Re:prayers (Score 1)

Well, there is a huge difference between ending a war and starting one. This is what separates justified and unjustified military action.

Oh, c'mon, that is a patently ridiculous assertion. Just a couple of examples:

• US Revolutionary War - started to secure freedoms denied by the British crown - that's unjustifiable?
• French Revolutionary War - much the same, but if the cause of revolt against tyranny is justifiable, then was all of the bloodshed and infighting justified?
• US Civil War - fought against secession and slavery - again, by your reckoning, the Confederacy should have been left alone.

There is no hard and fast rule about justifiable war; aggression, "he started it," defense of this, opposition to that, it doesn't matter. History will ALWAYS make assessments of justifiability after the dust has settled; that's the way of it.

Regardless of justifiability (and no, the point of this is not to defend this or any other particular military action), the critical thing is how the war is conducted. In fact, views of justifiability are always going to be informed by actions like rape/torture/murder vs. active effort to keep civilians out of harm's way. The US military is far from perfect, but I don't believe that there is another army out there with a better record of accountability in recent years. Unfortunately, this became policy because of the horrific atrocities in Vietnam.

Let's face it; every war has atrocities, and every country has been at various times responsible for horrible and aggressive action that has resulted in massive deaths. This includes the US, France, the UK, Israel, Palestine, Iraq, Turkey, Germany, Russia, India, Pakistan, China, Japan, Nigeria, Australia, the Vatican, Spain, et. al. There are no "peace-loving" peoples; everyone wants peace. There are no "war-mongering" peoples, everyone gets involved in wars. Everyone and no-one is innocent.

If your goal is peace, fighting wars rarely makes sense; however, if your goal is better world relations, neither does demonizing 280 million people.

-Yoshi