Question of the Day:
When, if ever, is it morally right to go to war with another nation?
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If they invade a close ally with whom you have mutual defense agreements. At that point you have a strong moral, legal and ethical obligation to go to your ally’s aid.
So the first world war was completely justified?
When they invade your country under false pretexts.
“Entangling alliances” do not necessarily justify war. As often as not, they are merely a pretext for war.
Oops. Hit the wrong reply link.
Isn’t that when it’s morally justifiable for barely literate grunts to gun down crowds with 30mm cannons and for their commanders to cover it up and deny it ever happened? Oh, wait…
To protect yourself.
When going to war saves more lives than not doing so, like it has been in Jugoslavia, and like it has not – unfortunately – been in Rwanda or Darfur.
In addition to Custador’s reason, if they invaded or attacked your own nation.
On a related note, not too long ago I went to a fundy church service (to appease a family member) and the pastor stated during the sermon that the US did not invade Iraq, we were invited. Wow. Talk about rewriting history.
Yes, Sadam invited those Marines into the hole he was hiding in…
yes, we were invited. punch was served.
Indeed. Except by punch we mean carpet bombing. And instead of “was served” we mean “the entire country.”
Unfortunately Sadam failed to follow through on the pie. Hence the whole trial thing.
When they have stuff you want!
Yup.
To stand up for the good guys…. seems simplistic, but to oppose those who commit atrocities against humanity, I think you have to use force.
Define “good guys.”
That’s a little tougher to do, and I can’t come up with an easier answer than “I know it when I see it,” which may or may not correspond to what the government sees when they know it. I had in mind when I wrote that it’s not a good thing to ignore a lunatic genocider and not show up to kick his ass. “Do the right thing”. I said it was simplistic, but that’s all I have right now.
“Good guy” is relative. War never has a good and an evil. It is always just 2 opposing views.
Christians think that Atheists are the enemy. If they invaded your home and took your belongings, do you think you would have the right to defend yourself?
If everyone had reactionary defensive policies, there would never be any conflict.
Kodie, international law wouldn’t agree with you.
Remember Sadaam was armed by the West when he was useful by attacking Iran. His gassing of the Kurds in 1984 was rewarded by increased funding from the West. This only became a problem when we wanted him removed.
He killed a lot of his people but the US/UK illegally imposed sanctions killed 500,000 children. If he’d been doing that we might have had a reason to take action.
Sadly your reasoning leads to the succession of war crimes carried out by the US and UK in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yugoslavia and Iraq again.
Never.
But there are cases when it should be done anyway.
I make a moral distinction between actively causing evil and passively allowing it to happen. I know many philosophers disagree with me on that point.
But as I do think it is worse to be actively evil than to passively allow the same amount of evil to occur, I think the bar for going to war gets set somewhat higher. While you may save more lives by invading, you’re actively causing the deaths, rather than allowing them to happen by not preventing it.
Once a country weighs their options this way, it becomes necessary to invade only when it is overwhelmingly obviously beneficial to do so.
Another way to phrase to moral question: If you could somehow calculate the total death toll of invasion vs. inaction, and found them to be identical, would you want the invasion? I doubt many people would. What if inaction would result in 100,000 deaths, and invasion 99,999? I think most people would still prefer inaction.
Not only do we need to have some margin of improvement over inaction in order to justify invasion, we’d need to have a large degree of certainty of that margin, which is incredibly difficult to get. Well, difficult to get *honestly*.
So, yes, invasions can be justified on humanitarian or safety grounds, but only in extreme cases.
When God tells you to.
A+.
When I as your leader tell you that God told me to.
We should be able to defend ourselves but War should be a last resort!
War, only when we have exhausted all peaceful alternatives to resolving the conflict and diplomacy is no longer an option.
1. In response to an offensive attack by that nation.
2. In response to invasion by that nation.
3. In response to an attack or invasion by that nation upon an ally.
Notice that all of these are reactions to events. Preemptive invasion/assault/war is not acceptable and should be condemned by the rest of the world. The US should suffer sanctions and punishment for our involvement in Iraq.
I am disgusted by our governments decision to invade a sovereign nation without provocation. Before we did this, I had never been ashamed to be an American. I am very ashamed now.
This.
Except I’m not ashamed to be American.
I still love our/my country very much. I think we have a lot of potential and in general our intentions are good. We have been falling short of this potential in recent years but I think we might be turning things around.
Unfortunately fear has put us in a position where the masses are willing to take extreme measures. A lot of laws have been created, passed, and enforced the last 10 years that would make our fore fathers’ heads spin. This is all a product of fear, the terrorists have won. We have been terrorized and our terror has cost us and the people of Iraq and Afghanistan countless lives (probably close to 1 million by now).
The political parties have mastered the use of fear to get things accomplished that would never happen with a calm and collected population. We have to stop being so scared of everything and calm down to get ourselves straightened out.
I firmly believe that the government of both my country and yours at the time of the Iraq invasion should be tried in the ICC.
When examined solely on a moral basis, war is never moral. To kill someone, even to save a hundred people, is still immoral to the one being killed. Those partaking in the war can (and do) come up with all kinds of justifications to ease their conscience (patriotism, protecting the homeland, fighting evil, etc.), and in many cases those justifications are very viable, but in the end the result is one half living and one half dying. For the dying half, I think you would be very hard pressed to find any of them saying “Oh, well, they were morally right to take my life.”
I have to admit, I kind of don’t care what an aggressor thinks.
If someone attacked myself or my wife in my home, and I shot them, I would be disinclined to worry whether that person thought I was making the right moral choice.
I agree with Goodman who says that if everyone reserved violence as a reactionary defensive measure, there would be no conflict. And if no one ever invades my home with the intention of doing myself or my wife harm, I will never have to shoot anyone.
The mugger who steals my wallet is still guilty of a crime even if he believes he did not. There are actions that we must consider inherently immoral and that we can feel morally justified in resisting with reasonable force.
I don’t think there is any such thing as a “moral” war. All wars are only varying degrees of immoral and are always primarily about money. The “moral” aspects are always based on, at best, half-truths and often complete lies.
I don’t think you can ever take up a war on moral grounds. To me, “kill or be killed” is a practical consideration, not a moral one. War can be the least objectionable of the available horrible choices.
Somebody — anybody remember who? — said, “People try peace for a week, and when it doesn’t work they go back to war, which hasn’t worked for thousands of years.”
Theodore Roszak (Google is your friend)
It’s not a question of *whether* one ought to wage war. Life, after all, is war. The question is what means ought to be employed. Violent or non-violent? Non-violence can encourage violence. One must not encourage aggressors with pacifism. We “Allies” had every justification to fight the Nazis quite violently, but were we justified in intentionally burning cities? Hell no. It’s not a simple question of “to fight or not to fight.”
There may not be such a thing as a moral war, however there can be moral justification for engaging in a war. Sometimes your back is against the wall and the choice is between fighting or being conquered or destroyed. Could we have sat back and allowed the Japanese and the Germans to continue their aggression in WWII? Still, I think WWII was the only war in which the U.S had true moral justification for its involvement. That is not to say that all our actions during the war were moral.
World War II is no exception.
As for Japan, we had been supporting the French in their colonial domination of southeast asia, enforced trade embargoes on Japan threatening their livelihood, and then Roosevelt blatantly kept intelligence information from Pearl Harbor to bait the Japanese into attacking to rouse American public fury. Japan was also still bitter about our brutal dominance and suppression of indpendence in the Phillipines decades before.
As for the Germans- We went over to “save the Jews” by transporting segregated black soldiers in the bottom hulls of ships with barely any ventilation (just like they were originally transported to this country) while white soldiers rode above on the decks meant for actual human occupancy. German troops were moved around in trucks built by Ford, ITT built German airplanes used against us, the list goes on and on. And this was just decades after us committing genocide on the native population of this country, violating every one of hundreds of treaties signed with them.
No war is an island and every war has its myths of self-justification, dirty little secrets, and hypocrisies. Know your history, it’s always primarily about money in the end. The elite and powerful win, the people lose.
“and then Roosevelt blatantly kept intelligence information from Pearl Harbor to bait the Japanese into attacking to rouse American public fury”
This is, at best, wildly speculative. Yes, I’ve read the conspiracy theories on this too, but none of them are what I’d call credible. They are the WWII version of ’9/11 truthers’.
For the record, I don’t buy the 9/11 truther stuff at all. “Wildly speculative”? Speculative perhaps, but we’ll just have to agree to disagree on the “wildly” part. There is a long and well documented history of the U.S. government decieving its own people as to the justification for, or even existence of, military actions that have killed countless innocent people.
Generalization that does nothing to prove the assertion.
“Humans have a history of killing each other,” is not evidence for the statement, “you killed someone.”
Unless you have evidence that Roosevelt deliberately withheld intelligence that led to the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and did so with the intent of gaining support for entering the war, then I’ll stick with “wildly speculative.”
Pretty far gone, there. As though no legitimate threat ever existed in this world, and every call to war has been illegitimate. Ask the American Indian whether the European, his weaponry, deceit, and all his diseases was a real threat. Incredibly irresponsible to imagine that Hitler, for his fantasies of annihilating the Jews, Slavs, and others, was not a real threat to humanity.
A threat to humanity as a whole or just to our allies? Was he more or less a threat “to humanity” than our “ally” in that conflict, Stalin? And the question was “morally right” not “legitimate”. Were there other more morally right alternatives that were not explored?
I am not saying it was 100% absolutely morally wrong to do anything at all about that situation. What I am saying is what was actually done, how it was done, leaves much to question as to morality and often smacks of what is in the interests of money more than people or morality.
A threat to humanity. No question. Every last human? No, but humanity? Yes. The alliance was defined by the threat; not the other way around.
As to “legitimate” and “right,” I used legitimate in two senses, one of which pertained to threats. As to “right”, it’s too high a term for the real world.
I’m sure there were alternatives that were not explored, such as attacking the Nazis before they got a chance to destroy much of Europe. Europe’s sin was in Europe’s neglect in defending herself. France was asleep. Britain was asleep. And yes, Russia was asleep. Hitler transformed Stalin from a tyrant into a monster.
Of course we committed terrible crimes in prosecuting the war, but the fact remains that once Hitler gained power, war was inevitable. Hitler was all about conquest and cleansing.
Could Hitler have been prevented? I think so, but once we had him, it was too late. You can blame that on Versailles, but again, once we had the monster, the monster had to be fought.
My knowledge of the history of that era is limited, so I need some clarification. Was there a specific, aggressive and violent action on the part of the U.S. that not just provoked the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, but actually justified it? I was under the impression that when the Allies stopped the Japanese advance in the Pacific they were on Australia’s doorstep. Was Australia also complicit in this baiting of the Japanese Empire?
As for Germany: So the racism of the U.S. negates any good that we do? Because we are not perfectly moral, none of our actions can ever be considered moral. And please forgive my ignorance again, but when exactly did the U.S. commit genocide against the German people?
Not genocide, but mass murder. This doesn’t negate the fact that the Nazi machine had to be fought, but fire-bombing cities is a definite no-no.
As far as baiting the Japanese Empire, let’s not forget China, and every peninsula and island that Empire overran. The Japanese may have learned how to make an empire from the West, and maybe they figured it was their turn, but ultimately I believe they did what they did because they *could*. They figured they were *destined* to conquer (read “manifest destiny”). Still, I’m not certain that the Japanese would have invaded the USA itself. Bear in mind that Hawaii was merely a territory at the time—one of many territories in a vast American Empire. I believe the Japanese as aggressors in the Pacific needed to be fought, but what the US did to Japan was unconscionable.
No argument here. I originally made the point that World War II was the only war in which the U.S. fought from a morally defensible position. War itself is not moral, and all participants in WWII were guilty of immoral actions. The goal of stopping Japanese and German aggression was a moral goal.
Was goading Japan into attacking them a part of that morally defensible action?
The US politicians took actions that played into Japan’s decision making. Did the US embargo Japan? Yes. Did she set about strengthening her Pacific bases? Yes. Did she move the Pacific fleet headquarters to Hawaii from California? Yes. But it is not likely that these constituted a plan to goad Japan into war but probably could better be explained as part of the ramping up of tensions that often presages hostilities.
“…the Roosevelt administration, while curtly dismissing Japanese diplomatic overtures to harmonize relations, imposed a series of increasingly stringent economic sanctions on Japan. In 1939 the United States terminated the 1911 commercial treaty with Japan. “On July 2, 1940, Roosevelt signed the Export Control Act, authorizing the President to license or prohibit the export of essential defense materials.” Under this authority, “[o]n July 31, exports of aviation motor fuels and lubricants and No. 1 heavy melting iron and steel scrap were restricted.” Next, in a move aimed at Japan, Roosevelt slapped an embargo, effective October 16, “on all exports of scrap iron and steel to destinations other than Britain and the nations of the Western Hemisphere.” Finally, on July 26, 1941, Roosevelt “froze Japanese assets in the United States, thus bringing commercial relations between the nations to an effective end. One week later Roosevelt embargoed the export of such grades of oil as still were in commercial flow to Japan….”
I agree that the US stance was reasonably moral in WWII, but can we remember that it was Hitler who declared war on the US, not the other way around!
I agree, WW2 was a result of WW1. If pacifism had been practiced in WW1, WW2 would never have occurred.
The aggressive and passive aggressive actions of the Allies gave rise to the Axis powers. WW2 was a reaction to the oppression opposed upon Germany post WW1.
While it is fun for kids to demonize Nazi’s and attempt to justify WW2, the fact is that we helped create the Nazi’s just as we have helped create the Terrorists.
Terrorists were called “Freedom Fighters” in 1980. We liked them because they were killing Russians whom we were having the Cold War with. We even trained and supplied arms to the Taliban. At this point, I can’t blame them for hating us. One year we are feeding/training/arming them; the next year we are dropping bombs on them.
If you want to look for whose “fault” World War 2 is, I suggest you look no further than France. When the Treaty of Versailles was written at the end of World War 1, it was France that insisted on crippling “reparation” payments from Germany, against the wishes of most of the European powers and America. Given that the first war was caused by a baffling array of interlocking treaties which all came into effect when Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria managed to get his brains blown out in the peaceful little town of Sarajevo. Germany, in effect, was forced to pay damages over a war for which the French (and all the rest of Europe) were equally responsible.
This left Germany with a prevailing zeitgeist of huge resentment and anger at their unjust treatment – and the Great Depression didn’t exactly help the public mood. Given that mood, the rise of extreme nationalism was inevitable. If it wasn’t Hitler, it would have been somebody else.
So, World War 2: Caused by the French. Who, by the way, blamed the British Expeditionary Force when they were beaten back to Dunkirk (ungrateful bastards moment number one), and after they got rescued by US, British and Commonwealth troops promptly kicked them all out of the country (ungrateful bastards moment number two).
The one who is to blame for any violent action is the one who throws the first punch or fires the first shot. To claim that war is immoral and then imply that the Japanese aggression can be justified by the way that the U.S “goaded” them into attacking us is hypocritical. Do you believe that the only possible reaction the Japanese had available to them was a violent one?
You are on a subway car and we come to your stop. There is only one door working, and you really need to get moving to the hospital for a course of dialysis treatment. I am bigger than you and decide to block the door and not let you out. Sure, you might die from not being able to move, but I am only standing there, being passive. If you then resort to physicality to get me out of the way, are you the one to blame for it?
I respectfully request that you allow me to pass due to my medical condition. If you refuse then I warn you that I will push you out of the way if you will not move voluntarily. If you still do not move then I will use a necessary amount of force to attempt to move you. If you resist then we will escalate until one of us prevails. I will not, however, pull out a gun and shoot you, nor would I threat violence against your friends or family to coerce you to move. And yes, the struggle to control the sole means of egress could escalate towards a severity which may end in serious injury or death, however I would be prepared to break off my aggressive actions if injury or death seemed likely. This is assuming that your only intention is to prevent me from leaving the car and that you do not desire to injure or kill me.
“This is assuming that your only intention is to prevent me from leaving the car and that you do not desire to injure or kill me.”
And if the intent is to keep you in the car knowing it will injure or kill you? It’s not a desire, but a known consequence of my actions.
That you may wish to kill or injure me is not a necessarily known consequence of your action of denying me exit from the car. Nightclub bouncers’ jobs are all about keeping people out of somepalce, yet we assume that most do not wish to kill or injure potential patrons in the process. As presented, your scenario indicated no motivation for your actions, so I would have to guess at your reason for detaining me, and I would start by assuming your intentions are benign until you do something specific to convince me otherwise. I could have gone on indefinitely covering all the variables that would impact our interaction. And that brings me back to the original comment that prompted my post. Custador presented a laundry list of actions that Roosevelt took against Japan to illustrate his contention that the U.S. “goaded” Japan into attacking Pearl Harbor. Did the actions of the U.S represent objectively convincing evidence to the Japanese that they needed to attack Pearl Harbor? Or did the actions of the U.S. give Japan the excuse they were looking for to pursue their own agenda? If in the subway scenario both of us state our motivation upfront, then the probable course of events becomes more predictable. If you tell me that you will resort to lethal violence to stop me from leaving, my condition is not immediately life threatening, and my chances of defeating you in a struggle seem slim, then I would sit down and wait to see what unfolds. If I tell you that I am in need of important medical treatment, perhaps you would show me mercy. Maybe the U.S. and Japan never made clear to each other what their intentions and ultimate goals were, and misunderstanding and mistrust ensued. But in the end, the Japanese chose to use violence to further their agenda, which in my opinion puts them in the wrong and justifies a military response from the U.S.
I have a very hard time conceiving of any war that would qualify as morally desirable. I don’t think I’m aware of any in history that have happened, and my imagination fails to produce one.
I think it’s probable, however, that there are situations in which war may be morally justified, if not desirable, if it is the “best” of the available options.
It’s probably a little bit of a cop out, and it’s probably not entirely consistent, but I’m inclined to think that there are some situations to which a good response isn’t possible, only a variety of bad ones, and that one/a country can be justified in making the best possible of those bad choices. I also think these situations are the exception, not the rule.
http://www.isil.org/resources/introduction.swf
Seriously. It’s all there.
Okay, explain to me then at what point in human history was property (i.e. land) “justly acquired”?
Land is simply a certain specialized (and historically, the most controversial) subtype of property. Most property is justified by fair free exchange, or direct production by labor. Ownership of land can be justified, as Locke argued, by improving it (the words he used was “mixing one’s labor with the land”). A sovereign of some sort is necessary to arbitrate disputes over claims of property, and that includes land. How the sovereign came to possess control over land is another issue entirely (and it is in this part of the process where moral warrant usually disappears).
Exactly. I think far too many people take the concept of private property (land) completely for granted without even questioning it for the rather arbitrary contrivance it actually is. Not saying the concept by itself is immoral, only that in practice claims of “original” ownership are most often dubious at best, and often entirely without moral merit.
war is just legal mass murder
While there are a variety of scenarios that would justify a variety of military actions, I think that actually going to war against another nation is inherently wrong. Declaring an entire people “the enemy” just opens too many doors. And we’ve certainly seen from Vietnam and Iraq that it is easier to get into a war than out of a war. Even if you go to war for morally justified reasons (we usually go for money), those reasons will disappear and the righteous war will not be carried out in a righteous way. Not the military’s fault exactly, but they are trained to kill and then sent abroad to spread democracy, a task they are neither equipped or trained for. Like I said, plenty of situations where killing a person or group of persons, or even overthrowing a government could be justified, not to mention domestic defense, but to consider war against a populace morally right there would have to be some pretty extreme justification. Best case scenario, the dictator we are trying to take down is an actual threat, and even then you are looking at a lot of civilians being punished for the actions of that one person. If Saddam had been the threat he was made out to be, would the Iraq War be justifiable? In my opinion (and probably the opinion of several hundred thousand dead Iraqis), even if we had found WMD’s in Iraq it would not have made what we did there right. Or to give a more current example, Iran. If it is decided that we are declaring war on Iran, will we (a) send in a seal team or CIA assassin to off Ahmedinejad in the middle of the night and be gone by sunrise, or (b) go in with some sort of “shock and awe” campaign killing more civilians than soldiers, and taking out hospitals, schools, and water treatment plants at the same rate as military bases?
No American soldier should be outside American soil. The Europeans, Japanese, Israelis and South Koreans are wealthy enough to protect themselves.
Mark, with over 300 foreign bases, are you really naive enough to believe that American troops abroad are there to “protect” us? It’s the same here in the UK. We have this public mass delusion that somehow we are the good guys defending the free. If America left us to protect ourselves then the world would be a lot more peaceful.
Ramen.
What is naive about the statement? You are wealthy enough to provide for your own defense.
The Filipinos expelled American troops about 15 years ago, (only later to invite them back). An American base in Ecuador is being closed and American troops have left Iceland
If the governments of Europe, Japan, South Korea and other countries asked American troops to leave, the Americans would leave.
So maybe the question should be, why don’t the political classes around the world ask the Americans to leave? I doubt many Americans would be upset to see our solders come home.
Mark, I really hate to say this but you spectactularly missed Guy’s point.
Mark, have you bothered to find out how many Governments around the world the US has toppled because they were not doing what the US wanted? I think it’s about 50 since the second world war but I might have missed a few. Very few governments are brave enough to ask them to leave and if they do they don’t tend to stay in government for very long.
It worked out fine for Cuba….
Sarcasm, I hope?
I am quite aware of America’s orchestrated coup d’états around the world.
But I believe you are bring paraniod if you believe the present administration would overthrow almost ever government in Western Europe if American troops where asked to leave.
As I stated the Filopinos once kicked the Americans out, and there was no resulting coup.
Most Americans believe the United States is too involved in the world. I have a friend stationed in Kosovo as a peacekeeper, that should be a job for an European.
I would welcome any leader from Europe, Japan or South Korea to say, “we would like to thank the Americans for their past help. But we can now wealthy enough to provide for our own defense.”
(Are you allowed to sumbit questions for prime ministerial debates?)
.
Interesting example the Philippines. I won’t detail the interference with government from wwII to 1991. But as you say in 1992 Subic Bay was closed after mass protests. Americans went home. Or did they?
So in 2008
“Philippine law has banned U.S. bases since a mass movement forced them out in 1992. Yet today 30,000 to 50,000 U.S. troops are stationed there and are in constant operation. Under the Balikatan joint war exercises, the Pentagon is bringing in logistical equipment and building installations.”
Makes you think don’t it???
When politicians and general war profiteers are willing to send their daughters and sons on the first line.
Great answer!!
That says it nicely. War is a Racket-
http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm