Duality wise, Is War more evil or more good?

As I said in Post #2, all wars are evil. Once the killing begins we can dispense with the pretenses to the contrary.

I'm afraid our motives for getting involved in World War I were a lot less noble than advertised. Our government, in the face of significant domestic opposition, invested a great deal of money in the Allied war effort and Wilson & Co. weren't about to let that investment go down the drain, even if it cost over 116,000 American lives.

As China's involvement in the Korean War illustrated, that war was not just a civil war, and neither was the war in Vietnam.

That completely ignores Saddam's own motives for invading Kuwait. Sorry, I'm not buyin'....

I don't buy that, either...

As a rule, out government sends its servicemen and women into harm's way to protect our national security and/or interests. Protecting the innocent and promoting freedom have generally been of secondary concern.

 

Yes, our troops don't set US policy, and it's the policy where the problem starts.

This came clear to me in college when I lived with a couple troops returning from Vietnam.

Yes, we do not hear the whole story - that's for sure.

 

Civil Wars are wars.

Big Bad Governments have systematically murdered more human beings when they are not at war than when they are.

 

I agree that the US was ready to take serious action after 911. In fact, from a political point of view I doubt any US president could have decided NOT to conquer Afghanistan. But, I don't believe that war helps support a determination that war is a positive tool. In fact, it shows the incredible weakness that decisions involving war can exhibit. We certainly knocked off the Taliban. But, we eventually gave up on looking for OBL after an effort that can only be described as weak at best.

One of the nasty things about war is that it's a method of lashing out, with no regard to longer term objectives or the chance of success.

We HATE diplomacy, and it seems one of the biggest reasons is that we don't get to kill anyone we believe harmed us.

Yes, it's hard to draw a line like that. We would have had to stand back and report the slaughter on the nightly news. One of the problems for us is that we have huge military and economic advantage over many of these places.

Of course, we're perfectly fine with actually helping Israel continue ethnically cleansing West Bank, bulldozing their homes, stealing their farms, interdicting their water, imposing Israeli military rule on a people that have no say in that government - while using mercenaries to enforce that law. Stopping that humanitarian atrocity would require someone to oppose the USA!

 

My point is that civil wars are usually not justified by the same criteria as are wars against other countries.

If you look at our declaration of independence and other documents, they lay out expectations for our government. We held our revolution really almost as a civil war in the sense that we objected to the way that our government was governing us.

Those documents don't form a justification for our post-WWII wars.

 

English is a garbage language as compared to some.

Start with the Greek version of Christianity, that predates Christianity. Chrestianity, a more civilized and tolerant religion than the genocidal god lovers religions.

Regards
DL

 

Yes.

Many stupid people will not take war, to mean real and violent war, which is of course, what is meant.

Did you read the O.P. or were your copy paste to other issues already ready?

Regards
DL

 

Historically correct, but usually with religious overtones.

Not all though. Look at the U.S. food supply your government allows Americans to be killed with.

Regards
DL

 

Our science and life saving medicine is where it is due directly to war.

Our wars, if we can forego another before full civilization of humanity, have created the base of our future sooner than later.

I go 60 - 40 in favor of war., but hope war is dead.

What numbers do you give?

Regards
DL

 

Few ever posit why god created all those evil gays who put love as a value above sex.

Christians and other homophobes, Dennis, should do the same, as love is more important than gender or sex.

Right, Dennis?

Regards
DL

 

I think the war in Afghanistan - at least the initial phase - does support the contention that war can be a positive tool. Thanks to the decision to take the fight to the enemy we haven't had any more 9/11s and the consequent loss of life and destruction here at home. Doing nothing was not an option.

As far as that war was concerned, I think we also have to look at our objectives and what was obtainable. Our objective was to destroy al Qaeda's bases in Afghanistan, which necessitated knocking off the Taliban, and preventing any further attacks on the United States and that was accomplished. As for OBL, the over-emphasis on the parts of many to capture and/or kill him overstates his importance and value to al Qaeda. During the organization's formative years in the early 1990s he was the indispensable man, but by the time Rob O'Neill put a bullet in his head his death didn't even have the propaganda value that losing the media war in Al Anbar had on that organization's standing, morale and operations.

It can be that at times, but it can also be a means of defense

I don't think we hate diplomacy - decades of diplomacy prevented the USA, USSR, China, et al, from wiping out the entire human race during the Cold War and got us out of other wars. As for OBL and al Qaeda, there's no question they declared war on us in 1996, waged war on us after that and inflicted enormous harm on us on 9/11, along with the harm they caused the foreign nationals who were killed in the embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam.

Osama bin Laden drew that line for us and everyone else, and as I mentioned earlier, standing back and watching those takfirist psychopaths slaughter more Americans and destroy more of our inner cities was not an option. While they did not prevent the 9/11 attacks, it's a damned good thing we had the economic and military advantages we possess so that we could prevent that from happening again (so far, at least).

Yet, there you are with your incomplete, one-sided narrative complaining about what we're supposedly doing.

FYI, we've had a two-state solution on the table for decades, and we've been able to end the conflicts between the Israelis and Egypt, Jordan and some of the other Arab states in the region.

 

The Inquisition and the witch hunts didn't come close to the body count racked up by the modern era authoritarian regimes.
Perhaps because they did not have the kind of bureaucratic mechanisms needed to efficiently carry out systematic mass slaughter programs.

"R. J.. Rummel, a professor emeritus of political science .... has painstakingly compiled statistics accounting for the number of people killed worldwide by "democide," a term he coined to describe governments' intentional killing ... of civilians....

...Rummels books on the subject - particularly "Death By Government" (1994) and "Statistics of Democide" (1997) - provide the most comprehensive estimates currently available, and the ones most often referenced by scholars.
Rummel estimates that from 1900 to 1987 governments murdered almost 170 million people - a figure that far exceeds the 34.4 million battle deaths thought to have resulted from all the international and civil wars fought during the same period....
Democide often occurs under authoritarian regimes... Indeed democratic governments were responsible for only about one percent of the twentieth century's death toll from democide...."
THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY, "The World In Numbers," "Murder By The State," Vol. 292 NO. #4, 11/2003.

 

My point was that wars of all kinds are not as deadly as authoritarian governments inclined toward mass murder while they are not at war.

"For more than 30 years as a political scientist and peace researcher, I had focused my research on the causes and conditions of war, conflict, and peace. I have believed that war was the greatest killer that nuclear war would be a global holocaust. *** Now I have found that the total killed by government in cold blood was almost 4 times that of war. It was as though a nuclear war had already occurred.***

Surprisingly few had recognized this. While much had been published on individual genocides, such as those of the Jews or Armenians, and some general analyses had been done, as by Kuper, up through 1987 virtually no research had been published on the total amount of genocide and mass murder among nations." (emphasis mine)
LETHAL POLITICS, R. J. Rummel, Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, Rutgers University, 1996., p. xi.

 

There is zero evidence that what we have done in Afghanistan has made ANY improvement in US security - now or during any phase of that war.

AQ and those related have had no problem with finding other places to be.

Plus, it's not at all clear that we had to conquer Afghanistan in order to wipe out some bases.

I do agree that OBL's value decreases substantially well before his death. In fact, his whole plan was a well known failure. Surely those who hated us were well aware that the OBL direction was not one that showed promise.

This becomes more of an issue of attempting to characterize terrorism as war. We tend to call everything war. We have war on poverty! So, I'm not really going to try to address this, as I think the larger issue in this thread is our own justifications for conquering other nations.

OBL's plan was to raise the cost of US intervention in the ME as a method of causing us to leave Saudi Arabia.

The whole idea of raising the cost of US intervention in the ME became well known as a failed concept. I think OBL merely proved why that direction would never work.

No, we do not have a two-state solution on ANY table. Bush made a handwave attempt, but surrendered almost immediately when Netanyahu told him to pound sand.

We protect Israel diplomatically by using our diplomatic power and providing stupendous military funding and capability.

When the atrocity is Israel's ethnic cleansing of West Bank, giving economic advantage to other nations and thus making things safer and more profitable for Israel is AID to Israel's direction - NOT resistance to their humanitarian crimes.

In that way, Trump was one of the more magnanimous supporters of Israel's humanitarian crimes, both in West Bank and in Gaza.

 

I agree with much of what you say, but I think national security was a minor consideration when the USG went to war in Afghanistan.

“OVERSIGHT BY CONGRESS:
Date Congress authorized U.S. forces to go after culprits in Sept. 11, 2001 attacks: Sept. 18, 2001.
Number of times U.S. lawmakers have voted to declare war in Afghanistan: 0.
Number of times lawmakers in Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee addressed costs of Vietnam War, during that conflict: 42
Number of times lawmakers in same subcommittee have mentioned costs of Afghanistan and Iraq wars: 5.
Number of times lawmakers in Senate Finance Committee have mentioned costs of Afghanistan and Iraq wars, since Sept. 11, 2001: 1.

PAYING FOR A WAR ON CREDIT, NOT IN CASH: ...
Estimated amount of direct Afghanistan and Iraq war costs that the United States has debt-financed as of 2020: $2 trillion.
Estimated interest payments on that $2 trillion so far (based on a higher-end estimate of interest rates): $925 billion.
Estimated interest costs by 2030: $2 trillion.
Estimated interest costs by 2050: $6.5 trillion.

THE WARS END. THE COSTS DON'T:
Amount Bilmes estimates the United States has committed to pay in health care, disability, burial and other costs for roughly 4 million Afghanistan and Iraq veterans: $1.6 to $1.8 trillion.
Period those costs will peak: after 2048.”
ABC NEWS, The cost of the Afghanistan war, in lives and dollars, The nearly 20-year American combat mission in Afghanistan was the United States’ longest war, By ELLEN KNICKMEYER, Associated Press, July 12, 2021.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/cost-afghanistan-war-lives-dollars-78802965

 

War is a risky business for any ruling political class, but war will probably always be far too lucrative for Big Bad Governments to resist.

 

I do not see any way for this numbers game of yours to have ANYTHING to do with the OP.

There are cases where numbers DO have a roll to play in whether war is a valid decision.

For example, in Libya there was crystal clear evidence before our intervention that government forces were moving on a civilian region with full intent to slaughter the inhabitants.

So, the question was, should we watch the slaughter or decide to use war in an attempt to stop that slaughter.

That is the kind of decision we face as a nation.

 

Perhaps, but if you add in that women and gays, religions longest running victims, along with the many Jews, you get injustice over centuries thanks to Christianity.

Did you add in that Christianity was responsible for decimation North Americas indigenous peoples by 95%?

How many slaved died on the way to Christian American's?

Let's bean count. I have many beans.

Regards
DL

 

It would have been extremely politically costly for a US president not to conquer Afghanistan.

Surely that was a bigger factor than was the financial cost of the war. At the time, we ran our wars off the books. We were fully organized to ignore the cost.

I don't see a way to consider the dollars to be a lure for our government, unless you're counting our military industrial complex and its influence on political decisions, of course.

 

The OP: "Duality wise, Is War more evil or more good?"

Rummels numbers answer the question. The shocking truth: war is the lesser evil.

"R. J.. Rummel, a professor emeritus of political science .... has painstakingly compiled statistics accounting for the number of people killed worldwide by "democide," a term he coined to describe governments' intentional killing ... of civilians....

...Rummels books on the subject - particularly "Death By Government" (1994) and "Statistics of Democide" (1997) - provide the most comprehensive estimates currently available, and the ones most often referenced by scholars.
Rummel estimates that from 1900 to 1987 governments murdered almost 170 million people - a figure that far exceeds the 34.4 million battle deaths thought to have resulted from all the international and civil wars fought during the same period....
Democide often occurs under authoritarian regimes... Indeed democratic governments were responsible for only about one percent of the twentieth century's death toll from democide...."
THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY, "The World In Numbers," "Murder By The State," Vol. 292 NO. #4, 11/2003.

 

Has there been another 9/11 attack on the U.S. since 2001?

THERE is your evidence.

True, and AQ was based in Sudan before it moved to Afghanistan. However, the ineffectiveness of the Clinton Administration's attacks on AQ's bases illustrated the necessity of having to put boots on the ground to destroy those bases, dig out AQ and keep those bases closed. Air power alone was not enough to accomplish the job.

I think the question the OP posed concerns the duality of war and how sometimes the good can outweigh the bad.

OBL's plans weren't confined to the ME. His ultimate goal was to incite the Muslim world into waging a jihad against the Dar al Harb.

Yes, we do, and it's been on the table since 1967 and the Palestinians have refused to accept it, which is their prerogative. They chose war and consequences that come it.[/QUOTE]

 

The Indian population was eventually wiped out by DeSoto's pigs not Christianity or by any government or religions scheme to exterminate them.

The institution of slavery was never aimed at the extermination of the slaves - valuable capital assets.
Schemes to ethnically cleanse and exterminate black Americans appeared when they became a political threat to the power of the white political bosses of the South. They did have some success, but lynchings and murder were a minor factor compared to less direct methods of the systemic institutional racist policies of governments in the US after the Civil War.

 

IMO, $6.5 Trillion is a hell of a lure.

 

Chicken pox infested blankets.

If I need say more, ----

Regards
DL

 

For whom?

Who are you suggesting is getting this money as a result of going to war?