Justification of War

[miho]

Every war in our planets history has started because of money. Religion, dictators and such are only excuses for someone to drop for a cup of tea with his army. From the first civilizations the reason for war was conquest. Do you think that the Greeks only wanted to bring Helena back from Troy, Do you think that the crusaders really had noble causes. They pillaged Constantinople in one crusade and captured Zadar for Venetians in another. And for the newer ones. War for the independence in the USA started because the English were takeing all their money. WW 1 started because Germany and Italy wanted colonies. I'm not sure for the WW 2 'cause Hitler was a mad man but he also must have liked money. Why did Saddam invade Kuwait? Because he wanted their oil deposits which bring a lot of money. See anything that appears in all of my examples. It's money.
So I don't think there is any justification for war. If you're attacked you have every right to defend yourself but there isn't an excuse to attack someone.

[Rodion Romanovich]

Every war in our planets history has started because of money. Religion, dictators and such are only excuses for someone to drop for a cup of tea with his army. From the first civilizations the reason for war was conquest. Do you think that the Greeks only wanted to bring Helena back from Troy, Do you think that the crusaders really had noble causes. They pillaged Constantinople in one crusade and captured Zadar for Venetians in another. And for the newer ones. War for the independence in the USA started because the English were takeing all their money. WW 1 started because Germany and Italy wanted colonies. I'm not sure for the WW 2 'cause Hitler was a mad man but he also must have liked money. Why did Saddam invade Kuwait? Because he wanted their oil deposits which bring a lot of money. See anything that appears in all of my examples. It's money.
So I don't think there is any justification for war. If you're attacked you have every right to defend yourself but there isn't an excuse to attack someone.

Very good, but why want money? For safety, power and with power people believe comes the ability to better defend themselves. While the laziness and will to enslave others to do all work for them may drive many, the utter desire for safety stands above all. Greed is just a stronger form of desire for safety - while one cow may feed all, why not kill ten cows, and get marginals? Why not kill 100 cows? Since civilization, money has been the ultimate embodyment of safety, positions of power comes next. Get money, and you get much of the safety you want (in the short term - you lose it all when there's a French/Russian revolution type of revolt). Get power of different kinds and you, seemingly, get much safety, or at least you can keep worse leaders from getting the power position by claiming it personally.

There are very few wars fought by monkeys, the worst example known is one or two raids conducted by some male gorillas against another gorilla flock, but it might have been influenced by humans destroying gorilla habitats and in general weakening the survivability of gorillas. We're not fundamentally different from monkeys, and there's no genes for money - money hasn't existed long enough yet.

@Those claiming war is in human nature: War is not in human nature, the desire for safety is. If there's no reason to go to war, we don't go to war. How often do you start wars on the social level, where you CAN start a war? Do you, in private life, team up with others and try to conquer them, defame them and destroy them? Wow, imagine how tea breaks would look in an average company! If war had been in human nature, you would have done this. Wars thankfully only happen in situations of misunderstanding or when the leaders have too much greed (greed is really only exaggerated desire for safety), when there's a potential a competitor may grow powerful and become an enemy in the future, when the intentions of a competitor are unclear, or other general situations where there's a desire for safety. Civilization is creating a bad outer frame for preventing such different situations of future threat from being created. One of the reasons is the humans using tools and the ability in civilization to alter power balance so quickly and so easily. If anyone can acquire power so quickly, then you always have reason for fear because someone you didn't expect can come and destroy you all of a sudden. Only solution is to kill/conquer/destroy/defame every single other human on the planet, and it's not that easy to do, as history has shown. And since the structure is left the same, the winners (assuming anyone could win such a struggle) would soon turn into each others' competitors again, and the procedure would have been repeated.

You all have to excuse me, but I'm tired of all people saying that all people are born evil and all people saying that all people are born good. We're born to react in certain ways in certain situations. Bad situations equals bad behavior, good situations equals good behavior. It's as simple as that. It's an obvious fact supported by both statistics and theory.