I have to take my seven year old to school right now, but I'll be back to comment on this . . . he he he . . .

Well, what a poorly thought out argument.

Police protect individuals. Armies protect nation states.

Wow, I agree with Brad, whoh!

But yes. The police handle domestic disputes. Armies handle international disputes. This is why the police do not have tanks.

Also, you said war is unlawful. I believe you are incorrect. War can be immoral and unjust and the acts taken by the participants can be illegal, and the initiating aggression can be illegal, but the resulting war is not.

IG

If you combine the military with the police you get the Gestapo of nazi germany or the NKVD of the soviet union.
You should read about and understand what you are talking about before you make statements like these.
The Armed forces of any nation are just another arm of diplomacy.

Many thanks to Draginol, InfoGeek, and SSG Geezer for summing up much of what I was feeling. I was self blacklisting myself from this post this morning, because all I could come up with fell into the trolling category and/or name calling. Thanks for posting.

Let me add one thing to this. It's a quote I read in Basic Training in a prayerbook designed for Soldiers. "Noone prays for peace more than a Soldier". Or something along those lines.

Also, my own - Soldiers make a difference.

I had a comment for you earlier, but decided not to post it. What I would like to do instead is say "right on" to the comments above.


Oh yeah, and . . .

[removed by moderator]

Only make that "post" instead of "posts," alrighty?

"War is unlawful in more than one element - it's destruction of property, murder, grand theft and a lot of other offences rolled into one. To stop this we need some kind of heavy armed police. "

War is like weather, it happens. It isn't a anomoly, or a twisting of human nature, it IS human nature. To say that war is "wrong" is to condemn those that fought Hitler, or the American Revolution, or any number of conflicts that today are seen as necessary conflicts.

We have armies for the same reason we have police. Someone of a slightly different bent could take your arguement and say "People become policemen because they want to oppress peopel and put them in jail."

War and Crime are both facts. If you can see the necessity of policemen, you can see the necessity of the military. Your post is insulting and ignorant, and if you have any self-respect you'll remove it.

Well, thanks to everybody for comments.

As for my statements, I still will stay by them and I cannot say anybody has fronted any arguments to persuade me otherwise. War is not "natural" as killing is not "natural" - we are not born with fangs or claws. We are born with big brains and we should use them. War is a crime. Maybe a crime done by countries as well, but also done by everybody involved. And that makes soldier criminals. People who decide their job will be to fight wars = participate in a crime.

I have more arguments, based on various value systems, that will maybe be more acceptable to some people who commented:

- Nations are made from individuals - police protects individuals - therefore, nations should be protected by police

- War is illegal as there is no law allowing countries to go to war. There are international conventions on how they should BEHAVE when in war, but no law ALLOWS countries to go to war. Therefore it is ILLEGAL (as in - "not in accordance to the law")

- War is not the form of diplomacy. Diplomacy is (according to the The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language) "The art or practice of conducting international relations, as in negotiating alliances, treaties, and agreements." and also "Tact and skill in dealing with people"

- Soldiers don't make a difference - money makes a difference (as US – but not only US - has proved number of times). Soldiers just die for other people's profit. That doesn't make them less guilty, it just makes them worth of our pity. And if they pray for peace, they shouldn't be the instruments of war.

- There is a big difference between the police and the army – the police protects the laws and rights that the nation itself decides it should have. The purpose of the army is to break those rules. If the aim of the decision-makers was only to protect the nation’s borders, we would have one arm of the police force with access to heavy weaponry which would serve as regular police during the peace times and take arms when the country was attacked. Setting the army as a separate organisation (as most of the countries in the world do) means preparing for war.
And if you cannot see the logical error in the “If You want peace, prepare for war” (‘Igitur qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum.’ – by Flavius Vegetius Renatus, Roman military strategist), there's really no point in arguing. I don’t prepare for rain with a sun lotion. By the way, that argument was made cca 1600 years ago so it seems some of us haven’t really progressed much, haven’t they?

While we are quoting, let’s see another one:
"War is delightful to those who have had no experience of it. " - Desiderius Erasmus, Dutch humanist, ca. 1466–1536
I’d like to say I’m from a country that has known war on it’s own soil in the last 15 years and had more than 1 % of it’s population killed and more than 10 % lost their homes. So there.

- And should I be apprehended for my thoughts? Probably in Nazi Germany or Stalin Russia (those countries with large armies). Thank my mother that I live in the free world.

- I'm not really religious, but as I remember it, there is a commandment "Thou shall not kill" - and id doesn't say "except in self defence".

At the end I would like to make an apology for posting this article to the forums as well, which was done by mistake - as I don't usually put my articles in the forums, knowing they could offend somebody and keeping them in my blog on purpose.

Are you kidding? There is nothing more natural than killing. Use your head. That being said, killing has nothing to do with war. It's just a byproduct of war. Despite your soft and surperior feel-bads war and conflict are a fact of life, despite the propoganda wars (at least on one side) are fought to protect life. In most cases they are fought in response to attrocious act's of criminal violince.

I know you posted, rather timidly in the beggining "theoretical" and then jumped to say nobody had anything you wanted to hear. What do you know of war? What do you propose instead? If you were elbow deep in a pile of childrens bodies trying to box them up before news cameras could get there, you might feel differently. If you knew the reasons they were dead you might feel differently. If you can't justify a war to end this what do you have to say about your humanity?