Just War Identity

This debate sparks an important question for the reader to comprehend: when is war justified? When is it okay to put the lives of hundreds or thousands of men in jeopardy?

William Calley is a former U.S. Army officer who murdered 22 unarmed citizens. While he was speaking to the public he says, “when my troops were getting massacred and mauled by an enemy I couldn’t see, I couldn’t feel, I couldn’t touch…nobody in the military system described anything other than communist” (Simkin). The U.S. government and citizens made no effort to understand the feelings and thoughts of a soldier until Calley blurred out his and the other soldiers. Everyone should have been more considerate to know the army’s point of view of the situation and their actions before dwelling on the fact that the men killed citizens in the My Lai. Philip Caputo, a US marine, who also was accused of murdering innocent Vietnamese civilians wrote, “in a guerilla war, the line between legitimate and illegitimate killing is blurred. The policies of free-fire zones, in which a soldier is permitted to shoot at any human target, armed or unarmed, further confuse the fighting man’s moral senses” (“My Lai Massacre” History Learning). Since no one really checks in on the “rules and regulation” of what a soldier can do, they make assumptions whether the person is right or wrong based on how one feels instead of looking into what was

Civilians have been known to have been taken advantage by enemy forces for tactical purposes. Reilly describes that “the same situation [relating back to the Vietnam War] was seen thirty years later when Somalis used women and children as shields and combatants during that Task Force Ranger Operation launched to capture the Somali Warlord Muhammad Farah Aided. The ROE [rules of engagement] which embodied the US culture became complicated and frustrating when the US attempted to maintain moral high ground during a conflict with a state influenced different cultural values and no apparent ROE of their own [Reilly, 1996].” Enemies of the US of the past and of today have proven to have no rules of engagement and no moral code. This means that having strict Rules of Engagement are holding the US at a huge disadvantage when fighting savage enemies such as ISIS and Al

In the article “War and Massacre,” Thomas Nagel seeks to portray a similar perception consistent with the values of absolutism. His overall view of the issue states that it is always wrong to target civilians, no matter how beneficial the aim might be, and that some weapons (like napalm) must never be used against enemy combatants, even if using those weapons is the only way to win a war. For him, actions take absolute priority over end results. Nagel sites examples, such as the scenarios pertaining to the Taxi Driver and the Politician, in order to give substantial reasoning to discuss “the most general moral problem raised by warfare: the problem of

Although wars cause much devastation in countries even in the world, the Just War Theory may be applied to determine whether or not a war was justly distributed through particular principles and conditions. Led by the United States in Iraq, the Gulf War caused much controversy and tension between nations. Not only did it left a scar on foreign policy but the citizens of Iraq were greatly affected. Through Thomas Aquinas Just War Theory principles and Catholic teachings, the Iraq war can be proven to be an unjust conflict due to a large number of casualties, expensive costs, and unsuccessful turnabout.

The debate begins with the weight if it is okay to kill in war. In the opening article the author of the book lays out a a huge question of what it means when you kill in war. He begins by clarifying board understandings and views that many people hold to be true. For example, that no matter what killing is wrong and only excusable in self-defense. He goes in more depth when the labels innocent and guilty are brought up, nothing when dealing with moral issues will be as blunt or simple as the good and the bad leaving one okay to kill and the other to let live. Either side of the war both view the other as the one who might be killing them and no matter the causes or reasons you are still killing a person who more than liking is going into survivor

It is only when these prior moral questions have been answered that the second set of just-war criteria -- what scholars call the "ius in bello" or "war-conduct law" -- come into play, logically. The positive answers to the first set of questions, the "war-decision" questions, create the moral framework for addressing the two great "war-conduct" issues: "proportionality," which requires the use of no more force than necessary to vindicate the just cause; and "discrimination," or what we today call "non-combatant immunity."

The concept of “just war” is built on the assumption that war is bad and should be avoided, but there also may be times when warfare is justified. Just war theories usually address two main areas: First, under what conditions is it right to go to war? Second, is there a moral way to conduct a war?

War is many things. It may be many different things depending on each individual. Many soldiers get trained so their mentality is to characterize their opponents as less than human, so their lives lose all worth. Some soldiers however, are not prepared for this, even though they have been trained. One thing is training for it, another thing is actually killing a human being. As they kill more people, it becomes normalized for them. All they have seen changes their mind, while all of their dreams get swept aside by bloody hands of the hypnotized while they carry the cross of homicide. But why kill other strangers? What’s in it for the soldiers? War feeds the rich while it buries the poor. Rich people are power hungry, selling soldiers in human grocery store, using them as their little puppets who obey their master, making them go around killing each other in order to determine who is right, but in the end, war determines who is left. “The Man I Killed” by Tim O’Brien shows how soldiers who commit violence become traumatized and how that changes over time.

Wars in our history have told human beings of the atrocities and horror our predecessors have committed and faced. The moral question at hand of killing of innocent civilian during war have been long debated by the people whether it was right to end the lives of people who are not involved in the war in order to stop the greater numbers of casualties that would have come without it as well to punish the enemies for their evil. Though these casualties during war already been done, and nothing can be done about it, does not mean that we can’t do anything to prevent it from happening again, human beings have to learn from the mistakes of our past to not let it ever happen again.

A defense for acceptable civilian deaths can be made due to the rarity and value of a target over another. If a high value target appears for the first time in five years, it can ba attractive to value the death of that individual over the life of a few civilians, especially if that target is known to be directly responsible for the deaths of soldiers and American citizens. However, this argument begins to fall apart when examined in the greater context. If the death of one enemy combatant is worth more than than the life of one civilian, every operation will become result in weighing operational need with regard to the

79,284,507, That is the number of lives lost by war since 1900. That is more deaths than the entire population of midwest America by nearly 12 million. I can’t help but ask myself, are two centuries of war really worth the cost of 80 million lives? Even more, is the pursuit behind any war worth the cost of a single life? For some people the answer to this question is a resounding yes; For others The answer is a blatant no; and for a few people they are unsure or even confused. Personally, I believe that war is never justifiable. That no worldly pursuit is worth the cost of taking another 's life. For the purpose of this paper I will be discussing arguments for both sides of this issue. I intend on using scripture to confirm What I believe to be truth. Before I get to my main points I would first like to share a story.

In past wars the majority of casualties were the combatants, but today’s wars have larger civilian casualty numbers. With aggressive pursuit of stories by the media and fast exchange of information in todays age, armed action against a states own citizens do not remain secret for long.

In this article, McPherson (2007) tries to argue on whether terrorism is distinctively wrong as many people have been made to believe. He compares the negative effects of terrorism with those of the conventional war. According to McPherson, terrorism is not worse than conventional war because both may start from unjust or just causes, and both techniques involve the use of force against unarmed civilians or non-combatants. Conventional war may cause more casualties than terrorism, and the latter can have justification on the ground of a lack of a better option and the ground of just cause. He supports his argument by stating that in the last one century, the conventional war caused the deaths of more than 100 million people, where 43 million soldiers and 62 million civilians perished in the war. Such deaths have occurred in the era of advanced military technology where the level of accuracy is excellent than the weapons that soldiers used before the twentieth century. Such a number is extreme compared to the few thousand people who have died as a result of terrorist attacks.

War has been a part of human history as far back as people can remember. At this point people would argue it’s in our very nature to seek conflict as a means to a resolution. It’s hard to dispute when looking at our history books, but that’s the thing, it’s in the past. We need to learn from our history and evolve. In this context it’s not implied that there can or necessarily should be a way to stop violence, but there are ways to have smarter warfare. It is easy to say that we must remain absolutist but the opposite is incredibly tactically beneficiary in the battlefield as the enemy has shown. Many don’t completely agree with the ill written essay of Elaine Scarry, but on a more humanitarian side, it’s possible to see where she is trying to come from. These rules of engagement should be in place to save the innocents that are dragged into the conflict unwillingly, but it only serves as a hindrance that is used against us. Time and time again it is heard how the enemy uses children, woman, the sick and the elderly as means to get close to our troops to cause as much death as possible. Because of this it’s not logical to follow the old formula for warfare if we want to protect our own. Protecting and placing our national sovereignty first is what the American military is for but many people mistake it for some sort of world police, which isn’t America’s place to do to begin with. If the enemy decides to use underhanded tactics, then there is no reason for us not to do the