Is war always evil?

There are few wars that are as clearly evil as the war in Kosovo.

Yup, all war is evil, IMO. Every war seems to involve atrocities of some sort that are unjustified by even the harshest interpretation of the supposed justifications for starting a war in the first place.

A the risk of eliciting groans from the assembled readers, it would be helpful if you could explain why you think that the war in Kosovo was somehow more EEVVVIIIILLL than others.

Looks like I didn’t get my point across. How exactly are you defining “the war in Kosovo”? The US-led coalition committed one set of actions, the Serbs anotherm, and the Kosovans yet another. Each set of actions must be judged separately, a process that is ill-served by lumping them together as “the war”.

Because, Nevelle, it is reasonable to believe that after annexing Austria, conquering Poland, The Netherlands, France, Northern Africa parts of Eastern Europe and attempting to invade Britain and the Soviet Union (oh and not to mention murdering millions of “undesirables” in the process) Hitler would probably have wanted more.

:rolleyes:

Why would you think that a Nazi Germany with all the resources of Europe under its control could not eventually invade the US? At the very least it could wield an uncomfortable amount of Nazi political influence throughout the world.

I would pretty much agree with him. It is Always EVIL. But I would add some qualifiers to it. WAGING WAR is always evil. I dont mean declaring war, I mean forcing war on other nations. Saddam, Hitler, Nepoleon waged war. war is the breakdown of intelligent discussion between nations and who now resort to savage barbaric brute force to get their way. I think thats evil in every sense of the word.

Heres the scoop. If US had remained neutral and did not help England with supplies, equipment and men, then england wouldve fallen. Given that, Stalin is not going to face Nazi Germany alone, he would have capitulated and then the US would have to contend with an axis power made of Italy, Germany and Russia. Communism would become the russian underground movement. There is no way Hitler was dumb enuf to take on the US across the atlantic. The US would be kept busy by the Japanese who will now be supplied by Russia and Germany.

In the meantime, more resources would be alloted to the german nuclear program and although they are years behind the americans, without ant bombing to impede their progress and spies in the us, they would eventually develop the bomb and force the US into a stalemate or all out nuclear war.

perhaps war in itself is not evil…
but the people that bring us to this extreme act are…
war is brought on by people consumed with hate in some way shape or form, someone seeking power, and or someone seeking to benefit their own personal agenda (oil, revenge, etc…)…
unfortunately it is sometimes necessary through war to “take out” these hateful people…

o.k. - the best way I can put it is
I would like to think that if I saw someone less fortunate than me getting picked on and bullied by someone stronger, bigger, and meaner than them I hope that I would do the right thing and extend my hand and help those less fortunate…
In the real world this means hateful people looking to dominate usually pick on the weak and defenseless and it is our duty to extend our hands and help get rid of these crazy, hateful, “evil” controlling freaks…even though it means war…

so the point… War is not evil, the people that make us go to war are…

my opinion…I hope that made sense…:slight_smile:

First off, I want to say that I love that quote by John Stuart Mill, and agree wholeheartedly. War is bad, but an unwillingness to go to war under any circumstances is far worse.

With regards to the OP, I agree with those who state that war in itself is a morally neutral, but undoubtedly unfortunate, endeavor. However, I think it can be stated that at least one side - or, more accurately, one side’s cause - in a war is typically evil, though there may be exceptions. For example, the motives of Germany in WWII were undoubtedly evil, and the motives of the Allied forces were pretty decidely non-evil - a mixture of self-defense, aid of allies, and such.

That atrocities seem to always occur during war is not indictitive of the evilness of war itself. It is at least theoretically possible to envision a war in which all participants in combat behave ethically (as ethically as possible, considering) - unless you consider the very act of killing an enemy in the name of your country to be evil. War provides an environment in which bad people can more easily get away with very bad things, just as natural disasters facilitate the works of looters. But many - indeed, most - combatants recognize that even in the midst of war, there exists a moral system that it’s unacceptable to violate. Rape, torture, especially brutal killings - these things are still frowned upon.

I remember an anecdote my grandfather, who served in WWII, told me. Guns back then were still equipped with bayonets. There were two flavors of bayonet - those that were smooth, and those that were barbed. The barbed ones would tear open your stomach, making for a particularly gruesome, and not terribly quick, death. The use of these barbed bayonets was deemed unacceptable, and both sides had a mutual understanding - any soldier from the opposite side that was captured and found to be using the offending bayonet would be killed, beheaded, gutted, and the body and head stuffed with straw, and left for his comrades to find. Now, you could argue that this has little to do with ethics, and more to do with pragmatism - nobody wants to risk being butchered by the opposing army and left as an example. However, at least on the US side, use of these awful weapons wasn’t tolerated by your own men, either. The point is, morals don’t suddenly fly out the window, even in times of war.
Jfef

First off, I want to say that I love that quote by John Stuart Mill, and agree wholeheartedly. War is bad, but an unwillingness to go to war under any circumstances is far worse.

With regards to the OP, I agree with those who state that war in itself is a morally neutral, but undoubtedly unfortunate, endeavor. However, I think it can be stated that at least one side - or, more accurately, one side’s cause - in a war is typically evil, though there may be exceptions. For example, the motives of Germany in WWII were undoubtedly evil, and the motives of the Allied forces were pretty decidely non-evil - a mixture of self-defense, aid of allies, and such.

That atrocities seem to always occur during war is not indictitive of the evilness of war itself. It is at least theoretically possible to envision a war in which all participants in combat behave ethically (as ethically as possible, considering) - unless you consider the very act of killing an enemy in the name of your country to be evil. War provides an environment in which bad people can more easily get away with very bad things, just as natural disasters facilitate the works of looters. But many - indeed, most - combatants recognize that even in the midst of war, there exists a moral system that it’s unacceptable to violate. Rape, torture, especially brutal killings - these things are still frowned upon.

I remember an anecdote my grandfather, who served in WWII, told me. Guns back then were still equipped with bayonets. There were two flavors of bayonet - those that were smooth, and those that were barbed. The barbed ones would tear open your stomach, making for a particularly gruesome, and not terribly quick, death. The use of these barbed bayonets was deemed unacceptable, and both sides had a mutual understanding - any soldier from the opposite side that was captured and found to be using the offending bayonet would be killed, beheaded, gutted, and the body and head stuffed with straw, and left for his comrades to find. Now, you could argue that this has little to do with ethics, and more to do with pragmatism - nobody wants to risk being butchered by the opposing army and left as an example. However, at least on the US side, use of these awful weapons wasn’t tolerated by your own men, either. The point is, morals don’t suddenly fly out the window, even in times of war.
Jeff

I guess this needs repeating over and over. The US didn’t rush in to “stop Hitler” when Britain and France declared war on Germany over the invasion of Poland. We didn’t enter the war at all until we were attacked and then didn’t include Germany in our war declaration until after they declared war on us.

It took quite a while before we would even give materiel aid to Britain. I would say that didn’t happen until after even the isolationist midwest got a little nervous over the fall of France. But the aid flow started slowly even then because of ourNeutrality Act which prohibited aid to either side in a European war. By pushing and prodding FDR managed to get “cash and carry” aid and finally “Lend Lease” but there was a lot of grumbling in Iowa where I lived over it. Words like, * “That Roosey won’t be happy 'til he gets us into a war. We pulled their chestnuts out of the fire last time and they still owe their war debts. Why should we help them again?”* were common among my relatives.
In my opinion war is always evil for those who have to fight in it, or run from it as in the case of displaced refugees. Unfortunately it sometime happens that there is no other choice.

The U.S. attack on Yugoslavia was an act of unprovoked aggression which had the effect of vastly escalating atrocities on the ground, killing a few thousand civilians, devastating the infrastructure, littering the country with radioactive material, and consumating the final breakup of Yugoslavia.

In other words, it was a spectacular success. That is, in the eyes of the NATO bloodsuckers, it achieved exactly what it was supposed to achieve.

firebat023: If you are talking about the famous little “jig” film clip of Hitler after France surrendered- you were perhaps taken in by Brit propaganda- that “jig” was created by the same process as the dancing cats in the Purina Cat Chow commercials.

sqweels- True- neither had the wherewithal to invade- at least in the 1940’s. But after both had a decade to ravage their new found sources of raw materials & slave labour- things might have been very different. And although freeing the prisoners in the Concentration camps was not one of our major reasons for going to War- we did so anyway, and thus stopped a great evil from getting worse. Stuff as bad was happening in the Japanese Empire. The war vs the Axis was truely a “War vs Evil”. And although Kingpenqvuin makes a point about there being early opportunities to prevent THAT WWII, I don’t know if that would have prevented A WWII, nor am I sure that preventing WWII at the expense of letting Hitler & Tojo have free rein would have been such a good idea.

Lizard- please tell the Finnish that Stalin had no “territorial ambitions”. Not to mention Stalin’s grabbing of various Balkan areas while under a peace treaty with Hitler. IMHO- he had just about as bad of imperialistic ambitions as Hitler.

Oh, and Kingpenqvuin? It’s really not “thou shall not KILL”, it’s really “Thou shalt not MURDER”. Bad translation. The OT makes it pretty clear that Yahveh had no real problems with war (and the killing it entails) in a “just cause” (and no- lets not sidetrack this into what He considered a “just cause” or what we currently feel about His “just causes”, etc.)

An invasion to stop a greater evil- even if that evil is not defined as “war” is not evil. The US intervention in Kosovo was argueably such, as was the US intervention in WWII.

So then, the war wasn’t very evil to the victors, now was it? :smiley:

I think that stuff like “cash & carry” (which was speciously neutral)and “Lend Lease”, not to mention our intelligence sharing & our convoy protection to the middle of the Atlantic- was pretty material. And, sure, there was minor grumbling in Iowa & elsewhere- but we still sent it. And many have postulated that if Hitler hadn’t declared war on us- we would have declared war on him anyway. Our acts of aid to GB pre-Dec7 were “acts of war” against" Germany in any case- we were shooting at their U-boats, etc.

He conquered Europe and North Africa because England and France declared war. I was wondering if he would have if they hadn’t declared war and let him have his war of destruction against the Soviet_Union. There isn’t any indication, I know of, that he would have wanted to conquer Europe or the US.

And the Germans too thought they were fighting a war against Evil, the Bolsheviks. They never quite understood why the US and Britain wouldn’t join them in this fight against this Evil.

Er, quite.

If I understand the above correctly, Chumpsky seems to believe that NATO’s only intention was to lay waste indiscriminately to areas of the former Yugoslavia. I would have to see some hard evidence that this was NATO’s intention, and a reasonable motive for doing so, before accepting such an absurd claim as correct.

The above also seems to imply that Chumpsky believes that Milosevic’s forces were of no danger to anyone in Kosovo, and it fails to explain why he believes that the NATO action was somehow intrinsically more evil than, say, the wholesale slaughter of innocents in Bosnia-Herzegovina by Serbians, just prior to the Kosovo conflict. I am also curious to know whether Chumpsky feels the capture and trial of Milosevic on war-crimes charges is itself some sort of injustice.

Such a discussion would be a sidetrack, however, and threatens to blow up into yet another of Chumpsky’s patented anti-capitalist rants. I therefore suggest that the poster in question start a new thread on the morality of NATO intervention in Kosovo, if he wishes to pursue this sidetrack further.

Chump give up on the Kossovo war already.
I can see your point on many other US wars, they could certainly be viewed the way you do. Not this one.

“Many can postulate” anything they want and usually do. The fact is we stood by while Hitler conquered western, and a lot of eastern, Europe. Yes, cash and carry and lend lease were important aids, but as I said, lend lease took a long time coming. And, as I also said, our aid was stepped up after France fell.

Cash and carry was reasonably prompt but of course we had no war industries to speak of and aid was mainly limited to commercially available goods. Cash and carry from the cite in my previous post: “In Nov., 1939, the act was revised in favor of supplying warring nations on the “cash-and-carry” principle; but U.S. vessels were excluded from combat zones, and U.S. citizens were forbidden from sailing on belligerent vessels.”

Lend Lease was institutded in about March of 1941, about 1-1/2 years after the war started. The prohibition against use of our ships and US citizens into the war zone wasn’t lifted until November of 1941.

All I am saying, and I will continue to say it because it is true, is that the US didn’t jump into the fight to save the world from Hitler. That’s why I dispute this quote from an earlier post: “Had Britain and the US (and France, initially) decided [not to go to war with Germany].” We didn’t decide, it was decided for us.

No one knows how long it would have taken before we finally, if ever, actually entered the war had we not been attacked and Germany hadn’t declared war on us. After the German invasion of the USSR all pressure on Britain and us as far as a German invasion went disappeared.

ElJeffe:

Interesting. I’m holding in my hands my foist material posssesion, a WWI era bayonet that is very wickedly barbed, with a sharp double row of sawteeth along one edge. Damn thing’s 19 inches long. It’s Swiss made, model 1911 and I got it for $5 when I was 12.:cool:

Anyway.

Msmith537:

I could go into considerable detail but I don’t want to hijack the thread. Suffice to say that it would have been geographically as well as logistically unfeasable, in that the Axis could not have aquired bases capable of bringing the US industrial heartland under aerial bombardment, as the Allies did from Britain. Any beachead could have been counterattacked from forces beyond their reach. But the bottom line is that the strategic aims of both Axis powers lay elsewhere, Hitler’s in Eastern Europe, and the Japanese in East Asia, plenty for them to bite off and chew. Hitler even offered to let Britan keep her empire. As for the U.S., they just wanted us to get our fingers burned on both hands so we’d be content to stay in our hemisphere and do to Latin America what they were doing to their spheres of conquest. Yes, the Axis were developing WMDs, but these are ‘knock-them-out-of-the-war’ weapons, which is all they really wanted to do, not to occupy all of North America.

The original Carter quote was:

“War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good.”

It should be noted never in the history of mankind has a war failed to produce civilian casualties.

“All wars are bad and no fun. With the following three exceptions: the American Revolution, World War 2, and the Star Wars trilogy.”

– Bart Simpson