Can war ever be 'just'

Sadly some people and/or groups only respond to the greater power. If warmongers were the vanguard this would be different. "The Art of War" I think handles this as well as anything I've read.

We don't live in a perfect or fair world. That's just the way it is, that's the reality.

Hey Edan

Nice to see you! I think a good general will appear to have many good qualities and many terrible skills. Deception, Subversion, Manipulation, Destruction: to name a few behaviors present in war time.

Who said these tools in the good generals armory cannot be used for a good outcome? I mean if it stops the 'bad guy' you would use any toy to prevent evil. But that being said, I don't think there is a 'bad guy' or a 'good guy' because each people will have unique likable qualities and every enemy and even the legitimate authority will have the same capacity for evil.

Fighting war usually means to uphold our way of life and just surviving war isn't our top priority: War is there to preserve the virtues of the nation. And we do this by appealing to public opinion and global opinion and in the west we have a good level of cooperation with other countries who agree with war time strategy.

The virtues of our organizations shows in how we fight, we preserve the good and kill the threat to our way of life. An enemy that is morally wrong for the right reasons in my humble opinion would loose local and international support vital for a victory. An enemy that creates enemies would be overwhelmed.

An enemy that is morally right and he wants to win, would possibly consider a level of acceptable losses. In that its justified to kill a few innocents. An authority can win a war but become isolated by its own strategy and loose in many other ways. I think to fight a war is easy but having a victory you need to be correct in justifying yourself and nation.

You can be ideologically morally correct and have proper moral behavior, but that doesn't justify anything. It has been groomed into us that good behavior is rewarded and evil is punished.

Just because you live a certain way, nothing logically follows those actions, i mean so what 'good', 'bad' whats the difference? When war is necessary the only thing that matters is if you can win and at best you pander the necessary authorities to support each other.

The problem is do you want to be defined by your enemy or by someone you respect, wouldn't it be awful if England became like their enemy. The question is who do you want to be and defined as?

The first victim in war is Truth and the second casualty is your Soul. When a nation starts to demonize another nation, thats when you start asking questions.

If you consider morals to be relative then everything is moral even killing, if you support moral realism. That’s the view that the truth of moral beliefs is independent of what anyone thinks, much like the truth about other matters within objective fact then morals are universal and some morals are waiting to be discovered. Some have proposed that societies develop moral rules, such as the prohibition on killing, to establish peace and order and that morals are societal creation then any nation given the chance could do anything if they had time to justify them.

Thanks
Peace & Blessings
Love & Light

To me a just war seems to be a contradiction of terms. Of course, I feel as though we should probably say what is meant by war. War can mean a lot of things to a lot of people and in debating the particulars of specific instances which we refer to war we muddy the waters of a general position on just wars.

War, to me, would then be an armed conflict over land, resources, or ideology in which the value of those three things is deemed worth killing other people to control. In that sense, I don't see a way to justify war because it requires first devaluing human life. That said, there is the trouble of wanting to save lives. In theory, one could engage in armed conflict to protect those who are in harms way. There are so few instances in which the primary motivation for armed conflict was to save the lives of others that I don't even know that they truly exist (the only one that comes to mind is US involvement in the Bosnian war, but even then some have speculated that US involvement had more to do with keeping control of the region than allowing Russia to have further influence)

Does 'just' mean justice? If warring sides don't operate under the same system of justice then its impossible for a war to serve it. Obviously either side can assert their own moral, legal, ethical, religious etc justifications but it's hardly a relevant measure when it causes unknown nature and quantity of results.

So I'm again with the 'discrimination' in warfighting, being the effort to do least harm and also increase the chances of managing and control downstream effects. There was a lot of confusion about the use of the term 'combat effect' in how to operate systems in war, so perhaps it should mean some capacity to measure the ongoing ripples of cause and effect from any action, and not just the immediate objective/damage assessment. All we can do is measure intent throughout the various levels of its application and assess how pacifist it is throughout - not in the sense of no war, but rather avoiding progression to/of war as much as possible. Unfortunately sometimes sticking your head in the sand makes things worse, so it depends on the intentions of both sides in a conflict.

Basically who wants peace & freedom, and if fighting is required then who is fighting for its restoration, will align more with my beliefs. I don't think because it aligns with my beliefs though it would be appropriate to call it 'just'. Doesn't feel right to me, but another very interesting question
:pinch:

If it was our purpose to destroy the enemy, there is little they could do about it. In terms of military power, they are outnumbered and outgunned. The reason we don't squash them like a bug is a purely strategical one: We do not want them to become martyrs of their cause and we don't want their adherents who already have infiltrated our population to become even more aggressive than they already are. Cared we less about potential havoc in our home lands, the enemy would be out of luck.
And so here we are with a war. One side is fighting for the safety and security of their civilian population, the other is fighting to bring about the prophesied end of days and is convinced that in this war there is no such thing as a civilian on either side.

There is both good and evil in this world and in all of us. Killing is an evil act but at a certain point it might become unavoidable. Is it just or moral? Those are interpretations based on personal morals and ethics. To one it could be and to another it could be a travesty. One person cannot decide this for another. When they do there tends to be problems. Harmony is the answer but there will always be someone whom over steps their boundaries. Until we are all United in love conflict is inevitable.

I don't think war can ever be "just", but I think it is often necessary.

We are a warring species, not all war needs to be violent but our's often are. We have an inherent need for conflict, whether it involves geopolitical concerns or just locally based societal problems. Without it, we find ourselves listless, without purpose, or drive. Even the fight for peace is a conflict within itself, as it is fighting against violence.

If we also truly believe the doctrine of the order, we know there is no absolute "death", and all life continues in some form after the end of its current form. In this way, war is just a game we play during the time we are here for this incarnation.

I'm sure many here will disagree with this view, but I would ask them to consider what they would do if our society was in a state of utopia, with no further problems to be solved, no work to be done, and no personal development to be had. Could they still be happy, could they be content?

respectfully, i do disagree with that view, at least once you scale it up to the level of war

i dont really NEED to fight with even with my family, although i admit i am pretty grumpy sometimes

i most definitely dont have any desire or need to kill anyone, or to put myself in the position to be killed

not at all for any reason, especially not for economic resources or religion or geo political blabbity blah

that we arent dropping bombs on one another does not mean that there is no work to be done or progress to be made, it means that we get a chance to do the work and make the progress without bombs dropping on our homes

During the Vietnam War the term "fighting for peace is like sex is for virginity."

Makes sense doesn't it.