on that war forms its own culture. The rush of battle is a potent and often lethal addiction, for war is a drug, one I ingested for many years. It is peddled by myth makers -historians, war correspondents, filmmakers novelists and the state-all of whom endow it with qualities it often does possess: excitement, exoticism, power, chances to rise above our small stations in life, and a bizarre and fantastic universe that has a grotesque and dark beauty. It dominates culture, distorts memory, corrupts language and infects everything around it, even humor, which becomes preoccupied with the grim perversities of smut and death. Fundamental questions about the meaning, or meaninglessness, of our place on the planet are laid bare when we watch those around us sink to the lowest depths. War exposes the capacity for evil that lurks just below the surface within all of us.

[Skidmore]

5. Look around our nation when it wasn't at war. You could see the capacity

for evil without being at the business end of a bomb. The rape, murder, thievery, abuse, corruption, drug culture, and any number of other social ills are present. You don't need war to get at that. War creates an environment in which all suspension of rules and order becomes permissible. It creates chaos and distorts human interactions. What is noble about killing?

[AngryAmish]

7. There was pretty clearly a winner in the Punic Wars.

[stray cat]

8. how does one describe self-defense?

war almost always involves reference to self-defense.

[OneBlueSky]

10. just as nations banded together to outlaw slavery . . .

so should they band together to outlaw war . . .

yes, slavery still exists . . . but the nations of the world have agreed that it should not, and will generally prosecute those found to have engaged in it . . .

and a declaration outlawing war won't stop it completely . . . but at least the nations of the world will be on records as opposing it, and can deal with violators through international law . . .

[adwon]

11. Problems

1. Common ground does not always exist between the parties. Assume party A makes the best widgets in the world and makes good money on them. Party B decides, rather than find their own niche, to steal the process and undercut A's prices. A petitions B to stop the theft. B refuses. A petitions a higher body, which issues a ruling in favor of A. B continues to produce. The members of the higher body agree to boycott B, but a substantial minority continues to trade with B. What does A do at this point? Continue to make ineffective protests? Petition the higher body for military intervention? Conduct their own?

2. The ghosts of Hannibal Barca and Napoleon Bonaparte could, and probably would, contest your statement that there are no winners in war. Such a statement can be true only if war is an aberration in international relations...which it clearly is not.

3. To limit the use of war only in self-defense will have the same effect as Eisenhower's New Look: it will increase the likelihood of covert actions on the part of belligerents. If fighting openly is banned, then fighting will be quiet and not advertised. Rather than actually stopping the killing, this will simply allow statesmen to strut and preen about how they stopped war when, in truth, nothing has changed. In short, it codifies hypocrisy into international law.

[Skidmore]

12. Someone tell me what is so honorable about grown men

devising and utilizing weapons designed to kill the most people possible? What is so honorable about pushing a button to fire a faceless missile? Delivering death with precision and never seeing the faces of those at the receiving end?

Personally, if we need to continue to use violence as a means to resolve international disputes, I'd like to see the national leaders choosing violence locked together in cages and let them fight it out. Whoever emerges is the winner. If some of these people actually were in harms way they perhaps would show a little more restraint when it comes to sending someone else's child to die or by making targets of their own people over political ideology, religion, or economic power.