On Saturday, August 19, 2000 9:52 AM Wilson wilson@supremetyrant.com wrote:
> I use "we" because I'm a citizen of one of those superpowers.. Feel free
to
> include yourself in the plural, or not. Heh.
I prefer not to. I try t obe more precise and not speak for others.
> Wars are always going to be warlike.. Some of them are fought for more
> "human" reasons than others. People tend to get shot no matter what,
though.
You might be right, but the best test of this, since we can't plumb the
minds of all the actors yet, I think, is if the war is purely defensive.
Granted, not all nations on the defensive are fighting a just war, but it
would seem more likely, a nation fighting in defense is one that has been
attacked. Prima facie, that would make it look like a just war -- for it
not its attacker.
However, this does bring up the issue of leading attackers on (which some
believe the US government did with the Japanese Empire in 1941) and also of
preemptive strikes (e.g., the Six Day War). On the former, to me, attacks
always given the odor of being unjust and wrong, though one must dig deeper
and make reasonable conclusions. Did the American government expect an
attack? Did it do anything to lead the Japanese government on? Was that
the most likely outcome of its policies? Did the people in charge know
this? If they did not, should they have? All of these are enough to fill a
book and I'm not a scholar of World War Two. I'm only using it to
illustrate this problem here.
Regarding the latter, I lean very strongly against the attacker, even if the
attacker is a democracy with much more freedoms than it adversaries, as in
the Six Day War. (Strange thing is a lot of democracies seem to be very
militaristic on the whole. Examples include, the US, UK, France, India, and
Israel. Yeah, there are plenty of counterexamples, but the Kantian
democracy brings peace argument has to come to grips with all the data,
especially since the ones I list are some of the most democratic nations in
their regions or have a long history of democracy.)
Cheers!
Daniel Ust
http://uweb.superlink.net/neptune/
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