Just War?

One of the great problems in the world is the idea of Just War. This single handedly has caused more deaths than any other idea.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_war_theory

The problem obviously is that each party in any war thinks they are Just. So its just a justification for bloodshed.

Given an "enemy" people try various devices to escape this obvious conclusion that really they should listen to the enemy rather than silence and destroy them. A common one is that the army they face is brainwashed and fighting under duress. And that given the option they would rather defect.

Many people given the choice between defecting or dying have chosen to defect. That decision is in fact made under duress so doesn't count. The idea that the enemy is brainwashed is a two edged weapon, because how do soldiers know that it is not them who have been brainwashed? Indeed I would argue that all soldiers by definition are brainwashed. Brainwashed to hear their leaders and not the leaders of their "enemy." I put enemy in quotes because it is a universal experience for soldiers to realise that they do not actually have a quarrel with the people they fight, it is just their ruling elites who do.

So there is actually no ground for "just war." And if there is no ground for "just war" there is no ground for war. And this is the inevitable result of all discussions on war. Why should the strongest win for any other reason than they are the strongest?

So you could argue that the "truthful" are the strongest cos they band together more successfully. "There is no honour amongst thieves" goes to saying and this is why thieves don't rule the world. If they did they would just have their stolen earning stolen in return. The Good are always stronger than the Bad because the Good are Good to themselves while the Bad are Bad to themselves. Indeed you can argue that War is pointless cos the Bad will destroy themselves through their own Badness. But the problem with the stronger are better argument is that the winners of conflicts write the history and define themselves as "good". No winner of a conflict has ever declared that they were not the deserved winner and they are "bad". So by definition the winner of any conflict is "good" so its meaningless to attribute anything to this "goodness." The US for example is a genocidal, enslaving, mass murdering nation exactly like the Nazis in every way. Yet the US won the war so is good and the Nazis lost the war and so are bad. For the Jewish Holocaust the US has the Indian Genocide. For concentration camps the US has slavery. And for mass murder and global supremacy the US has Vietnam to name one of many. There is literally no difference between the two regimes: except that the Nazis were stopped while the US hasn't been (yet).

So how do you defeat Evil if not by War? Its simple you learn to be good. Its a long struggle that takes each of us a lifetime, and we can inspire and teach others. This is how it is done. The battle with the Devil is quiet, earnest and indefinite. You never give up, and you don't expect to have it finished soon.