"I would welcome your comments on what justification and circumstances a nation (in today's time) should enter into war ... and what rights does the world community have in agreeing or sanctioning unilateral warfare." -SamAdams
I feel that war is seldom justified. Especially in today's time when most wars seem to be fought on the basis of political interests and not out of necessity. War is necessary in some circumstances, and these times are the only possible times war is justified. Even then I think it is questionable whether there is true justification for going to war. The Revolutionary War is an example of a necessary and justified war. To be controlled by a tyrannous government and given few rights is justification to revolt.
The current situation in Iraq is horrendous. Though Bush claimed it was 'necessary' to go to war, it certainly could have (and should have) been avoided. I said before in a blog somewhere in the archives that I was honestly scared when I watched Bush's State of the Union Address this year. The idea of preemptively striking a country [i]because[/i] they have weapons of mass destruction just made absolutely no sense to me. If Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and the U.S. attacked, don't you think there would have been major repercussions for us? That scared me. But, as it is, the so-called war on terrorism will only encourage terror, will only result in loss- loss of lives, money, U.S. economy, etc. Perhaps the Iraqi people are better off since Bush stepped in and took care of Saddam. But I believe in Laissez-faire government- as long as they don't mess with us, we shouldn't interfere with any other country's government. Iraq and Saddam had nothing to do with the terrorist attacks of September 11, so how is attacking Iraq fighting terrorism? It's not, it won't do any good, and this war certainly isn't justified.
Hmm, I think I got a little side-tracked there, sorry. I suppose my basic stance is that war is only justified if it is necessary to ensure the individual rights of the citizens, but wars of this nature should only be instigated by the citizens in question, not by another country.
As far as the rights of the world community, I really don't know. As I said before, I don't think one country has the right to interfere with the internal politics of another country. Even though there is the UN, there is no governing body over world politics. World politics equals anarchy. There is international law and the UN, which serve to unify the nations of the world, but they are only effective as long as all the nations involved in world politics cooperate. This is hardly possible and shouldn't even be expected. The international system is chaotic and unpredictable, with no legitimate form of international law-enforcement. As such, I don't know that there can be any definite 'rights' given to the world community in terms of sanctioning unilateral warfare.
I hope that answered the question, I'm not so sure it did though heh.. I'm just too tired to formulate a well-thought out response right now... comments are welcomed, of course.
"Tragically, a nation that was created by intellectuals and visionaries has now been completely taken over by venal corporate gangsters, delusional Christian fruitcakes and hopelessly shallow Texas shit-kickers." -Tom Robbins
