gambit
PROFESSIONAL
- Joined
- Apr 28, 2009
- Messages
- 28,569
- Reaction score
- 148
- Country
- Location
To 'justify' is to -- at least an attempt -- make an action and/or argument, often both, acceptable at some level, from purely technical to moral to philosophical. To demand an unconditional surrender is not a calculus to be taken lightly by all sides in a war, least of all by the side that demanded it, then by the side that received said demand. That calculus inevitably involves the moral dimension.Hello Gambit, in the long history of warfare, yes, that was just the result. Lots of countries get into wars. Japan and US had a war. The US won. At the raw geopolitical level, it can be understood. Life goes on. And in the following decades, Japan has done much better than it could have done if the overhead US was in character like the SU.
But all the arguments about "justification" on a moral basis is all BS.
What is the nature of the war? Why was it started? How was it started? All wars were started with some moral injections into their arguments. Hitler reasoned that a war was needed to protect Germans and expand living territories. Saddam Hussein portrayed Iraq as victim of Kuwaiti oil theft via lateral drilling from Kuwait into Iraq. The US wanted Noriega for selling illegal drugs to the US. ECOWAS invaded Gambia to restore order and preserve some measures of democracy. ECOWAS has several invasions in its history. In this short list of modern wars, every decision prior to execution involved some moral arguments as to why the wars were needed.
Even petty theft usually, though not always, involved some moral justification for the theft. If you displays your wealth, you 'deserves' the theft on you. The incel culture used morality for its misogyny.
So if morality -- whatever arguments there maybe -- was necessary to start a war, it is not BS to at least try to end a war using a moral framework.