[thechat] When is it time for war?

John Handelaar john at evolt.org.uk
Tue Mar 25 19:34:04 CST 2003


On Wed, 2003-03-26 at 00:49, Bill Haenel wrote:
> With all this talk of war here on thechat and elsewhere all around me,
> and an actual war going on out there, I find myself asking a lot of
> questions. Questions I don't normally consider. I have my own answers to
> many of them, but there's one I can't seem to find a solid answer for:
> 
> When is war justified?

Well, in this case there's no evidence that the latter 
applies.  If there were, the UN Security Council would have
backed this action.

Without UN authority, legally and IMHO and under all those
uses of the phrase 'Just War' which are in any case all based
on Catholic analysis dating back to St Thomas Aquinas and 
others, it fails on the grounds that the 'highest authority'
didn't sanction the attack.  The international law argument
falls on the same lines.  It also comes from that same 
christian argument, fundamentally, not that I'm saying that's
either a good or a bad thing.  (Here.)

But...

[And I add at this point that I got an *awful* lot of grief
for this position within CND, which has been Europe's biggest
peace movement outfit for 40-odd years.  Plus those naysayers
were just *wrong*...]

Partly, you know them when you see them.  WW1?  Bad.  WW2?
I can't argue against it morally.  A handy point with any left-
leaning peacenik (which covers me too, but not in this case),
which covered my arse enough that they didn't make any succesful
attempt at making me not-vice-chairperson-of-CND, was the citing
of the Vietnamese invastion of Cambodia in 1979.  Which, for
the record, remained opposed by the US at the cost of nearly
a million deaths when Reagan and co bizarrely decided to insist
that the Khmer Rouge was the legitimate government of Cambodia
even as they continued systematically murdering everyone in
the country with an IQ higher than their shoe size.  Yay America.
Again.

> Is it important to only wage war as a matter of self-defense, or is it
> okay to attack just because a nation believes it is in danger of being
> attacked? 

Apart from defence against foreign attack (on which case
Gulf 1 and Afghanistan 2001 both passes, I'm obliged to 
mention here):

When not doing so would result in even more death.

WW2: tick.
Cambodia 1979:  tick.
Somalia 1993: tick.  (Failed horribly, but that's not the point)
Bosnia 1994: tick.

Iraq 2003:  totally NOT a tick.

> Are there other circumstances under which war is okay? 

Leaving that one open for now.  My main moral position is that
you avert the deaths of civilians at any cost.  Ergo I'm of the
opinion that there are some things we *didn't* do which we
probably should have, which *may* include:

a) Republic of South Africa circa 1981
b) Action to secure Palestinian and Lebanese territory (and 
   *not*, for the record, to diminish Israel's recognised 
   borders) against both Israel and foreign-backed terrorist
   organisations at any one of several points between 1975 and
   now, with a specific reference to Lebanon in 1982 (which
   failed primarily because it couldn't be done without
   giving assistance to Palestine at the same time, and the
   obvious lack of intention in one caused the failure in the
   other).

For me it's about the law.  I'm in favour of applying it 
equally in all cases.  The US and UK governments generally
tend to ignore it when it suits them in what lots of people
would regard to be an imperialist manner.

The most horrific thing I can see right now is the so-called
'leader of the free world' operating something indistinguishable
from a Nazi-era concentration camp in Cuba.  Shut that bastard
down and I'm prepared to *begin* to consider the possibility
that the country responsible is remotely interested in freedom
and democracy - absolutely *not* before.  The US is supposed
to be the good guy:  there are NO exceptions to the Geneva
Conventions, EVER.  [Shooting both surrendering troops and the
camera crew with the evidence on Saturday counts just as 
heavily.]

-- 
John Handelaar <john at evolt.org.uk>



More information about the thechat mailing list