General Discussion

In the Just War theory, Christians are justified in going to war if the enemy has conducted an unprovoked attack. So, using that definition, we can look back on history and find very few 'just' wars.

Most of the time, when we speak of wars fought under the auspices of religion, it has been a bunch of people who are so very, very certain their religious dogma is correct and everyone else's is wrong that they are willing to kill those who disagree. Often in millions. Examples of that include the wars in Europe over the doctrine of transubstantiation - these happy little conflicts killed 12 million people over forty years.

We also have the crusades, where we had to get a bunch of people together and retake the Holy Land. We can also add the genocide of the Conquistadores against the Aztecs, Maya, Inca and other central and south American civilizations, and the north American genocide against the indiginous tribes on that continent. Millions died.

In fact, try as I might, there are only a few wars we could consider 'just.' In the twentieth century, the Second World War was just because the Axis countries were invading other countries right and left, and Japan attacked us at Pearl Harbor. Of course, there is the nagging little fact that our oil embargo against the Japanese Empire had a causal relationship with the attack at Pearl Harbor. Still, all things considered, we were justified in facing off against the Axis and it took 60 million lives to get rid of Hitler, Mussolini, Tojo and the rest of the fascists.

And Korea - the forgotten war counts. North Korea invaded South Korea and that was unprovoked. China and the USSR treated it as a proxy war, backing N. Korea, and we let an international coalition to preserve the independence of S. Korea. But we did not fight to win because of the nuclear threat.

'Nam was fought by our kids at the behest of the Military Industrial Complex, which arguably took over this country with the assassination of JFK and the MIC crazies convincing LBJ to send 500,000 of our people over there. They wanted to increase PROFITS from arms production and sales. Wall Street roared! In the meantime, America lost 58,000 people and 3.2 million Vietnamese were killed. We had an anti-war movement and riots that nearly tore the republic apart. But Wall Street and the MIC did GREAT! They sold our government $158 billion in death toys, which would amount to nearly a trillion USD now.

The forever wars were fought as a result of a terrorist act that created a shadow war against an invisible enemy. This war could have been won...economically, but never militarily. Unjust.

And this war in Iran? Unjust.