What would be described as a just war? Has any such war ever been fought?
Was there another way of resolving the dispute without a resort to war?
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You know that too well sweetheart ๐
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YES I DO !
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There’s no such thing as a “just war”, it’s just rhetoric to sell a war to the public, recruit soldiers and to clear one’s own conscience.
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I think wwii was needed to stop a large number of lunatics. Could we have made peace with Germany and Japan by talking? Would we have wanted to? In my opinion no, because talks always seem to indicate concessions, and I would not want to concede anything to that kind.
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I agree with club from above. WW2 I’d say probably had to be fought. I don’t know of how else Hitler, Stalin, and Japan could have been stopped otherwise. Whether dropping nukes on Japan was or wasn’t necessary is another discussion. I don’t know of any other way Hitler cold have been stopped, though, without forcing him to.
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The US joining the Allies was not the beginning of the war but a retaliation after Pearl Harbor if am correct. So their involvement was revenge kinda. Did Germany have any reason to start the war?
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Germany didn’t start the war. We (Britain) did when they annexed Poland.
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Is it Germany’s invasion of Poland or the British retaliation which led to the war? I should dust my history books again. At one point in life the two WW grabbed my attention.
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Germany did not start WW2. Britain declared war on Germany, as did Australia, India, and NZ, followed by France and SA. You can argue about the causes and the politics, but we kicked it off. And given what Hitler did, I think it wasn’t a bad call.
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Ah, thanks for the history lesson. This is how history is slowly rewritten and revised. Way back when we did history in school, all our history books had it that it is the actions of the Germans that led to WW2.
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Wait. Yes, the actions of the Germans annexing ie invading and taking over various places led to WW2, I was saying specifically that Britain started it by declaring war, followed by the commonwealth countries as above, and France. Both statements are correct and not mutually exclusive.
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Yes. They were treated like the a-holes of the world after WW1. However, if they weren’t stopped, we’d both be writing in German right now, and Jews would have long ago been eliminated. I’m not in any way condoning war. But Hitler had to be stopped. A better question is, why did it take the bombing of Pearl Harbor before America got off its ass to help out in Europe? We waited too long. And, treating the loser of a war the way France, and others treated Germany after WW1, is a sure fire way to create a psychotic enemy that is hell bent on eliminating anything that stands in its way. America’s actions in the Middle East are creating its enemies today. I can think of no better way to piss off a group of people than to send robot planes to bomb them. So, while I feel Hitler had to be stopped, we were also part of creating him in the first place. Once the monster was let loose, he had to be stopped. I’m glad he was. However, I’m not glad that we did not learn from the mistakes that created him in the first place. War is horrible and it will never stop until the big guys, like the US, can find a way to not create enraged enemies by prodding them with imperialistic red hot pokers.
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Perfectly argued, Inspired. Well done!
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I’ll step in for a moment since I’m one of the many Americans born with a German last name. While the world tends to think of Americans as being mostly renegade Brits, actually not only at the time of the Revolution but for a long time afterwards, the bulk of the “white” people in America were of German ancestry. One of the things happening in America between 1939 and 1941 was a very strong feeling of staying out of Europe’s problems, besides, who wants to go fight cousin Heinrick? The Americans of predominantly English ancestry dominated this country and set things up to keep it that way (look at the last names of the American Presidents), so all the Schultz’s and Mullers and the like tended to be sympathetic to anyone who glorified Germans (aka Dutch/Deutch). Then throw in a significant level of anti-Semitism and you have a population that is very resistant to opposing Hitler. Whatta you do? You use the Eastern end of the Axis to get us into war by setting up the entire Pacific Fleet in a bottle necked harbor inspite of several months of increasing anti-American rhetoric coming out of Japan. Japan took the bait and the rest is history. Sentiment changed rapidly and radically and all of a sudden it was our war instead of Europe’s war. And that’s why it took so long to get America involved.
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war is lazy thinking
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I like this. It is to tell oneself that by killing a great number of people, some end will be attained and that end is a just end.
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Tell that to Chamberlain…
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if it would “appease” you lol. Chamberlain did what he shouldve at the time. Had he not, what scrabble he had left for a British army wouldve been deccimated by Hitler, leaving the future of Germanys aggression unimpeded. Chamberlain had no troops, no allies, and no popular support. And no one cared about drawing boundaries anyway. War over a map wouldve been considered extremely lazy thinking.
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Excellent points. You did notice that his name got immediate reaction however. Ah well, arm chair quarterbacking and I don’t even play football!
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but of course! reaction is part of thinking and discussion. excellent that you brought him up ๐
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“We waited too long.” How long is too long? The repugs (one in particular) think we should “go for it” right now and rid the world of those fu__ “terrorists.”
Perhaps if we quit invading their space and let the Middle East fight among themselves (as they’ve done for hundreds of years), there would be no need for “military actions.”
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If you read my whole reply, that’s exactly what I said. We create this sh*t by sticking our asses into places we’re not wanted. Hitler, once let out of the box we created, unfortunately, had to be stopped. I was married to a wonderful Jewish woman for many years I’d have never met had Hitler not been stopped. Preemptive war strike ideas are horrible. I am not, and did not, make such a claim. We are bombing people with friggin’ robots. It is not making us likable and well understood. We learned NOTHING from WW2. We created Hitler. We did. The West and our god damn insatiable need inject ourselves into places we are not welcome. We punished Germany after WW1 like an abusive parent and made Hitler. War is disgusting. Horrible. And America is an imperialistic nation that creates its own enemies by spreading itself like a virus where it isn’t wanted. I am not in favor of anything war related. My only point here is that, once let off the chain, Hitler had to be stopped. We learned nothing from our experiences in WW2 and we continue to bring war unto others and ourselves rather than being harbingers of peace. That, I’m afraid, is a lot harder to do than to send a robot to blow up a village in the Middle East.
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No, I read your entire rant — and I agreed with it. I was just adding a bit of my personal opinion. I’m definitely for being harbingers of peace — but there are those in control of this nation that will fight (no pun intended) to the very end to “protect our borders” (their words, not mine).
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There are many in this nation who’d happily and readily drop nukes whenever someone pissed them off. Pontifirant is the correct term for my rants as they’ve no basis in anything anyone gives a darn about. They must be done from an arm chair with a beer or a glass of wine on hand. Otherwise they might make sense which would defeat their whole purpose.
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I agree entirely with your rant! You do leave out one item, wars are good because they provide a market for munitions made by large industrialists. You can make a lot more money selling guns and bullets than by making and selling baby buggies. Now, can someone help me get my g-d tongue out of my cheek?
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There’s a whole lot of stuff one can get into here, so I’ll do my best to try to keep my thoughts brief.
World War II is seen as a just war in the U.S. because we were trying to use peaceful means to halt Japanese expansion. They attacked us as a result, and that was a pretext for getting into the European theater. This is a retroactive justification though, as we didn’t know what was going on at the time.
Now, all that being said, World War II probably didn’t need to happen. If we knew how to wage peace better than waging war, we wouldn’t have saddled Germany with all that debt and created conditions for extremists to take control. So, depending upon one’s point of view, World War II might be just, or it might not be.
Other than fighting extremists, maybe the only other justified conflict might have been the first Persian Gulf War, where the world united to protect Kuwait’s sovereignty. The same mistakes were made there, and because we suck at waging peace, things haven’t been made better in that part of the world.
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What is that event in the clip?
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No idea. I just like the song
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It’s interesting that WW2 comes to mind. Don’t forget that Hitler had annexed Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland before he moved on Poland. I’m not sure the Treaty of Versailles can be blamed for Hitler’s megalomania and fascism. It’s like saying the Crusades wouldn’t have happened without christianity.
The political issue with WW2, was signing agreements to aid another country, but that doesn’t negate the power play that was still around following WW1.
But to shift the emphasis, was it just for the UK to defend the Falklands, part of the sovereign realm, after the Argentinians invaded? Defence, on the British part, not invasion.
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As for the Crusades, would they have happened if not for the Arab invasion of Palestine in the Seventh Century? Yes, it took a while for Europe to respond, but that response was triggered in part by the setting up of a competing god, Allah. (ignoring the fact that Allah simply means god in Arabic) The Middle East was almost exclusively Christian and Jewish by the time the Arabs invaded. Somehow that seems to be forgotten by the current group of folks who feel guilty about the Crusades thinking they were just an invasion of an unrelated foreign country. There’s a whole lot of history being ignored. That, and there’s a whole lot of ignoring of the basic causes of all wars: money and power.
You want a just war? The only thing reasonably excusable in fighting a war is defense of immediate invasion. Not threatened or suspected invasion, but actual invasion. Even then there are layers upon layers of opposing arguments: like what business did a bunch of European Jews have in invading and taking over a chunk of Palestine? Or, were the Irish justified in trying to free their land from the well settled foreign invaders’ descendants? What about Wounded Knee? Why do the native peoples of Brazil speak Portuguese? For that matter, why aren’t humans still just an African phenomenon? Wow, this could get to be fun!
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Concerning war Blaise Pascal said: “Why are you killing me for your own benefit? I am unarmed.” “Why do you live on the other side of the water? My friend, if you lived on this side, I should be a murderer, but since you live on the other side, I am a brave man and it is right.”
There are many reasons for war and some of them may be justified as moral action at the time but that just depends on which side of the water you live on.
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The justness of a war depends on which side of the gun one stands. Men have many excuses to go to war. I think it is far much easier to get bombers in the air than to get men willing to look for a non military solution to a crisis
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I know those lyrics well! ๐
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Sorry, I forgot your question! Was there ever a justified war? I don’t know of any.
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Me neither, but I am hoping someone could tell me about one they think was a just war
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There is no such thing as a “just war.” However, the morality of peace becomes an untenable position when juxtaposed with the likes of an Adolf Hitler. As long as humankind is susceptible to such dangerous megalomania, war will remain sadly inevitable.
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Well, we are still making bombs, superior aircraft and I don’t think they are being made as toys. Someone is looking for a place to deploy them
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Of course. It is the megalomaniacs who are looking to deploy the weapons of war. Only when humankind can free itself from that psychopathic malady, will it be able to end this persistent cycle of war.
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And that day when it comes, I know I will not be there to see it
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Me neither. And, if civilization continues on its current course, there’s a real chance that none of us will ever see that day.
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And sadly it seems that is where we are headed
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I liked that Nan, the cost of war
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We humans need to do some deep thinking about what we really want to be when we grow up. Right now we are a scrappy bunch who have reproduced to the point where we are crowding each other either for room literally, or access to supplies to keep our standard of living going. One of the things that this Dianic sees is that so much of human culture is based on a male point of view. That is a viewpoint of competition. Males compete to get access to sex. Scrape away all the rest of the rhetoric and that’s what you have. Competition in a classroom leads to potential job success which leads to desirability as a mate which leads to getting access to the best looking (i.e. healthiest) and best connected mate. That may not show up if you asked people what they were doing, but it is the undercurrent that runs through everything. Many of the now archaic rules about the roles of women and of marriage (anti-adultery, lifelong commitments, polygamy rules, child custody rules, on and on) were set up to not only institutionalize that competition, but also to limit it so that the society as a whole is not damaged by it. Put the brakes on it so to speak. Killing the guy next door is frowned upon, but killing the guy in the next town is OK as long as your town agrees that the next town needs to be taken out and the goods redistributed in your own town. In fact, maybe the next town is planning on doing that to you, so you better take it out before it gets you. Besides, they wear red on Thursday and you’ve got a god that hates red.
Way over simplified, the point is if we learn to re-describe events and change the terms we are using over and over until this barebones level is reached, then maybe we can see where we can throw the monkey wrench into the works before they blow up. How can we use competition safely. Can we?
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Yes, there are instances where competition seems to be quite harmless like in sports though in most the winner gets all which sometimes lead to guys trying underhand deals to win.
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Some years back (~30) a friend of mine who had been at a major University in our area told me of a problem with the “grading on the curve” practice she found. The professor would put an article or book on reserve in the library and assign it for reading. The first (usually) student to get to it would cut out the article to prevent anyone else from reading it so as to assure that his would be the highest grade on the exam. Competition. Personally I don’t like grading on the curve because it doesn’t tell the world how much you know, only that you know a little more than the guy next to you. That might be very little indeed. Rather, I would see a set amount one was expected to know at the end of a class and be judged by how close I got to that goal. If everybody learned what was expected, why shouldn’t they all get A’s? Or at least then raise the bar!
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It is the reason you mention above that i dont like exams. I don’t think the way ours are currently planned is the best way to measure what a person has learnt within the year
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