Morality and war
To consider a war just we must also consider the morality of making that war. Moral has been the ground where the law have grown. Of course, in the beginning there where only a couple of them. We even had a time where only ten where needed. That was the time of the beginning, the time where laws had to be enforced by gods and priests. Those days are over now. Now we have a much better systems and the laws are accepted as a part of the society's structure. But what as changed? Basically, gods where substituted by the notion of justice, and priest by judges and lawyers. Also the state created ways of enforcing justice. That's not a very big difference, just got religion out and putted politics in.
The main difference is the number of laws. We don't have ten now, we have ten thousand. Saint Sir Thomas Moore, in Utopia, talked about this problem. He was a saint and a lawyer, he should know about this. He says that if we have many laws that people can't know about we can't expect them to comply and behave according to the law. The same happens if the laws are to complex to be understandable by the average person. I guess that in many countries the ignorance of the law can't be used as an excuse for breaking the law, also being incapable of understanding the scope of a particular law. That leaves people in the impossible situation of not knowing if they are inside the boundaries of the law because they can't possibly know the law and not being able to use that in their defense.
Laws regulate the relations between persons in a society. Laws that are based in a common morality, with exceptions dealt with the tolerance inscribed in the constitutions. Those laws are always rules of conduct of a practical matter, like the parking tickets and taxes, or of moral matter, like "you should not kill". When we start talking about international law we are presented with a very different set of problems. International law must deal with relations between states and their representatives, not just people. All issues are of a practical matter. There can't be moral in international law, only conflicting interests. Trying to present war as just is adding a degree of morality to war that it's not possible. Morality is only applicable to people, not countries. Many of today problems with terrorism arise from the failure to understand that there is no way of forcing one set of values through international laws and resolutions. Values are accepted by the cultural mix of a society, not by any rational process in a short time. This failure has lead to many stupid deaths.
If there can't be any moral in international laws, because they are only practical matters (like road signs), how can a war be just? It can't. It can't even be putted in that level. Wars are part of the relations between states, and states can't have moral, they only have interests. Trying to justify war as just is like proving the existence (or not) of god, it's a lost battle from the beginning, we just better off not starting arguments.
Wars exist because of the needs of a nation, because an army, not the commanders, decide it's time to make that war. If all soldiers decided not to make a war, there can't be a war. It's a collective decision, well, not really a decision, a pulse to do something together. It's like if nations where fishes in a fish tank. I have an aquarium and sometimes, if the space becomes shorter because fishes grow or we add another fish, they start a killing each other. They kill each other not until they get enough room, but until they are all death. I think nations are like that, when they run short of some resource or the recognition they think deserve, they go to war. Them the process starts and only stops when there are much less than in the point before breakdown. Fish start killing each other until there is only one (or two at most), not until they have enough room for all.
A person killing another person is an act of lack of morality. A soldier killing another soldier is an act where the representatives of two nations are trying to assure the survival of their nation's interest. There can't be persons involved, only soldiers representing nations. As such no moral is involved in the process. If there in no moral involved, how can war be moral or not moral? And if there is no moral involved how can a war be (or not be) just?
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