ndogg's Journal: War, justice, necessity, morality

I got an interesting email to this journal entry. I've posted my response below, along with the email.

On Wed, Jul 21, 2004 at 10:47:25AM -0400, <name_protected_but_encourages_author_to_respond_here> wrote:
> >>No war is justifiable, nor will there ever be a justifiable war, not even
> WWII. Was WWII necessary? Yes, it was to protect the lives of innocent
> people. Justice would have been convincing the Nazis that what they were
> doing was wrong, and making them stop without force, but protecting the
> lives of innocent is a more important issue that can necessitate force.
>
> Do you know your history lesson on the root causes of WWI and WWII?
>
> Not a chance in hell anyone could have convinced the Germans (note, not
> Nazis...Germans) that their "exapansion" policy was wrong, in their eyes, it
> was extremely justified.
>
> Bad japanimation aside, try not to mix your ideals. Concentrate instead, on
> backing up your opinions. "Justifying" a war is tricky, but I'm certain
> there are several hundred thousand Brits who would disagree with you on
> whether WWII was "justified" or not.
>
> Something to think about.

I'd rather debate you on my /. journal than over email. If you repost
this there, I'll gladly respond, but...

What makes something justifiable, doesn't necessarily make it moral.
The moral actions that were taken for WWI and WWII were the necessary
actions that were taken. Part of the reason I wrote that journal was
in response to many things, much of which I will not mention, but I
will say that too often, people try to do the "justifiable" actions,
when what they really do is dismiss a person and any possibility for
that person to become better. That's exactly what happens in the
justice system here in the US. People get locked up, and the key is
"thrown" (metaphorically, not literally) away. There are very few
attempts at rehabilitation or helping them to find job skills that
would keep them out of prison when/if they get out. I'd rather have
tax payer money spent on something that may have a small success rate
than just locking them up and hoping they get better.