granted wars are never over just one thing. but you cannot just say it was tribal or religion, wars are over a series of things, an example is the Iraq war, we kept changing the official reasoning for invading, and having loads of reasons so we could justify it and they one they did not use was oil, and another west friendly nation in the middle east. I have read an interview from the DR of Congo, and i think that the minerals of the land really were a key issue, this was how they planned to make a living and feed their families, it is all about survival in some of the poorest areas of the world
maybe i am just been optimistic but i believe you can include some morality in warfare, how about when we try to minimize civilians casualties in some cases (if there was no morality, shouldn't we just bomb the hell out of them). i fully except it is very hard to include morality with war, but i think when liberal democracies are involved and the people have some power then the government must try and be seen to include morality so there is a sense of forced morality to not upset the compassionate people of your state. peacex
42.7% of statistics are made up on the spot. 1.1 to 1.4 billion Muslims out of 6+ billion is hardly a majority. According to this page, 20.12% of the world are Muslim. http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/xx.html#People Someone asked the Dalai Lama, "Why didn't you fight back against the Chinese? The Dalai Lama looked down, swung his feet just a bit, then looked back up and said with a gentle smile, "Well, war is obsolete, you know." Then, after a few moments, his face grave, he said, "Of course, the mind can rationalize fighting back...but the heart, the heart would never understand. Then you would be divided in yourself, the heart and the mind, and the war would be inside you." --Dalai Lama 'An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind.' - Gandhi Omnia Vincit Amor. There is no such thing as a good war or a bad peace. Generals die in bed. What if they held a war and no one came? It takes more courage to refuse to fight than to fight.
i agree i do not think that war is ever a good thing and should be avoided at all costs, i was just commenting on how morality could be entered into a war situations, even if morality wasn't used to enter the war. peacex
In a way, I agree, though one might better term that "restraint." But perhaps you're right: for a drafted soldier, who is thrown into war, he must fight. But he can do his job honorably (no raping women, no killing POW's, etc). However, the job of the war planners/those running it is to define the enemy as... the enemy. Sub human, worthy only of death. War propoganda must do this, lest the people get soft (that is, want peace) and thus lose resolve. Assuming it is a just war* (a war of defense, for example), to have the people go soft would be a catastrophe. So, if you see the enemy as subhuman, or monsters (like the "evil" terrorists who must be hunted down), why use restraint? Who cares about morals? See how impossible morals in war truly is? Why use restraint against a purely evil enemy? *of course we know, almost no wars are "just" and the warplanners want the people to support their wars not for moral imperitives or because of the critical situation they face as a whole, but because they are profiteering off the war, as well as often tightening their grip of power.
It has been my experience (I am sad to say) that you cannot train a man to kill another man. You must first reduce the enemy to something less than human to inure your troops to the idea of killing him. A high percentage of newbie’s do not fire there weapons in combat. That is why the military has a saying "The vets do the killing the newbie’s do the dying". The only answer is to stop war. You cannot send a human into combat without equipping him with the mental tools that will enable him to have a chance of survival. To do otherwise would be immoral in itself.
offices for active police duty has a ceiling. Above that, you get shot. You think too much, and that is a handicap in that job. In combat, I assume the same applies. The other factor of course is how mean a person is. Real sadists would revel in warfare, while pacifists would prefer to just let the enemy kill them.
The US military works hard to detect and eliminate sadists. They have the problem of not stopping when you tell them too. The purpose of the armed forces is to apply a controlled level of violence. Your ideal grunt will go into a town and kill every left-handed man with red hair. But not kill anyone else. That has nothing to do with morality all war is immoral. That is just the nature of the military beast.
Uhhh, you all are aware that army ants have been known to go to war... i.e. war is natural. Perhaps a method of natural selection?
yes it may be natural but i believe we as humans have morals and ethics, i like to think that we judge things a bit different to animals. animals will go to war to protect their own and to take over somewhere or even land or just because the 'enemy' are in their way. so therefore are you saying wars such as Iraq are justified, and the international community should live in anarchy at a constant battle, and all this attempt at cooperation is a waster of time? peace
