Our army is just for defense. Our country would never attack another country. Let’s assume that is an honest and well-intended statement. Let’s assume the politicians of your country always believe they abide to that maxim. It still doesn’t mean much.
No one is aggressive in his own eyes, for no one thinks himself to be unjust. Whatever is in the best interest of my country, that honest leader reasons, is also best for the world and what is good and just cannot be aggression, it must be defense. In a way it is logical, but as a principle of right action of course it amounts to nothing. It is just a rhetorical exercise eminently suitable for deception since it even deceives the speaker himself.
Whatever military action America performs in the world, it is self-defensive, as it is ultimately designed to remove future threats to the homeland. Russian bombs in Syria to defend its position in the world. North-Korea is out to defend itself building its nuclear arsenal and threatening to use it. Even the ultimate aggressor, Nazi-Germany, becomes a defender by a slight twist of words, as it did try to defend the perceived natural living space for the German people.
There is no aggression in the world that could not be justified by the right to self-defense.
What is the purpose of an international war crime tribunal? If it is to prevent war crimes, it is useless, for it is unthinkable that its existence will ever scare anyone from committing atrocities.
Ruthless warlords and brutal generals don’t expect to lose, but they know that if they do, they lose everything. The remote threat of an international criminal court will add nothing to the risk they are taking. Throughout history beaten kings and commanders have met a terrible end when their kingdom fell. The loser has always been utterly disgraced and often lost his head. Yet again and again aspiring conquerors have gladly taken the sword. In the quest for glory, being conscious of possible disaster have not deterred them from cruelties of war and it is not likely that a modern court in the Haag would make a difference.
After all only losers go to the Haag and anything else is inconceivable. Could you ever imagine George Bush before a tribunal being held responsible for atrocities in Iraq? We can only laugh at the idea. No court is higher than the highest military power and whoever has the might also has the right. This is not justice, far from it, but it is better to express this age-old simple truth that to be betrayed by modern illusions. In fact war crime tribunals are just another tool in the hands of the powerful.
What would have happened if Nazi-Germany had won World War II? There is no way even to start answering this question. Just like predictions fail, speculations about what might have been are likely to be wrong.
But some have tried, and since no evidence can ever be produced, they are free to reconstruct history according to their logic. They look at what is known about Nazi-Germany and from there they draw the lines logically into the unknown. The National Socialist system would have been established in all of Europe, terror and repression would have reigned, concentration camps would have dotted the barren landscape and people would have been brainwashed into fuehrer worshipping robots. Yes, go ahead and paint the horrors.
But the problem with this is that it presupposes a linear sequence of events. If something gets going, it is thought to continue unimpeded into the future. But such is not history, and the history that never was, would also not have been like that. Whatever would have happened, it would not have been what we thought would happen.
In China the communists won the civil war and initiated a system of radical communism. Today the same party stays in power and oversees a system of extreme capitalism. No one could possibly have predicted that.
Likewise, if the Nazis had won, their system might also have turned into something completely different after a while. We just don’t know.
We justify the allied war against Germany and the immense suffering that it entailed by the necessity of combating the horrors of Nazism. But we don’t actually know what would otherwise have happened and therefore the disturbing question is: Can we be sure it was really necessary? We cannot be sure.
Art is the creation of ideas through sense impressions and since human beings have five senses, a work of art may conceivably address any one of those five. What is directed at the sense of taste is mainly food and accordingly food may be considered an art.
But it is doubtful if the art of cooking can soar toward the same heights as visual and auditive (musical) art. A gourmet meal can probably be a thrilling experience for the trained connoisseur, but the range of ideas that are potentially being opened is likely to be limited.
Music may transfer the listener into all possible emotions and take him far away in wakeful dreams. Paintings and sculptures may arouse the imagination and convey varied messages in a vivid language.
But taste is just taste and the experiences of the palate can hardly reach farther than associations within the same sensual field. Pictures and music may harbor great ideas, but an exquisite meal stays within the narrow walls of the kitchen.
Food may be art, but hardly great art.
War can never be just, because it will always be out of proportion.
There has never been a war that follows this simple pattern of justice envisioned by just war theoreticians: An evil aggressor attacks innocent people who then fight back in rightful self-defense.
The aggressor is never purely an aggressor. He always has at least some legitimate grievances which he feels needs to be rectified and might be interpreted as self-defense.
The defender is never purely a defender. As he fights back he will necessarily go beyond the simple action of clear self-defense. An individual person who gets attacked can ward off the attacker as a direct reflexive reaction, but it is never obvious how a state should react. When the enemies step over the border, they are not simply thrown back. Elaborate strategies will have to be employed and counterattacks may be directed at places far from the original trouble spot. Then the defender becomes an attacker and the justice of his cause is blurred.
Who started it, one may ask, and potentially we could go back to the dawn of time to search for an answer. Who fired the first shot? Or who fired the first shot that went beyond self-defense? You can choose to trace the chain of events from wherever you like and there will always be some justice to your claim.
Then how can a war ever be just? Even if everyone would agree who was the original aggressor (which would never happen), the “just” war that was to be waged as a response would necessarily contain elements of aggression and thereby provide the enemy with a “just” reason for retaliation etc.
Whenever there is peace, a “just” war has been abandoned.
A country is a piece of land cut off from the rest of the earth by an imaginary line. This border runs oddly through the landscape, sometimes coinciding with a river or a mountain range, but often it reveals no reason for its peculiar track. Chance has drawn it as arbitrary incidents in relatively recent history have led faulty map makers to spoil the topography with red ink.
Luckily you cannot see it if you happen to be standing on that line. Looking at the scenery, you probably notice no difference between what you see on the right and on the left. Yet you know that on one side your own country is stretching out and on the other there is a completely different one. Therefore you love what you see when turning one way, but the other view leaves you cold. You are a patriot, and that is all there is to it. One side of the artificial border is right and the other one is wrong and what decides it is your having been born on the one and not the other. This doesn’t sound particularly rational and it isn’t.
Democracy is not suitable for all countries, but that is not mainly because their political culture and tradition is somehow less developed. There are plenty of examples of both countries that have gone directly from dictatorships to working democracies and countries that have unsuccessfully struggled with democratic experiments for years.
The deciding factor is the readiness to accept majority rule and that depends on the homogeneity of the country. Small minorities can be left out forever without the entire structure being endangered, but when a minority makes up a sizable part of the population, democracy will probably be impossible.
Iraq is a case in point. The Sunni minority can never win a majority through elections and if Iraq is to be a democracy it will always be ruled by the Shiites. An outside power has tried to lecture the Iraqis about the art of compromise and demanded that a broad coalition be established. But such a government would no longer be the rule of the majority and therefore it would not be democratic. What was the point of having an election, the Iraqis may rightfully ask, if the seats of government were to be distributed according to other principles than the election result.
Sure, it would be nice to have a coalition government in Iraq, but it would have to be held together by forces that are not democratic. Democracy is not suitable for Iraq, and that is also the case for other countries that are fundamentally divided.
Is democracy the same as decision by the majority? http://philosophy.hku.hk/think/phil/101q.php
Yes, it is, definitely.
I am well aware that another answer is probably expected. The minorities must also be protected, you may indignantly object. Yes, I agree completely, but that has nothing to do with democracy. If minority groups are to be given more influence than what their number would suggest, democracy has to be limited. It is good and just to shield underprivileged groups, but it is not democratic. Even if something is good for society it does not automatically mean it is democratic.
Maybe democracy is the best system of government overall, but a perfect democracy is not necessarily perfect for society. A partial democracy may be better, for many people may need to be protected against the government of the people.
The government of the people is the government of the majority – there cannot be another reasonable interpretation. Whoever governs is necessarily a member of the people and if a small elite has the power, at least it can be said that a part of the people has the power, but it would of course be absurd to call that a government of the people. At the other end, the government cannot be derived from all the people for a hundred percent support is obviously impossible. The people, then, can only mean the majority.
A Bear - Poles Apart 