When is War Justified?

[Mr Spinkles]

You're innocent sense of right and wrong is remarkable.

It was not a rhetorical question, truthseekingsoul. I sincerely wanted to know whether or not you beleive war can, hypothetically, ever be justified. Some people do not believe war is justified--ever, even in self defense--and I sometimes I find myself in agreement with them.

 

[Feathers in Hair]

It was not a rhetorical question, truthseekingsoul. I sincerely wanted to know whether or not you beleive war can, hypothetically, ever be justified. Some people do not believe war is justified--ever, even in self defense--and I sometimes I find myself in agreement with them.

I hadn't even thought of this until you mentioned it... I think one of the most incredible decisions of anyone was when the Dalai Lama (I honestly nearly misspelled that 'Dalai Llama'. *winces*) chose to follow his religions' practice of non-violence by telling those Tibetans that follow him to not fight back against the encroaching Chinese army. I know this situation is unique in that there might have been even more horror and slaughter if they had fought back, but when I look at it that way, I think I'll go with the 'theorhetically' position, and say that war is never justified, even in self-defense.

Again, this is full-scale war we're talking about, and not person-to-person conflicts. If someone were physically or emotionally hurting someone else in front of me, I would do everything I could to stop it.

 

[lilithu]

1) When it's self-defense - either retribution for an attack already suffered or to prevent a imminent attack.

2) When it's done to protect others (another country or a group within a country) who are unfairly being attacked and do not have the means to adequately defend themselves.

Funny thing about this latest war in Iraq: my stated criteria for a just war are actually more lenient than a lot of people's. But while I did not feel that the war in Iraq was just because it did not meet my criteria, my ethics professor thought that the Iraq war met his even stricter criteria.