Comments by "Evan" (@MrEvanfriend) on "Can War Be Just?" video.

  1. War is often just. It all depends on the cause. In WWII, for instance, the United States were never under serious direct threat from either Germany or Japan. However, I do not think it can be reasonably argued that the Marine on Guadalcanal battling the Japanese, malaria, malnutrition, and the generally horrible circumstances on that island were unjust in what they were doing. Nor can the soldier freezing in the Bois Jaques, holding the line against a vastly superior German force. Their cause was just, and therefore their actions were. When I was 19, I went to war in Iraq, a war that was unpopular then and is even more so now. I remain convinced that my fight was a just one. While the experience was one I'm glad to have behind me, I am very glad that I fought Islam on the streets of Fallujah rather than the streets of Philadelphia. There are men and ideologies that need to be stopped, and words do not always work to stop them. When that is the case, the mailed fist is the only option, and it is a righteous one. This is why the warrior is revered. Because war is truly the highest calling of man, as horrible as it is for the warrior himself. That a man is willing to put himself through hell to attain a result that he may well not live to see is everything that should be honored. This is not to say that war, just or not, does not have innocent victims. The tens of thousands of civilians who died in the respective firebombings of Dresden and Tokyo were, for the most part, decent people who had the bad luck of being from the wrong place, and they suffered and died for it. As cruel as it sounds, their deaths were worth it. The Third Reich and the Empire of Japan needed to be stopped at all costs, and if immolating tens of thousands of their people was what it took to batter these regimes to their knees, then so be it. In many situations, someone ends up on the short end of the stick, this is unavoidable. And in some situations, such as war, this can be for the greater good. 100,000 Tokyo civilians is a small price to pay for the billions of people today who live without the Imperial Japanese boot on their necks.
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