When is war justified?

Now, now. That's almost trolling, isn't it? Or is it a strawman? I can never unmuddle these things.

Or is it lively debate?

I'm simply speculating as to how consistent Synsensa is willing to be in applying his logic.

5 char

Defensive Wars are definitely justified (if you're being attacked of course you can retaliate )

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Only when it comes to Poles and self-defense.

I don't see how that's 'tricky' as you stated.

Just who is attacking who(m)?

Traitorfish said:

You're saying that the stubborn refusal of South Korea to evict the US military presence, a self-evident threat to the North Korean people, justifies North Korea taking military action against them?

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To their minds yes, it is justified. My definition doesn't only apply to good countries.

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Borachio said:

Well ,now we should get somewhere.

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Just don't say war is never justified and there are no good or bad countries.
You will ruin the thread.

Yes, that's true. Which is why I omitted to say so earlier, at post # something or other.


Good countries are justified no matter what they do.

Bad countries are never justified whether they do anything or not.

History is written by the victors. Or some such blather.

Well, there can be only one extremely pacifist point of view on this matter

I disagree and I'm willing to fight you about it. In an only mildly aggressive way.

What does war mean?

Military strikes such as the US launched on Libya were certainly so different from the invasion and occupation of Iraq that I feel you have a hard time comparing them.

I would definitely set a high bar on action such as was taken in Iraq. From my perspective the attitude of the UN or the global community are never factors to be considered. If a just cause exists then who cares what anyone thinks.

I totally disagree with Obama's position as stated that sovereignty can be so easily dismissed. We should not have invaded and occupied Iraq. We should not have intervened in Libya nor should be involved in Syria insofar as direct military intervention.

We went too far in Afganistan. A lot of US actions are just simply dumb.

Nation building is akin to rape. There is a fundamental difference between the reconstruction efforts in Japan and Germany after the world wars and what is going on in the middle east. The aggressive powers in the Great Wars committed terrible violations of sovereignty and the populations were justly chastened.

No such offense has been committed in the Middle East.

If war must be waged however, it should be as brutal and final as possible without surrendering the national soul.

Hello Mr Cooper, sir. Nice to see you. Still a bit shouty, though.

Borachio said:

Hello Mr Cooper, sir. Nice to see you. Still a bit shouty, though.

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Sorry, I am hard of hearing.

Kaiserguard said:

What criteria would you set in order for you to consider a war justified? In this case, I'm talking about war waged by a state.

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Winning.

5 char

The involvement of the United States in any war, regardless of how it is started or how the Americans joined it, is always intrinsically justified.