Self - Defense and War

Abstract

The recourse to military force violates the proscription within civil society against the killing of human beings, which is why every decision to wage war must be defended. The rationalizations offered by political leaders are nearly always assumed uncritically by the bulk of the populace to be sound. Numerous propagandistic uses of just war rhetoric have been retrospectively analyzed by historians, but the people of most nations persist in their generous financial support of the armed forces under the assumption that their activities are forms of legitimate self-defense.

I can’t really blame these people for not wanting us to be here . . . I wouldn’t want some other country to come in and just take over our country and drive through our streets. And I got to admit, we’re pretty intimidating when we roll in, you know, we got fuckin’ weapons pointed every which way . . . Yeah, I’m sure it scares the shit out of these people, and I guess they figure they have to fight back.

—US private first class Thomas Turner¹