Is Offensive War Ever Justified?

[The Vagabond]

Morality is a complex system with inherent contradictions. One and the same act can be moral from one point of view and immoral from another. Life would be too simple if morality were absolute. Offensive war is justified when its inherent immorality is offset by some other kind of morality.

[SlowwHand]

DetroitDave, you still aren't getting it.
IT IS NOT CONDITIONS ENACTED BY THE USA SOLELY.
You want out of the U.N. ? Don't go there.

[Comrade Tribune]

Originally posted by GePap
Defensive wars 2.0 (wars waged to defend the international system, with the expressed approval of international bodies[such as the first Gulf War]) are always justified.

Defensive wars 2.0 is utter nonsense.

The 'international system' is a thought construction with no reality to it. No one has elected any international body, including the UN, to the job of World Ruler. There is no World Government, at least not a legal one. Nothing, repeat NOTHING, supercedes the souvereignity of an independent state/government.

'International system' is code for 'Western Imperialist Rule by Intimitation'.

If Bin Laden decides to bomb the US again, he could call that 'Defensive wars 3.0', and he would be quite as justified, if not more so, with his thought construction than you are with yours.

[Zero]

Originally posted by Calc II
STOP! Let me clear some matters.

Are you asking, is offensive war ever morally justifiable?

In addition you cant answer this question without building up an arguement that War alone is ever morally justifiable!

No one responded to the second part If some of you have talked to me, I have no morals, but using concept of moral system that people seem to beleive in, according to their morals I tend to think... wouldnt war itself be immoral?

[Comrade Tribune]

Originally posted by Calc II
No one responded to the second part

I did. War is morally justifiable in a clear and present case of self-defense, otherwise not.

But it doesn´t matter much, because neither the physical battles nor the propaganda battles are decided by morality.

[Ramo]

Under your definition of defensive, yes. Stopping a state that's doing something really bad like massacring millions of innocent civilians (i.e. Nazi Germany) I consider defensive in the same way that stopping someone that's attacking an innocent person is defensive.

[Comrade Tribune]

'Really bad' is in the eye of the beholder. If you admit exception to the rule that pre-emptive wars are never excusable, the rule will soon be worthless. States pretending to have the right to judge other states is always scary. One should never buy the humanitarian excuses. The case of Hitler is not applicable: He went to war against the rest of the world, not the other way round.

[Ramo]

Why is the idea of states judging other states any scarier than the idea of people judging other people? It can be abused by immoral states, just as it can be abused by immoral people. It's the responsibility of the people in the state to see that it is not being abused. If they don't have the will or power to do that, why does it matter if the state uses such an excuse?

It doesn't matter if Hitler went to war with the rest of the world. I was using Nazi Germany as an example. Even if he didn't declare war on state, I think war against Germany would've been perfectly moral provided there would be a net increase in freedom.

[Ned]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
Me thinks you misunderstood me. I'm saying that in both cases, the war waged by the North against the South was justified, as the Northern states were indigenous states, while the Southern ones were created by and propped up by outsiders. Of course, after more than fifty years, today the DPRK would be unjustified in trying to overthrown the RoK, especially as the RoK has finally became semi-democratic.

Your problem, Che, seems to be that you will not cannot agree that popularly elected non communist goverments are legitimate while at the same time you contend that all warlord imposed leftist regimes are legitimate.

The ROK was elected under UN-supervised elections. It certainly was legitimate.

[Ned]

All offensive war is justified in the history books written by the winner.

[Comrade Tribune]

What I disagree with is the underlying general idea: That there is a universal morality that we should all adhere to, and there should best be a world state to enforce that morality. This is too much of a simplification, and put into practice leads to the situation we have, namely the US usurping the role of a world policeman, though with no legitimacy whatever. The only nation that has been tried and convicted for terrorism ending up as police chief. Would be funny, if it weren´t so depressing.

Edit: this reply is to Ramo, of course.

[Pekka]

No genocide in Kosovo? Hmm.. that's not what I have gathered.. but then again it depends what you consider genocide. Maybe it was not a full genocide, but there were several mass murders in villages.. but then again it might not count officially as genocide.
And then again, it's not fair to say Serbs were to only ones doing bad things. I just saw a program where there was finnish troops in Kosovo now, and they said it quite good 'there are no one bad side, there are only sides and they all do bad things' or something like that.
That is a good example of justified war, or should we say intervening, because it would be still going on today if it wasn't for the NATO to drop some bombs. Sure, some of them went to wrong targets, but the result from it was far less severe what it would be without them.

Just came to my mind.. in this coming war with Iraq.. could it work that we kill only some high ranking officers? Saddam won't quit, that's for sure, but generals etc are not sure if they want to fight for him. How about killing few of them, you know, killing the bosses so the soldiers won't fight? Or perhaps kidnap few of them with most power, and make them persuade their people not to fight and give up? I don't know.. just thinking out loud.
Or perhaps arrange secret meetings with most prominent generals, and turn them into allies, and they could try to take power with the worlds blessing.. war would not happen then. Maybe a short civil war.
Mhh, I should keep to this thread and not just type everything that comes to my mind at the moment. Sorry, I'm tired .

[Ned]

In Che's view, Saddam's war against Kuwait was justified because Kuwait was Iraqi territory before Britain begin drawing lines on the map of the Turkish Empire. All Saddam was doing was reclaiming from usurpers/British puppets territory that was rightfully Iraq's to begin with.

This means that the UN war to restore the usurper/British puppets to power was unjust - at least according to Che's views about what constitutes a just war.

[Pekka]

I thought Kuwait was stealing oil from Iraq?

[Ned]

Japan's war on the US was justified if the US had no right to interfere in Japan's war in China.

I have heard David many times say that Roosevelt had no right to interfere with the Sino-Japanese conflict the way he did. This would lead one to the conclusion that David would believe that Japan's causa belli was just.