Why do you subscribe to the totality that all war is unjustified?

[Writer]

That is what I'd like to know.

[Skittles]

1. why do you assume people think that?

[Writer]

2. Why do you assume that I meant all people? n/t

[jobycom]

5. Why do you assume she assumed you meant all people? nt

[Writer]

7. Why do you assume that I assumed when I said she assumed all people? n/t

[jobycom]

8. I don't assume. I can read it. nt

[Writer]

9. I assume that you can read her assumptions, then. For you are the assume-iest of all assumers.

;)

[jobycom]

13. She said "people," you answered "all people." One doesn't have to be a writer to see that. nt

[Skittles]

10. why do you assume I meant all people?

I find it hard to believe you're a writer

[Chulanowa]

12. Because Democrats aren't immune to Republican syndrome

In the past, this tragic prion disease was only spread by eating the decomposed brains of Republicans. Naturally these never made much of a meal, so they were usually avoided as a food source, and so the pitiful harbors of this disease didn't often spread the prion to others.

All that changed in 1994 when the Republicans finally got congress back, and immediately took over the airwaves. Now this dangerous disease can be spread simply by immersion in the thoughts (such as they are) of conservatives. The dumber those thoughts are, the higher the prion count and the more infectious they are. As you will note in figure C, while the cases of Republican Syndrome were on a steady rise from 1983 (Reaganomics resulted in a tragic outbreak of necro-cannibalism, just to stay fed) cases of Republican Syndrome among declared democrats really spiked around January 21, 2001.

Symptoms include...

- incessant whining
- siege mentality
- paranoia
- messianic complexes
- spontaneous autofellatio
- anal leakage
- illiteracy

...and many, many other heartbreaking ailments that result in the sufferer becoming a social and intellectual pariah.

Unfortunately it appears that as more and more democrats succumb to this tragic prion disease, they are quite capable of infecting, second-handedly, those other democrats who avowedly avoided right-wing media as much as possible and thus escaped the initial wave of infections.

[NRaleighLiberal]

3. a bit more context....question to whom?

[bigjohn16]

4. This escalation is a mistake. Our military should be used for our defense not nation building. nt

[okieinpain]

55. but do you really have a choice. do you really think that if

we pull out that is the end of it.

[bluestateguy]

6. They only know what their Chomsky reader tells them to do

nt

[jobycom]

11. I doubt you'll find many making that assumption here.

Most people assume a self-defensive war is justified, and on rare, very rare occasions a war in the defense of others is justified if it can be shown that the defense will actually change the situation.

Have you seen people claiming that all wars are unjustified? I've been so busy reading posts from people who assume this war is unjustified that i haven't noticed them.

[Oregone]

17. What makes it a tough sell...

"it can be shown that the defense will actually change the situation"

Is that even in what would appear to be altruistic situations (like the Congo), we wouldn't go unless someone was making a mint off of it. The moment profit enters the equation, then there are people who do not want that war to end. There exists an inherent conflict of interest when the MIC is that ingrained with the government.

I don't know...can the US wage a war and produce more good than harm? I'm not talking about peacekeeping with an international force, but something that starts domestically and passes muster with US Congress.

[XemaSab]

14. God grant me the serenity

to wage the just wars;

courage to avoid the unjust wars;

and wisdom to know the difference.

[Oregone]

15. Come break into my house at midnight and ask me about pacifism

But as far as supporting the rich men's war of agression against goat farmers poorer than myself living on the other side of the world, based on faulty 9/11 fear tactics, fuck that.

[okieinpain]

56. so you're saying that if we leave afghan that will be the end of it.

they will go back to growing their poppies and we will not have to worry about that area being used to train terrorist.

[quakerboy]

16. As a pacifist

I wouldn't say that. Unwanted, unreasonable, wrong, destructive, and probably even unnecessary, but not necessarily unjustified. Some certainly are, but justification is fairly easy to come by.

[freddie mertz]

32. These folks have a simplistic notion of pacifism. They need to read AJ Muste.

http://www.ajmuste.org/

[TreasonousBastard]

18. Of course all war is unjustified-- why would you think any war is, but...

that's not the point, is it?

A war is started by someone, and rarely with any serious justification-- power, money, ego, all the usual reasons are behind it, and either someone wants avoid the annoying diplomatic means of dealing with things or simply sees a war as the simplest way of getting something. Perhaps the only way.

But, you're thinking of the victimized country attacked by someone-- and that's pretty much the gist of "Just War" theory. There are times when war is inevitable, and it is analagous to personal self-defense.

As a Quaker, I'm naturally against all war and violence but as a realist I understand that war does exist no matter how much I may be against it. What to do about it all is for another time.

[grantcart]

24. So you were against the invasion of Cambodia by the Army of the People's Republic of Vietnam

even though it eliminated the murderous Khmer Rouge and saved millions of life.


You would not accept a war to stop mass murder? How does that calculus work exactly?

The life of a person killed in war is worth 100 times more than the lives of innocent civilians that are murdered by a psychotic government that is committed to mass exterminations?

[TreasonousBastard]

39. Oh, please. Quaker meetings were split over WWII and...

the Revolutionary and Civil wars. All the arguments for and against just war have been argued since James II warred with France and the Peace Testimony was drawn up.

As I said, reality bites us pacifists in the ass when the bad guys refuse to listen and start putting the hurt on. My own justification for occasional military forays is to redefine them as police actions. Truman pulled this trick in Korea, but it didn't ring all that true and was seen as largely a trick to avoid a declaration of war.

War I define as an invasion of one country by another with the intent to own it while policing I define as maintaining order. Yes, there are a lot of problems with those defnitions, and there is a lot of crossover, but it's a place to start.

[Clio the Leo]

19. I was wondering that earlier....

.... given the fact that this country did not come into being as the result of the founding fathers and England sitting down at the negotiating table and coming to an agreement and our Union was not preserved by Lincoln opening Bilateral talks with Jefferson Davis. Sometimes the "no war - ever" folks remind me of those who oppose illegal amnesty yet dont think twice about benefiting from the labor they provide this country.

No one LIKES war .... but no one has found a way to banish it from the human psyche. The amount of FIGHTING going on here over the question of whether to FIGHT should be proof enough.

[Sinti]

21. honest question

shouldn't someone try to banish it from the human psyche as abhorrent? It has to start somewhere.

[Clio the Leo]

27. The answer to that my friend.....

.... is what separates the pragmatist from the ideologue.

The noble thing would be to lay down your arms before the other guy does. But it's a gamble and is the value of that nobility worth losing your life over?

It's not a simple question to answer.

[Sinti]

20. Many reasons, I'll list a few.

Because I, too, am a father pulling his daughter's lifeless body out of the rubble of what was once my home

Because I too am a grandfather who has just buried not only his children, but his grandchildren, as well

Because I too am a mother who cannot feed her three small children, because nothing grows in a war zone

Because I too am a soldier who is burying a good friend, and standing by the wife and child his friend left behind

Because I too am a veteran who can barely live with the memories that he has, and the pain in his soul

Am am them, because I am a human being just like them and but for the roll of the dice I am living that hell

Because I am only in control of one thing, and that is what I put into this world in word and deed

Because every single dollar that goes to kill people in war is one more dollar that won't go to feed starving people left to die, due to our complete disrespect for humanity. War makes this disrespect all the more vivid in my mind's eye

When they used to fight wars of Colonialism the Crown took the resources and the peasants and natives paid the dearest price. Now the Corporations take the resources and we and the people who are sitting on their resources pay the dearest price possible. Look at the Oil Benchmark in Iraq.

The one so-called "good war" was WWII, right. If we had of stopped our monied interests, and others from supporting and investing in Hitler, especially given his rhetoric, and exercised strong diplomacy with Japan WWII would have never happened.

Dropping bombs on mothers and children will not turn the heart of a tyrant - you cannot create a harmonious and prosperous anything with war

The war tool can only kill human beings

Any man who tells you "we must go off to war" is lying through his teeth

It's far to easy to be pro war when the bombs are dropping on someone else's house thousands of miles away.

Why do you subscribe to the notion that war is ever justified?

[grantcart]

25. Because in 1977 the People's Army of Vietnam invaded Cambodia

and eliminated the government of the Khmer Rouge.

A short war in which a few thousand (if that as the Khmer Rouge being complete cowards did not stand and fight but ran for the jungles) died and liberated and save millions of innocent civilians.

I appreciate your sentiment but an absolutist position is hard to accept.

[Sinti]

26. You do realize that if human beings ever proactively sought peace

there would be no more war, right? Regular people never want to fight. They fight because the boot is on their neck and they cannot survive, or they fight because their governments tell them to "be afraid not just your life you whole way of life is under threat and your children will live in tyranny!!!"

The money and effort spent in killing could be put to use in empowering human beings. People who have plenty don't bring war home to themselves. The fact that we accept war also means we accept not proactively seeking peace - so we get more war.

If we as a nation, and other nations, actually were supportive of human life we would not live in the world we live in now. The social pressure to behave would be so incredible, there could be no oppressive dictatorships. You would not need to have wars - you don't need them now. Even if the man who tells you "we must go off to war over there" doesn't know he's lying to you - he's lying to you.

As for your example, you know we supported Pol Pot, right?

U.S. and Chinese support for Pol Pot continued long after Hanoi’s 1979 invasion ended the genocide and established the Cambodian regime that came to be led by Hun Sen. The former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski recalled that in 1979, “I encouraged the Chinese to support Pol Pot... Pol Pot was an abomination. We could never support him but China could.” They both did. Washington “winked, semi-publicly,” Brzezinski said, at Chinese and Thai aid to the Khmer Rouge forces. “I do not understand why some people want to remove Pol Pot,” was how Deng Xiaoping put it in 1984; “he made some mistakes in the past but now he is leading the fight against the Vietnamese aggressors.” China gave his Khmer Rouge forces US$100 million each year during the 1980s. American military aid to guerrillas allied with the Khmer Rouge reached $17-32 million per annum.

http://www.yale.edu/cgp/KiernanCambodia30thAnniversaryEssay.doc

The Khmer Rouge's most notorious prison chief told a Cambodia war crimes court today US policies in the 1970s contributed to the rise of Pol Pot's genocidal regime.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article6043309.ece

[Teaser]

30. "Regular people never want to fight"

This is part of a comedy act, right?

Regular people love fighting. It gets them all hot and sticky.

[grantcart]

36. Absolutely I know that the US government diplomatically supported the KR

I was there working in the refugee camps working with the people that came across the border.


And every night I went to be grateful that Vietnam had done the dirty job that needed to be done.


And I never thought that Vietnamese were angels and didn't have their own self interests at heart.


Nevertheless the armed conflict started by the Vietnamese saved hundreds of thousands of lives.


You have taken the absolute position not me. You would have accepted the continuation of the Khmer Rouge. You must be compelled to do so by some overwhelming religious impulse because no logic can hold that every armed conflict is without justification. Sometimes the government that is being overthrown is morally worse than the war that is being conducted to eliminate it.

[Sinti]

41. You would have accepted the continuation of the Khmer Rouge.

I did not say this. I was trying to illustrate that without our support the Khmer Rouge would not have existed. We accepted KR as horrible, but good for us anyway. We do not seek peace, ever, and we do not respect the lives of ordinary people. You say the Vietnamese armed conflict in Cambodia saved lives - I am saying we could have saved many thousands more by supporting the people over the KR in the first place.

For a more current example, look to the Taliban. Without the support from the ISI and ourselves the Taliban would not exist. For every war, necessary or not, there were many moments when you could have stopped it. We do not look for those moments, because we feel that war is just fine - even better if we can justify it. When the http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/oct/14/afghanistan.terrorism5">Taliban offered us OBL in October of 2001, we refused. They wanted to release him to an international court, and I suppose that's why we said no. We chose to bomb villages instead. How a man justifies that is beyond me.

You say: "Sometimes the government that is being overthrown is morally worse than the war that is being conducted to eliminate it." I agree. I realize this is true and have no problem giving arms, logistical, information and other support to the people on the ground. I don't, however, think we should send our soldiers in there, wherever there may be. If we are under attack, we defend. If not, we seek peaceful outcomes that respect the dignity of all humans involved.

I never suggested you were taking an absolutist position. You were trying to point out a good war and I responded that it was not a good war, it should have been stopped long before KR and would have been, if we did not support the KR. Both ourselves and the Vietnamese should have given the Cambodian people there support and let them take care of it themselves. It wasn't in our 'national interests' to do so.

It's not because I'm religious that I realize the futility of war. I'm just not exposed to as much of the marketing for war as most people are. Ten years from now you will probably look back on this and wonder how you could have been so duped. I don't hold any disdain for those who agree with war, I simply hold a different view and would try to persuade others to entertain it for a moment.

Peace is not something you achieve by merely putting own your weapons. You have to work at and for peace to bring it about. You have to resolve to solve your differences without resorting to guns and bombs. There is no attempt at even feigning peaceful resolutions these days. They just tell you it's a good war, a just war. They point at the new enemy, tell us he threatens us, our very way of life, and we go kill. Who do you think we fight for?

Every armed conflict is without justification. It may be necessary, if you're being shot at, to shoot back to save your family, but war is a horrible idea every time, especially wars on deeply impoverished people in nations thousands of miles away.

[freddie mertz]

34. Have you read any actual pacifist writing?

David Dellinger?

A. J. Muste?

There is no "absolutism" there, and plenty of non-violent people understand that the world is not black and white.

[grantcart]

37. I will do you one better my colleague and friend Max Ediger

Max has spent his whole life working for peace in Vietnam and now lives in Hanoi

http://peace.mennolink.org/cgi-bin/m.pl?r=20


The person who I was responding to seemed to take the absolute position, not me.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

42. You say WWII was a "good war"

Would it have been a better war if Europe had intervened before Germany went on the war path and slaughtered millions of Jews and gypsies? Or is it only good once someone goes outside their own borders and other countries jump in?

[Sinti]

47. Absolutely, if we had of stopped our monied interests, and others

from supporting and investing in Hitler... you have to want for peace then you will get it.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

48. But doesn't that make it a pre-emptive war?

[Sinti]

50. Stopping the cash flow? I'd call that pre-emptive Peace

and I am definitely all for that.

If we could stop the cash flow to the extremists, then use our robots with sensors (bomb sniffing like airports) to find their munitions surpluses, get the GPS and send another robot to reclaim or destroy them, this would be over in no time. You could also pay people to turn in their guns. You've just got to make they're not getting more guns from some of our shady arms dealers - it wouldn't be the first time. If we could make the average guy feel he has something to live for, he won't toss his life away, and that of his children in futile war.

Wage Peace :hippie:

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

51. Yes, because all they needed to do in the 1930's was go to their computer terminals to do it, right?

As far as Afghanistan is concerned though, you do realize a large amount of their income comes from opium, right? So how do you propose eliminating that source of revenue without actually going there?

[Sinti]

52. Perhaps trading it for something else

Do you believe that a counterinsurgency operation is going to do anything about the poppies? Who buys the poppies? This sounds like a police action to me. Those warlords are like inner-city drug lords. Do we send the Marines into South Central? You could imprison the large buyers, and offer the growers an equally lucrative crop that's legal. You could also use your robots to find the opium fields and clear them then offer something else as an alternative.

Are they afraid of violating someone's privacy by revealing big money involved in this opium? This money could be traced and stopped also. How do you think we stop the mob anywhere? I would thoroughly audit every single company involved in this ME bloodbath. Let's see just how much profit they make, and who they then give money to. Are they keeping it going. Whether they know it or not is a question for later.

We have not tried much of anything that doesn't involve war, from what I've seen. We've given a little food aid. How hard do you think Karzai laughs right now, while we're setting him up. Later, we'll say we have to take him out, because he's a tyrant - like Noriega. You've seen it before. What makes it different this time? The generals are running this, obviously, and they have one tool in their box - when all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail and you think the harder you swing at it the more effective your tool will be.

Technically, if my family knew in the '30s that Hitler was coming, and that the Americans paid for his stuff -- anybody could have known. It was not kept a secret in any way. FDR knew all along, and they tried to remove him from office. The America First people were known as being supportive of Hitler - look at Lindbergh. Mein Kampf - they always tell you what they're going to do, and they usually project a whole lot. Generally, whatever they say the enemy is doing, that's exactly what they're doing, with few exceptions. You have to pay attention and want to prevent war.

I don't envy President Obama in this situation. I wish he'd choose something different, but I'm not sure they're giving him those options. I think we need to do everything we can to support him getting us out of the business of killing sooner rather than later. The MIC is not his friend, IMO.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

53. 1) We really don't stop the mob anywhere.

All we do is slow them down.

2) The technology involved in having robots that can actually navigate that terrain is only in prototype stages, so really, that's not an option.

3) What do you think a "police action" against another country looks like? Do you think they send in the LAPD or the FBI?

4) My point with WWII is solely that if we (not just the U.S., but Europe as well) took action BEFORE they started the Holocaust and BEFORE they started invading other countries, it would have been a far less bloody affair and we likely would've never had to use a nuclear weapon. The point is only that just because one asshole (Bush) used the concept of a pre-emptive war for his own bloodthirsty reasons, that doesn't make it a poor policy choice. It just means we've got to do a better job of picking presidents, and I believe we have in Obama.

[Sinti]

57. Now, why do you suppose that is?

If we're incapable of stopping the mob, what makes you think we could stop any organization bent on criminality? On the other hand, who is 'the mob' and who do they work for and with, maybe they have connections that explain why we can't do more than slow them down.

Take this for instance:

Schumer was reacting to an ABC News investigation that found Shafi was able to get his job, and U.S. citizenship, despite fleeing the U.S. in 1988 after he was indicted in a case involving the BCCI bank and accusations the bank helped hide millions of dollars for Colombian cocaine bosses and former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega.

"I am utterly amazed that someone at this high a level, and this visible, in the middle of a major scandal can come back into this county and without blinking an eye be allowed to run a major bank," said Schumer, who called the situation "shocking."

Source: http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/sen-schumer-calls-bank-officials-remove-saad-shafi/story?id=8940818

I don't think it should be a police action against 'a country.' That's the problem. An international police action would involve actual police agencies FBI, DEA, Interpol. The war tool is simply not the right one for this kind of thing, in my opinion. This, of course, is far from saying the action we are taking is illegal - I believe it's unwise.

I disagree strongly with the notion that pre-emptive war is ever good pre-emptive war is aggressive war, IMO. When you bomb people living in villages to punish someone who might or might not be living among them, they used to call that collective punishment. If you wish to discuss this as a separate subject, I'd be delighted to hear your views as to why it can be valuable. I may not agree, but insight into the mindset that does would be interesting. I can't see past the death and horrid waste of war. I don't kill spiders that get into my house, I scoop them up and put them outside, so perhaps you can understand where I'm coming from.

Afghanistan itself did not hit us and technically was no existential threat. If you look at the over-arching strategy laid out in writing you can see what they're doing. In writing = The Grand Chessboard; the PNAC papers, especially Rebuilding America's Defenses, but there are others; and the Accidental Guerilla. There are other papers and books that have come out, but these are probably the most well-known. The plan and process seems to be moving along, grinding away without detour, or pause.

I'm happy to agree to disagree with any individual on this war at this time. Believing it to be a justified one does not make a monster out of the believer in my mind - they merely have different information than I do. I feel that the laws against aggressive war should be strongly codified after this turn through the karmic wheel. At the same time I support President Obama, and I voted for him. I don't feel that my stance on war nullifies my ability to do so. I don't support the war in Afghanistan, but he did say he was going in there so I don't feel 'betrayed' as some people do. The push for peace simply presses on and there's no reason for it to stop :)

I agree that Europe and the US needed to take action long before Hitler invaded anywhere. They should have recognized him when his people took over and cut him off. There were bloodless ways to take care of him, had they worked together and intelligently. My personal family saw him coming, and took difficult steps to ensure our survival. If we knew, anyone could have known.

About the robots, you're wrong. There are plenty of robots, there are robots in Afghanistan right now. Gratefully, they may stop more farmers from losing a leg (or worse) to a mine, and our soldiers from losing a leg (or worse) to an IED. They may not be outfitted for the jobs I've described at this time, but they could be rather easily. They could use drones to spot poppy fields and report back with GPS coordinates. They could use drones to figure out where clusters of fighters are, if they wanted to. They are using them right now. How they use them is the important bit.

The Talon is a most excellent example. These things are just fascinating, IMO. They are a really powerful tool that if used in the right way could go a long way to improving life on earth in general.

http://www.foster-miller.com/lemming.htm

http://www.qinetiq.com/home/newsroom/news_releases_homepage/2009/4th_quarter/mod_orders_dragon.html

http://science.howstuffworks.com/military-robot.htm

Cheers :toast:

edited to add a link to the source of the excerpt above

[quiller4]

22. I don't. I'm a proponent of "just war" theory and I believe the war in Afghanistan to be a just war.

[wowimthere]

45. really? Where is Bin-Ladin? And Al-qiada is gone. Hijackers wer from Saudi Arabia.

[smalll]

23. Exactamente and certainment. Ding, ding, ding, we have a winner.

But it's not even that the leftbagger deviationists believe that all war is unjustified. Only that all wars waged by AMERICA are unjustified.

If they were across-the-board pacifists, I could respect them, but they're not. Che Guevera was a bloody man, for example. But they'd never condemn him.

I'm Just Sayin'! :shrug:

[daa]

28. Why do YOU subscribe to the totallity that all war

is justified as long as the US starts it?

[Orsino]

29. Too vague a question.

All war is bad. I make allowance for individuals and nations defending themselves against violence--but the use of violence always carries with it a responsibility for the harm one does.

Justification for Allied participation in World War II often focuses on the Holocaust, or on the invasions of various nations by the Axis, but rarely touches on atrocities like the Dresden firebombing. War is all of this.

[freddie mertz]

31. Who are you addressing here?

Weird.

[treestar]

33. No

There are some you have to fight.

Bush did not have to start Afghanistan, but once he did, the next President might have to fight it.

And there is an exit plan.

[era veteran]

35. I don't

[beyond cynical]

38. I don't, but "they" do.

[Whisp]

40. war = profits for the MIC

and death and hardship for the cannon fodder.

taxpayers pay with their childrens blood and their hard earned money, those other fuckers don't pay anything - they just rake it in by the truckload.

If they had to donate their missiles and junk just like families have to donate their members and their tax dollars, then I'd take another listen

[ItNerd4life]

43. Excellent question! It seems a lot of people on DU

think that all war is unjustified. Disheartening reading all the anti Obama threads re: Afganistan.

[wowimthere]

44. If someone doesn't believe in war and they are innocent of any crimes...

and a bomb gets dropped on them then to that person (since they did nothing wrong) has an argument to make. The bombs we drop affect the innocent like they affect the guilty. War is not winnable and it creates more enemies. Obtaining independence from a repressive regime may be worth fighting but our current wars have nothing to do with independence.

[Kitsune]

46. I believe that nation-states cannot be trusted with the right to engage in violence

Because they are essentially sociopaths. Or at least, the American nation-state is.

There is no conscience, no check on the exercise of power because there is no person singularly responsible. Even the president, vaunted "commander-in-chief," can pass the buck because if he has any money for his war then it means Congress is behind him (rare as Congress NOT being in favor of a war someone is).

Even elections don't serve as a check on this urge to use military force for our own ends. As we've seen, every single politician who ever hopes to be president has to be rah-rah-rah in favor of continual, endless warfare. We'll never elect a dove in this country because no dove will ever be allowed within sneezing distance of a primary victory thanks to wealthy interests who like the fact that they have a sociopathic nation-state they can use to their own ends.

[Milo_Bloom]

49. Not all war, but this war CERTAINLY is.

[ShortnFiery]

54. Because OCCUPATIONS are UNJUST. Congress hasn't declared "war" and we are punishing the WRONG

people since al Qaeda has relocated to Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen.

It's now IMMORAL to occupy either country much less escalate combat troops, and as a result KILL more American troops as well as innocent Afghan Citizens in the crossfire. :thumbsdown:

WWII was the last JUSTIFIED WAR.