A Good War

[David Floyd]

Often times, people will describe World War 2, for example, as a good war, or a moral war.

My question is this. Can any war be described as good or moral, and in what circumstances?

I would say that the only war that could be considered good and moral is a war of absolute self defense, that does not include a draft (although I don't mean to turn this into a draft thread, but that is an important part of my answer).

What do you think? Can offensive/preventive wars ever be moral? Is it OK to fight in the defense of others?

[JohnT]

Can any war be described as good or moral, and in what circumstances?

Pretty much any war you win, I think.

[David Floyd]

A valid point. That's how the Dresden bombing, firebombings of Germany and Japan, and the atomic bombings are justified, anyway, and most people accept those justifications.

[JohnT]

Now was that so difficult?

I think we can close this thread now.

[Shi Huangdi]

Re: A Good War

Originally posted by David Floyd
Often times, people will describe World War 2, for example, as a good war, or a moral war.

My question is this. Can any war be described as good or moral, and in what circumstances?

I would say that the only war that could be considered good and moral is a war of absolute self defense, that does not include a draft (although I don't mean to turn this into a draft thread, but that is an important part of my answer).

What do you think? Can offensive/preventive wars ever be moral? Is it OK to fight in the defense of others?

The United States Government has been endowed with God's authority to judge nations, therefore any war the USA involves itself in is a just war!

[David Floyd]

Now was that so difficult?

I certainly don't agree with your point, I just acknowledge it's a common one

[Kidlicious]

Sometimes you have to be the aggresor to defend yourself. There's nothing wrong with fighting for a good cause.

[David Floyd]

The point is, explain what a "good cause" is, because other than self defense, I can't necessarily think of one.

[Shi Huangdi]

Stopping a holocaust isn't a good cause?

[Tassadar500]

Originally posted by Shi Huangdi
Stopping a holocaust isn't a good cause?

Exactly. I don't understand when people say that going to war is wrong no matter what, and that they would never fight in a war.

[David Floyd]

Objectively, perhaps so, but look at the methods used:

1)Conscription
2)Mass area bombing of civilians for the purpose of terror
3)Mass firebombing of civilians for the purpose of terror
4)In the case of the Soviet Union, hundreds of thousands of cases of rape and murder of civilians (with much lower numbers of cases involving the Western Allies

And that's just for starters, but I think you can see my point - the particulars complicate the issue.

[Tassadar500]

Originally posted by David Floyd
Objectively, perhaps so, but look at the methods used:

1)Conscription
2)Mass area bombing of civilians for the purpose of terror
3)Mass firebombing of civilians for the purpose of terror
4)In the case of the Soviet Union, hundreds of thousands of cases of rape and murder of civilians (with much lower numbers of cases involving the Western Allies

And that's just for starters, but I think you can see my point - the particulars complicate the issue.

The fact that they were fighting the Nazis was moral, the way they were fighting was not.

[David Floyd]

Maybe, but if those methods had been off the table, do you think we still would have fought? Faced with the prospect of using an all-volunteer army, and absolutely no ability to intentionally terror bomb civilians, we would not willingly have gone to war. If we had, it would have been in response to an attack.

Now, Germany did declare war first - but let's face it, we were unofficially at war for months prior.

If we had simply declared war on Nazi Germany with no provocation, that would not have been moral. Even if doing so to stop the Holocaust would be an excuse (which I don't necessarily accept), bringing up that point is silly, because at the time no one knew about it, and if, 10 years later we had known about it, it would have been too late to stop it. Either way, if the existence of a Holocaust would be enough to trigger a moral crusade, then you can't use that as an argument for the morality of fighting the Germans, because we didn't know about it at the time nor did we have any way of finding out about it until we actually occupied the death camps, which couldn't happen until we were already at war.

[Shi Huangdi]

You need to look at two seperate issues here. One is whether the war itself is immoral. The Second is whether the war is being fought in a moral way.

You can have one without the other. It could be moral to go to war, but you could do immoral actions during it such as intentionally attacking enemy civilians. A war could be immoral, but there might not be any ways in which the war is being fought that are immoral.

You can say that some of the Allies actions during WWII were not moral. But that doesn't mean that going to a war against Germany and Japan in itself was immoral.

[Tassadar500]

Originally posted by David Floyd
Maybe, but if those methods had been off the table, do you think we still would have fought? Faced with the prospect of using an all-volunteer army, and absolutely no ability to intentionally terror bomb civilians, we would not willingly have gone to war. If we had, it would have been in response to an attack.

Yes, I could see that starting a draft was necessary, but what result did the firebombing of Dresden have? I couldn't imagine that it actually resulted in something that changed the outcome of the war.

Now, Germany did declare war first - but let's face it, we were unofficially at war for months prior.

If we had simply declared war on Nazi Germany with no provocation, that would not have been moral. Even if doing so to stop the Holocaust would be an excuse (which I don't necessarily accept), bringing up that point is silly, because at the time no one knew about it, and if, 10 years later we had known about it, it would have been too late to stop it. Either way, if the existence of a Holocaust would be enough to trigger a moral crusade, then you can't use that as an argument for the morality of fighting the Germans, because we didn't know about it at the time nor did we have any way of finding out about it until we actually occupied the death camps, which couldn't happen until we were already at war.

Well, we did know that the Axis were fascists, and that they were attacking our allies. I think that attacking the fascists that are trying to bring down your democratic allies, is far from immoral.