Sidonie is very wise.

In other words… Yes, War is ok when it is in: * Self-Defense * Defense of Others

Ryan

War is a necessary part of life. Much life animals control their interacting ecosystems by undertaking “crowd control” ie eating other animals for food. So too must humans control their own population. There is 3 ways this can happen; either via global birth control(some form of eugenics), the systematic erradication of a type of peoples outside of a war(purging a troubled society that bogs down the world” or, the most plausible way, war. Quite simply war helps control our population to remain within safe parameters

If you have to try to argue a way into believing war is just,

then it isn’t.

I do not, even a little bit, think war is ok. I feel that there are so many other ways of solving and argument. Fighting is never the answer. Besides I think most of the people who go and fight are doing it more for the action anyway. The fighting for the country thing comes in second. Some people say that war is always ok because the only time they fight is when they are protecting their country. I feel that protecting is the same as defending, and defending isn’t the same thing as war. When our country gets attacked we should fight back to protect the lives of the people, that is defending the country. In contrast, when our army is fighting in another country for years and the people they say there protecting don’t feel as if they are in any immediate danger. I feel is just pure asinine.

Firstly, the premise of the question “When is war ok?” represents an antequated notion framed by theorists from Sun Tzu to Clausewitz that “war is politics by other means.” In past centuries when war was a very limited or even a fairly reasonable rationally focused human behavior of last resort and just barely able to be justified by rational/logical moral persuasion, many were able to argue that despite General Sherman admonition that “war is hell,” there were some cases where it was perhaps a necessary evil. But with the emergence of Total War (realized perhaps in a small way by Americans on September 11, 2001—a statement I can justify personally by the fact that I almost was a victim of the attacks that day thanks to a planned appointment in the Pentagon corridor where the airliner impacted) and the melding of the killing of noncombatants and combatants alike beginning in the Civil War and reaching its height in the Second World War (when MOST of the 55 million killed were “innocents” or would represent what some in the Pentagon today would term “collateral damage”) the construct of war has become not only counterproductive but extremely threatening to the notion of the continued existence of the human species. Weapons technology has passed the point of no return or the point of world system failure if you will. We, meaning the average citizens of the planet, for the most part have NOT recognized this fact or worst yet have forgotten the progress achieved in the 1960s-1980s in educating the populace of this fact. There has been a purposeful backsliding or forgetting of the progress (speeded unfortunately by the fiction of the “end of the Cold War”) made in recognizing the illegitimacy of the tragically flawed notion that war is still sometimes necessary mindset This mass global movement of citizen (which began in a few scientists’ homes and workplaces and spread to larger and larger number of all classes of citizenry from plumbers to corporate CEOs) to educate the people that the invention of thermonuclear weapons (and many other genocidal weapons such as biological and chemical agents, and a variety of other toxins, some designed specifically to differentiate and target specific racial and/or ethnic groupings) has forced humankind past an irreversible watershed—that each and every war, no matter how limited or structured has the potential to trigger the omnicide of the human race. Therefore the question “When is war okay” is akin to asking “Is Human Extinction An Acceptable Risk for Rational Political Actors on This Planet.” With the increasing spread of nuclear weapons beyond the Nuclear Club (US, Russia, China, France, and Britain), combined with the continued existence of less formalized defense and alliance treaties (the Warsaw Pact is no more but NATO and a Russia-China axis of extremely extended (as well as secretive) mutual nuclear pacts and defense protocols), not to mention the existence of tens of thousands of nuclear weapons in Russian and American arsenals, there is absolutely no doubt that each and every war fought today and in the future could go nuclear and in fact through additional suicide terrorist ideology create a circumstance (see the SUM OF ALL FEARS motion picture and many other classics such as TERMINATOR or FAIL SAFE) where Russia and America might accidentally or unintentionally trigger a global nuclear holocaust. Granted in MOST current wars the chances of such an occurrence can be rated as quite remote. However, no matter how small the possibility, the extremely massive threat of resulting Nuclear Winter (i.e. the destruction of our biosphere from the exploding of even just a few dozen thermonuclear warheads in the span of a few hours or days) and in real terms the extinction of human civilization and the real possibility of the resulting omnicide of the human race remains a risk not worth the benefit of “starting a war.” History has countless examples of squirmishes, limited military actions or small wars spinning out of control, even with the best intentioned and rational actors at the “controls.” The Nuclear Freeze, Nuclear Build-Down and other efforts to promote large nuclear weapons reductions by the superpowers and such reasonable and rational unilateral efforts to de-alert hair triggers on nuclear weapons (which by the way is a policy of both Russia and America which has triggered dozens of computer-generated false alerts and almost resulted in pushing the doomsday button countless times and as recently as 1995) which President Bush mentioned as a possible U.S. policy during his 2000 campaign for president (but later axed as inconsistent with a new nuclear posture review) have been mightily discredited and forgotten, especially since the 9/11 attack. But in fact with a new growing mass suicide terrorist jihad mindset (predominantly Muslim but also existent in some Fundamentalist Christian sects around the world), it is in fact critically important that world citizens and their governments embrace the beginning of a serious global effort to radically reduce and later (say by 2030-2040) elminate entirely nuclear weapons inventories (as much as possible, granting that a few warheads hidden away by rogue regimes could only play a minor role in disrupting a post-nuclear global peace regime). If you don’t buy the “wars inevitably lead to nuclear weapon usage and increasingly that means triggering regional and global climate catastrophes” then you need to consider that EVEN IF NO NUCLEAR DOOMSDAY WEAPONS EXISTED AT ALL IN THE WORLD (in fact we’ll say no WMD weapons to include chemical, biological weapons) war is still a wholly bankrupct, counterproductive, and irrelevant legacy from the past. Wars damage the global environment (starting at the regional level but insidiously war technology pollutes and contaminates the environment with solvents and heavy metal poisons including depleted uranium weapons used by the U.S.). Wars bankrupct any nation’s economy even the largest world economy (U.S.) through the creation of large budget deficits and widens the gap between rich and poor. And in fact there is a legitimate argument today that the current global financial crisis is directly tied to world global military expenditures and U.S. and Soviet military buildups during (and yes even after) the Cold War. Wars have an overwhelmingly net negative effect on the individuals involved and particularly those fighting the wars, and not just for the “losing side.” Veterans are scarred emotionally, physically, and in many other ways deterimental to society (coorelation with crime rates, etc). “Just War” theory may have legitimacy for the world of the early-mid 20th century but today’s globally connected, financially and environmentally interconnected world does not equate with war-fighting. Most political leaders realize this but cynically are afraid to redirect mass citizenry away from nationalistic, patriotic endeavors that distract the populace away from real changes necessary to create a healthy, well-educated, sustainable, economically viable world citizenry. The giving up of war as a human behavior, which is inevitable but must be accelerated in this half of the 21st century before irreparable damage is done to the biosphere and/or the human population’s genetic and biological sustainability, does not necessarily equate with eliminating all local, regional or “national” sovereignty. In fact, peoples of the world will still have reason to work politically (through peaceful though not necessarily unrobust means) for fair distribution of resources and “goodies” if you will to local jurisdictions. And peoples will still identify strongly with their localities, states, cities, regions, and nationalities in recreational and symbolic settings such as the Olympics and even with global sporting leagues. So, in conclusion, the answer to “When is War Ok? is NEVER. If you have any doubt that wars are on their way out, in terms of human behavior, then that doubt, fully equates rationally with the tremendous acknowledgement that a future war, somewhere or somehow, either tomorrow, next week, next year or next decade could realistically be the tripwire to the end of human civilization and in fact could really mean the end of our species. To quote the 1998 film “Armageddon” about war (rather than asteroids the subject of this film) WE CALL IT A GLOBAL KILLER, NOT EVEN BACTERIA COULD SURVIVE. War is most assuredly not in any way, shape or form, an ok activity. Just as cannibalism, human slavery, and other human behavioral taboos have been largely eliminated so too will war. If not, our species won’t make it. That’s a fact, jack.

War, is not okay. As i’m sure many believe, there are always alternatives to solving a problem other than violence. Many fight for the fame and glory of the country, but is it glory if youve killed over 200 innocent people? I do not think so. The country needs protected, but a war is not the answer. Especially when it goes from being about your country and fighting for its freedom, to a war for another country and the freedom they want. It may be nice to help others out, but fighting a war for them is simply rediculous. So, in this case and in any case, war is not alright. The killing of people just for the sake of killing them is not right.

War is never okay. People lose loved ones over a war that usually means nothing. There was once a time when kings or queens fight with their soldiers… Now it’s the goverment that sits behind a desk giving orders like a tyrant knowing that they wont be in the fight. Lat year Bush spent billions on war supplies and soldiers when he could have used that money to save the world! Thats how corrupted and evil war is now.

War and okay are antonyms, but it is an unfortunate truth that war is a necessary evil.

War is never ok. It is acceptable only as a last resort.