See, this is why you shouldn't be talking about these things. We're not talking about the authority of Saddam but the country that wants to go to war. Which you'd actually know, if you'd read my earlier historic summary. So you can't claim knowing what the Just War Theory entails and therefore aren't qualified to decide one way or the other whether it's a good theory or not and what parts should be changed or not. You're just demonstrating your ignorance.

But when the correct action is being taken, intent doesn't matter a damn. It's only if bad intent causes a bad action that we should seek to prevent the action being taken. — Paul Edwards

There is no correct action without rightful intent. If I intend to murder you and you happen to be raping someone when I walk in on you with the intent to murder you at the time, it's still murder regardless of the happy outcome. If I walk in on you by happenstance and you're raping someone and I accidentally kill you in the process of defending the victim, only then am I not a murderer.

But yeah, never mind 2000+ years of thinking on criminal law. :snicker:

Let's hope 50 years from now a lot of people still care so they avoid the shitty mess the US is in now.

That said, I think the only solution for this polarisation and ridiculous hate-mongering going both ways is prohibiting targeted ads and content on social media. If I click on an "anti vax" movie, I get more anti vax movie suggestions, clicking another and I get a corona hoax, clicking that gets me a 9/11 hoax. Pretty soon I live in an alternative reality. Did find this gem though:

You know what never gets old? Dark humour and unvaccinated kids.

Again a total misrepresentation. I asked if you knew the Just War Theory. You said you read a Wiki. I shared a summary of its history and advised a book by Walzer as a good start to get a grasp on the subject. Exactly no where have I said that the Just War Theory is what it is and should be. In fact, I already pointed out an issue with Walzer's theory. I've alluded as to the largest gap in your thinking in that you don't take sovereignty (or right authority) into account. I have explained why intent is important by analogy as you won't be able to tell the difference between a purposeful murder and accident otherwise. I'm trying to get you to see, with tiny fucking babysteps, which blind spots you have and all I get is "muh, mental blocks!" as a pathetic excuse for not listening. So you can yawn all you want but you basically have no clue what you're talking about.

Again, this didn't answer my question. I'm done Paul. You don't listen to what I say and don't answer the questions I ask. Don't bother replying.

So much effort you don't understand just war theory. Whatever. I graduated in the subject and apparently my 6 months studying it in depth with decades of continued interest got me a lot further because I'm not trying to sell a conclusion I've been walking around with for decades. You're only convincing yourself that you think you know what you're talking about. The exercise you do though is playing the tormented genius and whine "why doesn't anybody understand me?" and then proceed to classify everybody's shortcomings as reasons not to engage their points. You need to accept your interlocutors are as rational as you are (if not more so) and engage their arguments instead of raising straw men every time you're challenged.

So what this answer once again demonstrates is an unwillingness to try to understand someone else's position. You're not qualified to debate this subject if you don't understand the context.

He wants me to wait until tomorrow before I explain that if he is raping someone I will kill him regardless of any rules preventing me from doing so. If I can get away with it, anyway. If I can't get away with it because his name is Uday and I'm an Iraqi citizen I will instead wait for a US liberation and support that. — Paul Edwards

I asked you to reflect on why a thing is a certain way not what you think it should be. Why does Australian law or Dutch law or UK law prohibit you from travelling across the country and attacking a person you believe is a murderer and rapist? You'd be convicted of murder is you did. Why is that? What are the specific exemptions to that and why?

Yeah, it must be mental blocks causing people to disagree. :brow:

Your reply has exactly zero bearing on my previous post. Your rule doesn't apply because I'm not saying there's a rule protecting Saddam, I'm saying there are rules to exercising force by others.

The prohibition on you personally to not attack me is not a rule to protect me so I can murder people.

Instead of replying to me, why don't you have a good hard think on why that is and come back to me tomorrow why you think that is the way it is.

That is a straw man and not the first. Just stop it. You're not going to shame me into a different position by pretending I'm all for Saddam killing people.

Just like I think the police should adhere to rules regardless of the victim or perpetrator, so is it here. It's a pathetic argument to make that I'm therefore in favour of murderers continuing to murder innocents.

It is you who excused Saddam's murders and tried to prevent the police from arresting the murderer. Maybe it's you who doesn't like Iraqis. — Paul Edwards

This is the third straw man you've raised and the first one I'm reacting to. You should respond to what I say not to things you make up.

I suppose it's good to know you think murderers should be excused as long as you don't like the victims. An ethically repugnant position. It's even worse than I thought and apparently you need to study ethics too.

No, that is not my position. — Paul Edwards

That's the consequence of ignoring intent.

There's a reason why intent is important, which you happily ignore because you want to reach a certain conclusion.

By analogy, you're now proposing that murdering someone and killing someone accidently are the same thing, because intent doesn't matter.

Or, if I'm a serial killer and I happen to kill a family planning to commit a terrorist act, that I committed a laudable act. This is of course ridiculous. Intent matters.

The sooner you accept you've barely scratched the surface on this subject and therefore have no reason to take a position one way or the other the better for everyone involved in this thread.

2016 -- Dildo Trump (sub-abysmal) — Bitter Crank

You'd wish he was a dildo as that would at least make him useful and give you good feelings.

wait, what, you're a progressive? :rofl:

Love the holier than thou and no true Scotsman thinking gripping this thread now. Bullshit all around as usual.

The grand jury has only testified that no evidence for homicides was submitted and when they asked about it the prosecuter said because he didn't think it could stick. He then lied about the process that the grand jury made/agreed to that assessment themselves.

However, none of that is proof that the assessment that homicide charges could not be proved is wrong.

As I set out before, only if you can prove the cops lied about the knock and announce do you have a chance to do convict for homicide charges but there's only one witness who flip-flopped on that outside the 3 cops. And not hearing anything isn't proof it didn't happen. So you're never going to get beyond a reasonable doubt on this unless there's evidence we don't know about.

So yes, based on the available facts I have no reason to believe not prosecuting homicides is the wrong call.

All capitals really gets the point across doesn't it. Just the first paragraph alone shows how you don't understand sovereignty. Read up. I'll talk to you in about a year. Bye.

I'm not denying there's systemic racism in the US. I'm saying that while the Breonna case has been poorly handled I so far have not seen evidence that homicide charges could be successfully proved.

I already pointed out an issue with it. The history I set out is peppered with remarks as well. And your take away is I'm dogmatic because you're not informed and willing enough to put your own pre-conceived conclusion under review? :rofl:

The Iraqi war was wrong by many measures. It was based on lies, so there was no right intent and the war and sanctions killed more people than Saddam ever did. So it didn't result in a greater good. You're totally blind to what sovereignty means and apparently don't accept dissent from your values to the point you'll start wars for it. In other words, you don't even have half a theory and are willing to murder people over disagreements. Well done. You think reading a wiki makes you informed, you're just wasting everybody's time.

Ah, that's how it works in the Netherlands as well. You can only ask the court to order the prosecutor to prosecute.

Capital flows far outstrip the money involved in goods and services. So yes, the economy is largely financial bullshit.

Let me try to illustrate (not 100% correctly but this should get the idea across). Let's say we're a country of 2, I'm a farmer, you make tools I can use. The government (central bank) made 10 coins and egalitarian as we are, you have 5 and I have 5. Since it's linked to the gold standard, the government can't make more coins without devaluing their worth.

I buy tools for 1 coin and produce food and at some point you'll buy one bushle of food for 1 coin from me. We can go back and forth like this unitl we're both dead. We'll have exchanged a lot coins and probably obtained some wealth in the meantime because the tools are pretty durable so there's a collection of them.

Now we introduce a bank. First of all when we put our coins in the bank, they will gain interest. That means the money supply needs to grow. Back in the day 10% interest wasn't uncommon so let's say we both only need 4 coins for our day to day transactions and can keep 1 coin in the bank until we die plus whatever interest we get on it (we'll give that 40 years). Compound interest means that after 40 years, we each have 41.14 coins in the bank. So both of us have 46.14 coins but since we're lazy, no productivity increase. If the money supply is 90 coins in total and the number of goods in the market remain the same, what will that do for prices? They ought to be rising, right?

Now, there's of course a good reason for this because the savings can be used for lending. And if the bank lends to @ssu, he'll do something really useful with it. So that's our third countryman. Welcome to the club, we're special because there's only three of us. Here's 5 coins to get you started because we're totally egalitarian here.

Based on the circulation of money, the bank feels comfortable to lend out the money we deposited. So let's say the bank treats our savings as term deposits of one year. But will only lend out one of the deposits so it can cover one deposit with the other if we'd withdraw early. So it will lend out 1 coin in the first year and 41.14 coins in year 40 but since it promised us both 10%, it needs to charge 25% for the yearly loans. But wait, it can lend out any profit it makes as well. So the money supply doesn't increase with 82 coins but with... (drumroll) 6,311 coins for a total of 6,319 coins of which you own 49 coins, I do too and the bank owns EUR 6,009 coins. Pretty fair huh? Especially since we're the only ones actually working in this picture!

But wait, ssu borrowed that money everytime and actually successfully invested it. So his rate of return was actually larger than the interest rate. A whopping 5% after his interest and downpayment but since he annually borrowed larger and larger sums of money (initial 1 coin + compound interest + whatever the bank lends him from it's own profits), he ends up with the other 300 coins. Prices should be rising for our tools and bushles right? Except they're not! Why God, why ain't I as rich as ssu? You fucker, you didn't work harder than I did. Give me your money. Tax him or something.

We see here the simplest divergence between goods and services price levels and that of a financial product, namely loans, which is a simple product to see how it yields profit. But a bank can of course
buy stock, buy bonds or trade derivatives instead of providing loans. Now that the bank has it's own source of money, you and I can go fuck off with our 10%, interest rates will go down as will lending rates as banks start competing to get ssu to enter into a loan with them. As lending rates drop other financial instruments become more interesting so at some point the lending rate bottoms out at the level where other financial instruments provide a higher yield. Even if ssu used his lending activities to raise productivity and add to the real economony, his wealth after 40 years is much smaller than that of the bank.

So how do we know asset prices are inflated? Because goods and service prices are not inflating, which they would if more money would be spend on goods and services simply because the money supply increases. Now, goods and services inflation can also be offset by increased productivity but this isn't happening and certainly not concurrent with increases in the money supply.

Second, sub-zero interest rates. If money were scarce, you'd have to pay a premium to be able to get a hold of it. But there's no premium, banks are basically giving it away since the central bank is giving it away too.

Third, yield or return on investment. Would you put your money into something that would take 1,000 years to pay that amount back? Doesn't really seem like a sensible investment to me.

I'll need something specific to be able to contest the claim, and it's far from obvious. Ending the Iraqi holocaust (including institutional rape) is probably the most just war in the history of the world, and if Just War Theory fails to spell that out then the theory needs to be adjusted. — Paul Edwards

As I said, you're not here for debate but for confirmation of your own believes. Boring.

A Brief History of the Just War Tradition (3 of 3)

5. Contemporary Theory

In general there existed a positivist denial of the doctrine of war on the basis of natural law after Grotius and as such war was considered to be beyond legal control. The fault of an aggressive state was mainly looked upon as a moral fault, not a legal one and was in some minds too subjectively determined. The source of international law did not lie with universal principles such as Grotius thought, but within treaties and actual practice.
The wars of the twentieth century led to a reaction against positivism, as a thing was no longer regarded as being justified merely because it existed. Most importantly the Tokyo and Nuremburg trials introduced the notion of responsibility as the idea of an illegal war was reintroduced and the guilty individuals were punished. However, the present trend of international terrorism goes beyond imposing responsibility on individuals acting for their States. As Bowett states, with wholly different problems in mind:

“The new techniques of subversive activities and ideological propaganda, for example, call for a specific regulation…(and)…afford to individuals an unprecedented power of endangering a state´s security.”

The twentieth century has known a revival of the idea of a just war. Today aggressive war is legally no longer allowed and self-defence is the only violence permissible in international law. In practice some forms of aggressive war exist that can be considered just, namely humanitarian interventions and possibly aid to secessionist movements and counter insurgencies, depending on one’s qualification of the facts.
Of the contemporary thinkers on the subject of the just war theory Michael Walzer is regarded as one of its foremost writers, even lthough he considers the theory apart from the traditional six criteria. Walzer briefly expounds thinking on aggression and revises this by means of historical illustrations thereafter. The legalist paradigm as he calls it represents current (1977) thought on aggression and can be summed up as follows.

1) There exists an international society of independent states
2) This international society has a law that establishes the rights of its members - above all, the rights of territorial integrity and political sovereignty
3) Any use of force or imminent threat of force by one state against the political sovereignty or territorial integrity of another constitutes aggression and is a criminal act
4) Aggression justifies two kinds of violent response: a war of self-defence by the victim and a war of law enforcement by the victim and any other member of international society
5) Nothing but aggression can justify war
6) Once the aggressor state has been militarily repulsed, it can also be punished

Walzer puts forward five revisions to this paradigm. The first is to allow a state the use of force before the existence of an imminent threat or actual use of force against its political or territorial integrity and is a revision of the third rule of the legalist paradigm. Walzer suggests that:

“…states may use military force in the face of threats of war whenever the failure to do so would seriously risk their territorial integrity or political independence. Under such circumstances it can fairly be said that they have been forced to fight and that they are the victims of aggression.”

He admits that such a word as “seriously” requires a normative interpretation and as such its meaning is not fixed, but stresses that although the rule is permissive it implies restrictions. Such restrictions are indeed implied by words such as “seriously”, “threats” and in a globalising world even a word such as “independence”. His implied restrictions are therefore normative considerations of these words and against the background of the Israeli six day war they are even correct, but as a general rule they are inadequate.
In terms of the Just War criteria this means that next to self-defence and the possibility of a pre-emptive strike, including wars in defence of others, and wars of recovery – both immediately arising from a conflict or after some time – a third just cause can be distinguished. Considering that the threat of war is no longer imminent it would be a contortion of the idea of pre-emptive strike to categorise it as such. Preferably such wars should be called anticipatory. The discussion on whether an anticipatory war is allowed is not concluded. The legal basis is at best shaky, but the moral case is not so clear cut.
The second, third and fourth revision by Walzer are connected to the problems of secession, counter-intervention and humanitarian intervention. He contends with if and when a foreign power may intervene in another’s territory. It is closely connected to the right of self-determination which “is the right of a people “to become free by their own efforts” if they can, and non-intervention. Non-intervention is the principle guaranteeing that their success will not be impeded or their failure prevented by the intrusions of an alien power.” In other words, people must help themselves to their own freedom, and with such freedom comes the principle of non-intervention.
In the case of secessionist movements Walzer requires of them that they demonstrate their representative character after which it would be allowed to assist them in their bid to self-determination. The reason for this is obvious for if a community is not capable of self-determination it should not be assisted in a struggle that cannot exist on its own accord for it would lack any authority. This of course has to do with the problem of identifying an authority in the first place. An ally to whom we may offer aid should have in principle all the characteristics of an authority, because an authority is a demonstration of the representative character of its relevant community. Although at first glance it appears as if another just cause is generated for a State it really is a just cause for the developing relevant community to enforce its right to self-determination. A State that assists such a community is allowed to do so in defence of a friend or ally. The difference then is that a State is allowed to aid an existing relevant community that has no legitimate authority as of yet.
From this flows that when a third State assists either the secessionist movement or the state within which boundaries the movement tries to enforce their right of self-determination yet another State may possibly attain the right to assist the other party. For even when the secessionist movement did not demonstrate its representative character the struggle becomes an external conflict simply due to the fact that an outside third has chosen a side in an internal struggle. This allows outside third States to ally themselves to either side as these sides become clearly identifiable as different authorities not because their representative character but arising from the de facto situation.

Walzer further qualifies the principle of non-intervention for cases where the appeal to self-help is not very attractive. In the case of humanitarian intervention he says “when a government turns savagely upon its own people, we must doubt the very existence of a political community to which the idea of self-determination might apply.” Thus, humanitarian intervention is justified when it is directed against actions that disregard the moral convictions of ordinary people. Walzer's argument has been criticised as a potentially indiscriminate mandate for intervention because of the difficulty of distinguishing between tolerable and intolerable abuses.
As stated before, an ally or friend in terms of international politics requires that parties have all the characteristics of an authority to express their representational character. When a third State comes to the aid of a repressed community it cannot be defined as defence of a friend or an ally in its original meaning as it cannot ally itself to an authority. The moral cause to aid the community is obviously just. At a certain point individual rights simply transcend the rights of states, it is, however, a cause separated from any other previously existing just causes. When deciding whether there is a duty to intervene it is not too difficult to recognise human rights violations nor is it complicated to establish the helplessness of the attacked. It is very complex however to decide whether the violations are severe enough to breach a State’s sovereignty.

Walzer’s fifth and final revision of the legalist paradigm is the abolition of the paradigm’s sixth rule that once the aggressor state has been militarily repulsed, it can also be punished. He considers the domestic situation of capture and punishment of aggressor not applicable to the international society. Following the recent institution of international tribunals in which not States as whole, but human actors are held responsible and are prosecuted this view should be underlined. Since the object of the war on terror is to stop terrorist organisations and as such no punishment is aimed at States, this aspect of the legalist paradigm is unnecessary to consider in detail.

After this brief survey of the Just War Tradition we can conclude the following six criteria regarding Ius ad Bellum:

1) right authority; meaning the supreme authority, which cannot turn to a higher authority
2) just cause; of which are identifiable, self-defence, defence of a friend or ally, wars of recovery both immediate and after some time, self-determination and finally humanitarian intervention; no punitive wars are allowed
3) right intention; an authority should have as its aim the common good of all involved although the particular good of its own community may outweigh such considerations; the intention to kill is lawful for a public authority
4) last resort; all other means to solve the conflict must have been tried and failed
5) reasonable chance of success; before waging a war an authority must surmise whether a war will be successful for otherwise he will waste the lives of its citizens
6) proportionality; the evils let loose by war should be proportionate to the evil avoided or the better peace attained

As is apparent, little is said explicitly on the criteria for Ius in Bello and although the principles for these criteria existed through history their actual substance differed greatly. It is however clear that the thoughts on Ius in Bello revolved around two concepts, that of proportionality and discrimination.

A Brief History of The Just War Tradition (2 of 3)

3. Aquinas

In the second division of the second part of the Summa Theologica (hereafter: “war articles”) Aquinas wrote on war. He discussed whether war in itself is wrong and its possible justification if it were not. He continued to deal with the questions of whether clerics should fight, whether it is lawful for belligerents to lay ambushes and whether fighting on holy days is permissible. Of these, only the question whether it is lawful for belligerents to lay ambushes is of enough significance in today’s secular world. Although Aquinas’ answer to this question points to the existence of rules of conduct the substance of these rules have changed drastically over time. As a consequence the rules of conduct are considered as part of existing international law in order to distil substantive rulings and Aquinas’ answer is not dealt with. I will further endeavour to separate the theological aspects of Aquinas’ theory only insofar as this will not distort the representation of his ideas.
To the first question whether some kind of war is lawful he raises four objections. The first two objections are quoted from Scripture and as they do not represent lines of thought that can be rationally reconstructed their consideration is one better left to theologians. The third objection states that war is contrary to the virtue of peace and the fourth objection states that since the Church forbids warlike exercises in tournaments, they must be sinful.
His answer revolves around three main criteria for a just war, which are the following classical distinctions:
- right authority
- just cause
- rightful intention

Right Authority

The idea of a right authority is not original to Aquinas, but it certainly is paramount in his thinking. Aquinas is of the opinion that no private individual is allowed to summon the people together and declare war, because he has the opportunity to seek redress from a tribunal of his superior. It is the care of the common weal that is entrusted to those in authority and it is therefore their business to watch over the common weal of a community. And as it is lawful for them to use the sword in defending this common weal against internal disturbances so too is it their business to wage war in defending the common weal against external enemies.
Quoting Augustine he says: “The natural order conducive to peace among mortals demands that the power to declare and counsel war should lie in the hands of those who hold the supreme authority.” It is important to stress the requirement of supreme authority. It would seem that any authority that can turn to a higher authority for arbitration is not allowed to declare war.

Just Cause

On the subject of a just cause Aquinas writes “those who are attacked, should be attacked because they deserve it on account of some fault.” He elaborates when quoting Augustine:

“A just war is wont to be described as one that avenges wrongs, when a nation or state has to be punished, for refusing to make amends for the wrongs inflicted by its subjects, or to restore what it has seized unjustly.”

Both Aquinas’ idea of a “fault” and Augustine’s “wrong” are inadequate to define a just cause, as these terms themselves are undefined. Moreover, Augustine considers wrongs inflicted by the subject of states as punishable by war. This of course begs the question what wrongs these should be, as they certainly do not include theft. For “what it has seized unjustly” refers grammatically to the nation or state and does not refer to subjects. This invites the discussion on what is considered to be an act by a state and that of a person but goes beyond the scope of this thesis. However, what wrongs, if any, these are, are for a large part unclear.
Aquinas does rule on self-defence but not in his war articles. It is closely bound to that of the rule of double effect, which he reflects on in another part of his Summa Theologica and which will be contended with below. Self-defence comes into play when the wrong suffered by the other party consists of a direct threat or attack to one’s person. Through analogy we can consider the reclamation of territory, if it has been taken, as a form of self-defence for an authority that rules over a distinguishable area. No other wrongs are further considered by Aquinas. Interestingly enough, when considering self-defence even the unjust side can claim to wage a just war on the grounds of individual self-defence. From this follows that the just war would only operate up to the first moment of attack.




Right Intention

Finally, Aquinas reflects on the requirement of rightful intention. The belligerents must “intend the advancement of good or the avoidance of evil.” Again he quotes Augustine and illustrates that the object of war should be securing peace, punishing evil-doers and uplifting the good. Prohibited are “the passion for inflicting harm, the cruel thirst for vengeance, an unpacific and relentless spirit, the fever of revolt, the lust of power, and such like things, all these are rightly condemned in war.”
What good Aquinas speaks of is not entirely certain. When dealing with the requirement of a right authority he regards as the good, the good of the community over which the authority resides. However in his answer to the second objection he also considers the good of the enemy when he quotes Augustine to demonstrate that resistance is sometimes preferable to non-resistance. He states: “nothing is more unhappy than the happiness of sinners .” Next to these two goods a third can be distinguished, namely that of the “common good” that stands above the good of separate communities.
As he considers the good of the community and that of its enemies separately, there is no particular reason to assume a war must necessarily be fought for the “common good”. Either appears to be enough to assume a rightful intention even if it were to be to the detriment of one or the other. However, such a separation might be considered undesirable since the detrimental effect to either community could outweigh the positive effect for the other. It appears to me that if this were the result of the existence of a right intention that this cannot have been Aquinas’ meaning.
To continue, as is apparent from the answer to the second objection non-resistance is sometimes considered evil. Likewise, the horrors of war can be redeemed by a purpose of bringing peace. It appears to illustrate that when considering the “common good”, elements of the good of the different belligerents are to be considered. When declaring war these differing goods must be weighed against each other. On the other hand the good of either of the belligerents might sometimes outweigh the “common good”, as the price that must be paid is simply too grave for the goal of a better peace. None of these considerations are explicitly mentioned in Aquinas’ war articles and I would not go so far as to attribute them to him, but the arising problems are in the foreground when reading Aquinas’ war articles. It is unlikely he was unaware of them.
On the matter of double effect, that is, the problem of an act having two effects only one of which is intended, Aquinas writes:

“Accordingly the act of self-defence may have two effects, one is the saving of one’s life, the other is the slaying of the aggressor. Therefore, this act, since one’s intention is to save one’s own life, is not unlawful, seeing that it is natural to everything to keep itself in being, as far as possible.”

It is therefore unlawful for an individual to intend to kill the aggressor, but a public authority may intend to do so for he will “refer this to the public good, as is the case of a soldier fighting against the foe”. Private animosity is still considered a sin when this moves the public authority to act. Further to the idea of double effect Aquinas writes:

“And yet, though proceeding from a good intention, an act may be rendered unlawful, if it be out of proportion to the end. Wherefore if a man, in self-defence, uses more than necessary violence, it will be unlawful; whereas if he repel force with moderation his defence will be lawful, because according to the jurists, it is lawful to repel force by force, provided one does not exceed the limits of a blameless defence.”

He so demonstrates that the use of force for an individual must be proportionate. Although Aquinas permits that a public authority is allowed to intend to kill a man in self-defence, he does not speak of allowing disproportionate force to a public authority. Aquinas’ explicitly makes the comparison between the individual and a public authority when reflecting on the intention of killing the aggressor in the case of self-defence. He does not relate the idea of proportionality for an individual to that of a public authority at all, whereas this idea is both conceptually but also textually closely linked to that of the intention to kill. It is therefore defendable that the requirement of proportionality of force is applicable to public authorities according to Aquinas as he does not explicitly allow it as he has done for the intention to kill another.
The intention to kill in public self-defence was presumably allowed because it is thought that the judgment of a sovereign is more rational and deliberate. However, it is doubtful an authority is more efficient in distributing justice than the individual. The authority in the end does little more than give approval to individuals to carry out “justice” in its name. These individuals bear the practical responsibility but they escape all moral responsibility, which Aquinas thought to be the responsibility of the sovereign, as is apparent when he again quotes Augustine:

“He slays not who owes his service to one who commands him, even as a sword is merely the instrument to him that wields it … just as a soldier slays the foe by the authority of his sovereign…”

Although the individual is not allowed to intend to kill his opponent even under threat of losing his own life, it would appear unjust for an authority to have the intention to kill for any lesser reason. Considering that Aquinas did not reflect on other wrongs than those dealt with under the rule of self-defence, it may be inferred that these wrongs – threat or attack to persons and/or territory – are the only wrongs that will serve as justification. This is a logical conclusion from the fact that no war can be fought without the intention to kill and as it would be unjust to kill for any lesser reason than self-defence, no other causes may be considered just.
Aquinas briefly reflects on an aspect of the conduct of war when he answers whether it is lawful to lay ambushes in war. He considers that the object of laying ambushes is to deceive the enemy and this can be done in two different ways. On the one hand through telling "something false or through the breaking of a promise", which is always unlawful, and on the other hand "a man can be deceived … because we do not declare our purpose or meaning to him". The first is condemned because we have the duty to preserve the rights even of our enemy. However, these rights do not include telling another everything we are going to do to him. Here, Aquinas ignores the more positive aspects of laying ambushes as he defines "ambush" as nothing more than "concealment of plans". This all he states on the matter of the conduct in war.

It can be concluded that on the criteria of Ius ad Bellum Aquinas writes that the right authority is the supreme authority, which is able to exercise power in order to defend the common weal. It does so only in self-defence as he loses the moral right to intend to kill another if his cause is other than self-defence. Since no war can be fought without the intention to kill others, the wrongs that facilitate just causes are the protection of the population over which the authority resides and the reclamation of lost territory. He must do so with the intention to advance good or avoid evil and although the supreme authority is allowed to intend to kill others, he is still bound to use force proportionate to the wrong suffered. Even though Aquinas did not explicitly consider what good the authority should intend, it was suggested that this should be the good of both warring parties. This requires some consideration towards how the war will end, for the original injustice and the situation after the war should be compared to decide whether going to war will advance good or avoid evil. Aquinas allows for the existence of double effect insofar as the authority or person is intent on bringing about the just effect. On the criteria of Ius in Bello Aquinas is brief as he only considers the laying of ambushes in a very limited sense of the "concealment of plans". Such concealment is not permissible when it is brought about by lies or the breaking of a promise.
The authority of Aquinas’ thoughts on war are not due to any original or comprehensive exposition but because his general eminence and that of the Summa Theologica. As Joan D. Tooke notes: “the subject of war had not been included in Peter Lombard’s Sentences, the accepted theological handbook for three centuries during the middle ages ...” Since the Summa Theologica replaced the Sentences Aquinas ensured that his treatment of war had a certain importance and authority.


4. Vitoria, Suarez & Grotius

The just cause of war, which Aquinas had defined as an attack on those who “deserve it on account of some fault”, was more precisely defined after his time. Defence, of which Aquinas said nothing specific in his war articles because he took its rightfulness for granted, came to be recognised as a specific cause. Recuperatio, recovering goods unjustly stolen and held or wrongly taken in a previous conflict, was another cause. A punishable injury was yet another.
It was generally accepted that in defensive war there should be not element of punishment and that it was right to recover only what was wrongly taken. No enslavement or seizure of enemy possessions was thought to be allowable. Furthermore, defence was thought to derive its authority from its intrinsic justice and it did not need a superior authority. This permissiveness reached out to friends, allies and neighbours.
Recuperatio was in some cases thought to be somewhere between defence and aggression. Recuperatio in continenti was more or less a direct reaction to an earlier conflict and as such could be regarded as an extension of defence. Thus it shared the conditions and rights of defence as opposed to recovery after some time. In general the latter was widely considered as a new act and therefore requiring right authority. Whether recuperatio after some time is considered punitive is not entirely clear. The distinction between wars of punishment and wars of recuperatio suggests that it is not punitive. Also, the practical necessity to marshal an army to recover goods or land might require time, as such it would be a strange thing to consider such action as aggression for the mere fact that no army would have been near to react to the initial conflict in the first place.
The third type of war; the punishment of an injury was directed at the moral guilt of the enemy as punishment of this guilt. Most thinkers limited the right to punish to just wars of aggression, that is those wars waged by a right authority, with a just cause and rightful intention. The capture and enslavement of persons and the confiscation of goods and property could be part of this punishment. Nevertheless, it is thought that the true justification of any defensive or aggressive war was not punishment but the maintenance of justice and the care of the common weal. Even those violations that were subjectively just of those goods would initiate an aggressive war.
New criteria came into fruition as well. Increasingly, thinkers regarded war as a last resort for maintaining or restoring justice and therefore all other means of settlement had to be tried and failed. Furthermore, the chances for success were progressively more discussed. Since the victory of the just could not be guaranteed the authority was recommended to surmise the likelihood of victory.
After Aquinas Vitoria (1480-1546) was the first to make a considerable contribution to the just war tradition. Armed defence of property, life and honour were justifiable without question, but an offensive war should fulfil the following conditions :
- it should be declared;
- by the right authority;
- having a just cause;
- as a last resort;
- having a rightful intention, and;
- the evils let loose by the war should be proportionate to the good one hopes to attain.

Vitoria thought that war was only justifiable in the absence of a court of a superior to which contending parties would be obliged to refer their dispute. In an offensive war the enemy would not be justified to defend himself as he should recognise the justice of the aggressor. Nevertheless, the guilt of the enemy was not essential for a war to be just. Recuperatio of wrongly held goods could be initiated against an enemy that acted in good faith. If defence was offered as an immediate reaction to an injustice suffered the requirement of a right authority was not needed. However, Vitoria did not allow private persons or lower authorities to recover goods after a certain time had passed. Vitoria was the first that allowed that a war may be subjectively just on both sides; it did not change his thoughts on objective justice. Only an objective injustice was a sufficient cause for war.
Suarez largely agreed with Vitoria on Ius ad Bellum but he has been criticised for the fact that he allowed a sovereign to be justified when his doubts appeared most probable . The consequence is that this might easily mean that both sides are both objectively and subjectively justified in waging war. This of course renders the concept of a just war redundant.
Both Suarez’ and Vitoria’s separation of objective justice from the subjective is laudable but, unfortunately, impractical. It would imply that objective standards are paramount. Sadly, such objective justice can for the most part not be assessed until the war is over. Only after the war can we weigh the deaths and damages of it against the original injustice. Since objective justice is further influenced by a rightful intention, which exists subjectively, and as any assessment of objective justice is made by humans, it must be presumed that a true objective judgment of the situation is impossible. Furthermore, eliminating all subjective factors such as motive and intention from our considerations of justice renders a strange situation. For then only the crime of mass murder could justify war, for no other reason could objectively justify a war in which a State will indiscriminately kill numerous soldiers.
After the rise of the large nation States any visible imperial authority had weakened and the reformed States had renounced the Pope’s authority. The concept of State sovereignty was developing and as such a need arose for international law in its modern sense. The main purpose of Grotius’ work was to create rules that all State rulers could accept and follow in order to prevent anarchy, war and unnecessary bloodshed.
Since Grotius (1583-1645) believed that God could command homicide or theft it shows that the intrinsic goodness of an act is its conformity with the will of God. This emphasises that justice cannot be merely concerned with the outward form of an act but requires more than outwardly objective standards of right and wrong. He was thus equally concerned with moral quality as with formal appearance. A rightful intention therefore only existed when it was in accordance with God’s will, which could be known through reason.
In approaching war Grotius’ main concern was to limit warfare. He made a distinction between private and public war of which the former was only occasionally permissible in the event of immediate threat. A public war was war waged by a sovereign power, which in his eyes was the nation. No matter the justice of its cause it should not be waged unless it was likely to be of more benefit than harm to the nation. Grotius was the first to recognise that there is justice and injustice on both sides in a war. Elsewhere Grotius stated that a war could be subjectively just, because the subjects of an unjust state were sufficiently innocent, on both sides but not objectively.
Grotius allowed self-defensive conduct but condemned vindictive behaviour, towards this end he also allowed that death might be dealt to ward off an ominous threat, which is an explicit allowance for a pre-emptive strike. He furthermore allowed the taking of life to recover stolen property. He stated that the side with a just cause had no intrinsic right to kill innocent subjects except in self-defence. If the just side were to kill innocents carelessly, needlessly or purposefully those innocents had the right to defend themselves. However, he stressed that this did not make the war just on both sides, but that individual justice would transcend collective justice.
“Then only is the time for war, when we have right on our side, and, what is of the greatest consequence, strength also” : says Grotius as he warns us not to wage war too rashly. Grotius was the first to explicitly stress the necessity to require a reasonable chance of success. Even before considering the chances of success all attempts should be made to arbitrate between disputes and if one side were to agree to arbitration it would be wrong to fight.

Although Vitoria and Suarez defended that objective justice was necessary to wage war they considered it wholly separated from subjective elements. Grotius’ thought certain actions to have intrinsic justice because they were in accordance with natural law and thus with the will of God. This allowed for a consideration of moral quality of an action quite apart from its formal appearance. Likewise, an action could be sufficiently unjust that the immoral quality of it allowed for it to be reacted to by war. It should be noted that the only accepted injustices that could form a just cause were the assault on persons and the taking of property or territory. This in contrast to Vitoria and Suarez, who, if one were consistent, would only allow war in the event of mass murder. On the other criteria of Ius ad Bellum no important divergences existed.
As we regard the thoughts of these secularist writers we can distil the six criteria of the modern Ius ad Bellum. There exists a seventh criterion that requires an authority to declare a war, which was suggested by Vitoria first and agreed upon by Suarez. Although a declaration can be considered as good form, such a procedural requirement can in my opinion never serve as an indication of justice.

On the subject of Ius in Bello all three writers considered that there existed certain barriers but were unclear as to their substance. The most important of these was Grotius saying that a nation had no the intrinsic right to kill innocents, who the guilty were, remains unanswered and as he allowed that soldiers could be innocent it is not a clear discrimination. Similar to earlier times Ius in bello was largely defined by actual practice.
Despite the redefinition by Vitoria, Suarez and Grotius of the Just War theory, it had little effect on the way war was waged in their time and there after. Right was considered might in their time. The whole idea of a just cause was left behind and the State and therefore its sovereign decided whether he saw reason to go to war. As such the actions that were justifiable increased as they were adjusted to the reality of the power politics between States when they would go to war for reasons of State. The whole notion of a Just War became obsolete in the 17th century. A formal declaration was then in accordance with Ius gentium. The most illustrative of the absence of Just War thinking was the expansionistic politics of European countries in other parts of the world.
For instance, Spain was required to convert the non-European world in the name of Pope Alexander VI in the Inter Caetera. Towards this end Spain drafted a complicated document, the Requerimiento, in which the Indians were ordered to convert to Christianity, to subjugate themselves unto the Pope and peacefully allow trade and preaching under penalty of forfeiting their goods and rights to the Crown of Spain. In the following period this document was read to the Indians in Latin or Spanish, which languages they obviously did not understand, and after waiting for a reply the attack was begun. This was thus purely a formality.

A Brief History of The Just War Tradition (1 of 3)

Since Antiquity, the manifest and physical conflict between groups organised towards that end we call war, seems to be a fact of human nature or at least a fact of human society. The causes for war are numerous and of differing nature and vary, among others, according to time, place and culture. Many subjective and objective factors lead to wars. We can differentiate between those factors situated within the individual, the group or State or its international relations and those of various economical, political, militaristic and psychological developments.
Next to this casuistic approach, wars can be differentiated by ends, motives and justifications. The ends for which wars are waged are often not identical with its intentions or motives. Where the end might well be situated in the retrieval of lost goods or lost territory – sometimes a limited area of little political or economic use – the actual reasons might well be grounded in nationalism, as the indignity suffered by the nation convinces its subjects to restore the loss of face.
Nonetheless, justification of a war has always been a necessity. A necessity, because the principle exists in many cultures and religions that the killing and maiming of fellow humans is not self-evident, but that it requires justification. The use of physical force without any form of justification remains within the realm of the insane and madmen. In general, a person applies such force with reference to higher ideals, necessity or divine dispensation. It is, however, not only this ethical dimension that requires such justification. More pragmatic considerations sometimes require that we must first convince our allies of the justice of our cause before they are willing to participate in a war. This is especially true in democracies where such justification is also necessary to mobilise civilians for the war effort. Such legitimacy is most often in accordance with the opinion of specific communities.
However, the problem of such a term as legitimacy is that its meaning is not semantically fixed. In its philosophical approach the basis on which legitimacy or illegitimacy is assumed, refers to criteria that lie outside the judging subject . The characteristics of the legitimate political system are fixed within objective, philosophical definitions. This is different when we approach legitimacy from a sociological perspective. Here the criteria by which legitimacy or illegitimacy is assumed, exists in the minds of its judging subjects. This might imply that a political system, or at least a part or an aspect – e.g. war – of it, can be considered legitimate whereas it should be considered illegitimate by more objective standards of right and wrong. What is of paramount importance to the sociological approach is that a majority of the relevant community experiences the political system or an aspect of it as right. Nevertheless, in legitimising a justification for war, convincing the subjects of the political system often requires an appeal to the characteristics of objective legitimacy. However, this is not a requirement. It is important to note that these approaches exist next to each other. One does not exclude the other and I will make use of both of them.
The Just War tradition is the designation for a diverse collection of literature on the morality of war and its conduct, which academically is often referred to as respectively Ius ad Bellum and Ius in Bello. It aims at offering criteria by which a war is considered just and by which its conduct is considered just. The tradition as a whole does not argue against war but aims at restraining the resort to war and its conduct on a moral basis. In opposition to this, it should be noted that the Christian pacifistic movement, as part of this tradition, does argue against war. It is, however, not predominant.
The Just War tradition can be traced back to ancient Grecian philosophy when Plato and Aristotle offered their insights on war. During the Dark Age the sources for legitimising wars were the Old and New testament, the rules of law of the Romans, Greek philosophy and the Fathers of the Church of whom Saint Augustine of Hippo in the fifth century is most notable. In general, it is considered that Saint Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century was the first to approach the tradition systematically. Considering that saint Thomas Aquinas bases his work mostly on the thoughts of Augustine and Gratian, who in turn based their works on non-Christian Greek and Roman scholars, brevity on my part when considering these earlier scholars should be excused.
The Reformation in the 16th century did lead to a partial secularisation. During this time, most religious philosophers maintained that war for religion was the most just cause for the use of force. In opposition to this view stood those secular philosophers who thought about justice in war in terms of natural law.
As is apparent, the tradition is mostly Christian and Western, although a similar debate exists in Islam. Modernity also shows a greater participation by non-Western countries in the development of Just War thinking through international institutions such as the U.N. and the adoption of treaties. The prevalence of Western thinking is still obvious, which is most likely due to political, economic and social dominance of the West. The tradition’s universality can therefore be questioned but remains unchallenged, if for no other reason than the fact that the tradition has shaped the lines along which most western scholars think and they should not be disregarded by a simple act of will.

1. The Greeks & Romans

In the earliest times (750-500 BC) of Grecian history violence, plunder and sudden migrations were common in the area that is now the south and middle of Greece and the west coast of Asia Minor. Thucydides, an Athenian historian, notes that the lands that were called Hellas in his time (ca. 460-400 BC) had no permanent population in olden times. Migrations were common because the differing tribes easily left their territories under the pressures of superior forces of invaders. There was no trade between the different tribes, nor was there safe travel over land or by sea.
During Thucydides´ time things had changed to some degree. By this time stock-breeding became less important as opposed to agriculture. It was this stock-breeding that allowed for easy migrations before. As agriculture grew in importance, the leaders became aristocratic landowners who had their own retinue. They developed a system of values and rules, which they applied both in battle as well as in sports. Heralds and emissaries were spared, the dead of the enemy were returned for proper burial, they respected, if possible, the right of asylum of temples and other holy places and the substitution of wars of destruction by organised and regulated battles between champions or selected groups. The conquered population would not always be killed, but were often partially or entirely enslaved.
One of the first examples in which morality is seemingly separated from war is given in Thucydides’ History and is covered by Michael Walzer in Just and Unjust Wars as the “Melian Dialogue”. In this dialogue two Athenian generals meet with the magistrates of the island Melos. Melos was a Spartan colony and, although it rested on neutrality, refused to be subject unto the Athenians. The Athenian generals put forward that if they did not conquer what they could, they would reveal their weakness and invite attack and that it was therefore necessary to conquer what they could, which was in this case Melos. The Melian magistrates considered themselves innocent against men unjust and hoped for the assistance of Sparta. They thought of the Athenians unjust as they had no just cause to attack them. However, the Athenian generals pointed out that Sparta would do no such thing since they would only think of themselves as “they hold for honourable that which pleaseth and for just that which profiteth.”
It illustrates that one of the reasons, why the whole notion of morality in war would fail according to realists, is when those that resort to war are realists. That is to say, they consider war apart from normal life, where self-interest and necessity dictate their actions, and morality and law have no place. Nevertheless, as they consider war outside the realm of morality, they do so within the language of morality. Realists are still speaking on the subject of morality. They consider the conduct of war to be free of any moral constraints but justify this on the basis that winning a war is the highest good and that all other goods, for instance the rights of non-combatants and prisoners of war, are inferior to this goal. For war to be entirely free of morality it should be separated from the whole concept of winning and losing, as this concept in itself is normative. Yet, the object of war is to win by force that which cannot be obtained or is thought not to be obtainable by other means. So, as these realists first justify their need to wage war by pointing out that it is necessary, which in itself is a moral argument, they subsequently justify their conduct by referring to this necessity. And in all this they fail to answer vital questions; what is necessary? Is it necessary to kill civilians? And if so, when is it no longer necessary to kill civilians? Is it necessary to declare war on neutrals? Etc. Etc.
Leaving Thucydides and with him archaic Hellas behind, the Greece of Antiquity as it is generally known came into being with the development of the – incorrectly named – city-states (hereafter: "poleis"). Agriculture developed even further and gradually the poleis monopolised the use of force due to which the private wars of aristocrats and plunderers were considered illegitimate and therefore criminal. The poleis signed treaties with their neighbours in order to limit violence and this often led to a situation of peace (eirèné) between the contracting poleis. However, even after the development of the poleis, military expeditions would sometimes end up as expeditions of plunder under the direction of the general, in which neither friend nor foe was out of harm's way.
The philosopher Plato stated rules for the resort to war and the conduct of war in his Politea and Nomoi. He disapproved of expansive wars, civil wars and revolutions based on power politics or material ends and he felt that wars should only be waged as a last resort. The purpose of a war should be a new peace and the conduct should not be too harsh, especially against other Greeks, and the overbearing of women and mass slavery were wrong in his eyes. Plato also made a distinction between civil strife and war and the emerging idea of non-combatants can be inferred, at least in the case of civil strife, when he states that not the whole people of a poleis – its men, women and children – are to be regarded as enemies but only the hostile minority. Of course, this does allow for the hostile minority to be part of what we now consider non-combatants. Still, it is clear that he means to introduce some form of discrimination.
With respect to the conduct of war Aristotle agreed to a large extent with Plato and on the resort to war he said: "… for we are busy that we may have leisure, and make war that we may live in peace." That the object of war should be peace can be inferred from this. Despite this, the Greeks were thought to be superior to the barbarians, that is to say; those that were not Greek, and it was therefore their duty to subjugate and enslave them for the purpose of peace.
After the conquest of the Persian Empire (334-323) by Alexander the Great and his death, his empire fell apart in kingdoms, poleis and leagues of poleis. Between these a near constant state of conflict existed. Limited wars were fought by mercenaries, who had no interest in the annihilation of their "comrades in arms" because they might well lose the battle themselves on another day. Prisoners were released for ransom and truces were mostly upheld. In general the treatment of the conquered areas was more humane as an expression of the general humanisation of the relations between peoples from different communities.

The Roman Republic in the times of 600-300 BC shows little evidence of private wars. Perhaps this is due to the lack of sources on these times or perhaps it points to the possibility that the Roman Republic monopolised the use of force at an early age. According to Livius, a Roman historian of around 59-17 BC, the Romans had clearly defined ideas on the justification of wars from the beginning of their history and a complicated ritual for their declarations of war. As a reason for and a justification of wars the Romans identified the incursio hostilis, which is a breach of Roman territory, an attack aimed at an ally, infringement of treaty provisions, support to an enemy, not extraditing hostile persons and the molest of Roman emissaries. Nevertheless, these justification were often utilised as artificial excuses for aggressive wars. Even the expressed motivation for war was often a mere pretext, as the real reason was to acquire plunder, land and fame.
It was not until the era of Marcus Tullius Cicero (hereafter: "Cicero") that Roman thought on war and peace was established. During the times of Cicero the Roman Empire was inflicted with civil war that coincided with large military operations by Caius Julius Caesar and Cnaeus Pompeius. It was within these setting that reflections on the State, society, values for public and private life and the problem of war came into existence. Of the writers of these times Cicero is the most well known.
During the time of the Roman Empire the primary care for peace and justice rested with the government, including the emperor. This care referred to both the external peace, by protecting the border with a professional army, as well as the internal peace, by instituting courts and convicting criminals. The emperor alone was authorised and justified to use force.
According to Cicero a war was justified when negotiations with the enemy had failed, after which the enemy should be warned and finally war should be formally declared. He also considered that a new and better peace should be the aim of a war and that it should not be commenced without a valid reason. Peace to Cicero and other Romans of his time was the absence of hostilities. However, justice did not mean to Cicero what it means to us. A war for imperial glory was to him a legitimate motive for war, although he was of the opinion that such wars were to be fought with lesser intensity. As a matter of fact, justice to the Romans was mostly formalistic. Cicero did differentiate between civil wars and wars against others and separated defensive wars from aggressive wars, without condemning the latter.
In a just war the capture of civilians, the destruction of land and the plunder of cities was allowed according to Cicero. In practice, the warlords waged wars largely in the spirit of the times before Cicero. However, there was a tendency to give greater consideration to the justification of war. Caius Julius Caesar demonstrated his wars in Gaul as defensive wars and justified his ruthless treatment of certain Gaelic and Germanic tribes with rather forced reasoning in which he would depict his enemies as aggressors.

2. Early Christians & Augustine

The official position of the early Christians with regard to war was one of non-participation. In accordance with the Christian command "Thou shalt not kill", which was a command to the individual, the refused to serve in the Roman armies. It has also been put forward that Christians did not serve as soldiers, because it automatically required them to participate in idolatrous ceremonies. The early Christians were also expecting the return of Christ who would bring a new world. To them, peace was the Messiah's peace of God's kingdom to come and as such unattainable on earth.
This was the official line of the early Christian church until the beginning of the fourth century AD. The most influential change was the conversion of the Roman Empire to Christianity as its official religion within a century after the adoption of this religion by Constantine the great in 313 AD. Christian writers mainly copied the war ethics of Plato, Aristotle and Cicero.
According to these early Christian writers war should be a means in the hands of a sovereign instituted by God, which or who alone was allowed to take life. The war should be preceded by the proper diplomatic steps and should be waged as humanely as possible and should be waged with the right intention. A better peace should be its aim and unnecessary bloodshed should be avoided.

It was Saint Augustine that first established a firm Christian doctrine. When he did so he gave little consideration to wars of defence, because he thought such wars obviously justifiable and even obligatory. Augustine´s main exposition was on just wars of aggression. He required that the supreme authority alone was allowed to declare. Only an injustice or wrong caused by the enemy was considered as a sufficient justification for war, although the direct command of God could provide justification as well. It would seem that Augustine implies a right of punishment and he certainly accepts war as a means of God to punish the just as well as the unjust. He was, however, more concerned with defending and maintaining objective justice. Augustine insisted on war to be necessary and to have as its aim the achievement of peace, despite this he did not consider the contradiction and tension between war and peace. He thus leaves objective justice for what it is and from this the importance of the criteria of right intention might be inferred as it only leaves us with the subjective justice of these intentions.

As stated above on page XXX the Roman Emperor had the sole right to resort to force. However, during the Dark Age the Roman Empire disintegrated due to the invasion of the Germanic Tribes. Every free man of these tribes was a warrior. War to the Germanic Tribes was an enterprise to obtain fame and wealth and the charge of their Kings was very different from that of the Roman Emperor. These Kings were not primarily responsible for peace and justice; on the contrary, their duty was in the first place that of warlord. In fact, war to them was the natural state of things and the annual campaign was a part of their living pattern.
Neither was the internal peace fully under the charge of the Kings. For the solution of litigation the subjects had recourse to two alternatives; they could either bring a case before the court, or they could resort to force by exercising their feud right. The feud is a condition of formal and declared hostility that can exist between two persons when one has wronged the other and is unwilling to amend that wrong. The purpose of this force is to coerce the opponent to amend the wrong. This feud right was a fundamental apart of Germanic Law.
When Charlemagne tried to live up to his Roman predecessors he once again attempted to monopolise the use of force. Especially the nobility of that time saw any restriction on their feud right as a breach of their freedom and therefore as an injustice. Here the two radically different legal systems clashed.
After the disintegration of Charlemagne´s Empire due to the struggle between his descendants, the position of the King of the Western Empire was weakened severely. The power vacuum that was created was filled by the dukes. The further this disintegration continued the less willing these local authorities were to subjugate their disputes to a higher authority. The consequence of this was that the disputes between them were again resolved through feuds, with several notable differences:
a) The nobility enforced their own jurisdiction because of which the subordinate population lost their feud rights. This right became an exclusive privilege of the ruling upper class.
b) Because of the invincibility of the strongholds the feuding parties would redirect their force against the defenceless peasantry to compel the opponent to capitulate.
c) The feud developed from a purely legal action into a political military means of coercion until it finally became war.

The main problem was whether feuds could fulfil the requirements of a just war. Primarily the problem revolved around who was to be considered as the right authority. Strictly along the lines of earlier thinkers only the Kings and Emperor were allowed to declare war. Obviously, the actual practice was very different. Although many attempts to banish feud rights failed, certain rules were created by which feuding parties were supposed to adhere. First of all, before resorting to force parties had to strive for a non-violent solution. They were not allowed to use force before the feud was formally and openly declared. A feud that met these requirements was considered in practice to be just.
The theory usually let both parties put forward irrefutable arguments, which allowed them to invoke the just war theory in good faith. The articulation of a just cause was based on vague distinctions such as "fault" or "wrong" that were not further defined and the idea to intend a "better peace" is unclear too. Although a fault or wrong was a thing that existed prior to the decision to declare war and as such some objective measurement was possible, the aim of a better peace was – and still is- immeasurable and solely subject to the expectations and "rational" predictions of the future. The main weaknesses of the tradition lie therefore with the classical distinctions of right authority, just cause and right intention. Especially the purpose of a right intention turns the theory into a teleological one and as war is one of the most socially complex activities of mankind its outcome is impossible to predict beforehand. This is even more true when one considers that rationality is often absent in the heat of battle. As a consequence such precognition is even less likely to be accurate. At the same time the tradition in medieval times and from then on rests on this teleological consideration of a better peace. The classical distinctions of right authority, just cause and right intention have survived to this day.

Well, the 2003 Iraq war fails on a few levels to be considered a just war based on what has been written on the subject. Quite obviously so to be honest.

From reading your posts, you seem to have a pre-conceived conclusion and are trying to collect information to strengthen your case. Which is fine because many people do that but it doesn't make for interesting discussions. All I'll leave you with is to suggest Walzer's book "Just War Theory". That's not perfect either, particulary his Combatant Equality doesn't make a lot of sense, but it's pretty good. The Stanford Encyclopedia entry on War is interesting too. I'll post an overview I wrote years ago about the historic development of just war theory as well.

Are you familiar with the Just War Theory? The UN Charter and the Geneva Conventions also deal with this subject. Did you read them?

Thanks. I get this part. Cameron's statement about the murder charges and the grand jury agreeing that they were justified in their return of fire is probably a lie. However, that doesn't mean the conclusion that these charges couldn't stick wasn't the right one. But I agree that the grand jury, especially after asking for it, should've been presented the necessary facts and by not doing so the prosecutor has undermined the grand jury process (especially on how it should work on paper) and this results in undermining the entire case.

@Hanover @Ciceronianus the White @180 Proof Can you force the prosecutor to redo a grand jury process?

Oh, you're Dutch? Cool.

when did you move to Israel?

Something is resonating with about 40 to 50% of voters.

What make's it "the last" one? It didn't burst, I think we are living now in that bubble economy still... and the pandemic might be perhaps the final straw that truly will burst it. — ssu

I distinctly recall houseprices losing value significantly. Of course, they've rebounded since on the "solution" offered by central banks to bail-out the banks that would've otherwise gone bankrupt for fear of an imploding financial sector. This time every asset category is just overvalued; We had negative yield on 30-year bonds for a while because of the flight to safety in NL and DE. Stocks are overvalued and property is through the roof again.

Or simply let's have that deflation and start of with totally new financial sector. — ssu

Well, I already called the fear of deflation irrational but... that only concerns goods and services price deflation. There's no statistically significant link between such price deflation and diminished output. It's different for asset prices though, in particular property price deflation combined with high levels of private debt. Here the link is obvious and serious.

How would you solve that?

You misspelled ChyNa.

Now we have them pretend a 3.5% contraction in GDP is a good thing because it isn't 10%. :rofl:

Hunter isn't running for president. Nobody cares.

What does agnosticism have to do with this? — ssu

You can be agnostic about opinions as well. So I don't commit to saying God exists or not but I can also be agnostic about markets going up or down. Maybe that's a very Dutch way of use the term agnostic for "unimportant" things but Merriam Webster recognises that type of use as well.

From your definitions, Market Business News is the definition of speculation I'd use if I'd have to chose; it's not investing based on yield but (short term) price differentials.

Anyway, Then call it a debt bubble or simply an asset bubble. It's the same important phenomenon that earlier was even dismissed to ever happen in the modern financial markets (and still there are those who don't believe in bubbles anyway). I myself have seen enough crashes and market hype in my own lifetime to believe that this phenomenon does truly exist. And a crash can happen ...and then people start bitching about risk management being wrong. — ssu

I think bubbles are real but if you see speculators as a sub-set (or even separate) from investors, calling them speculative bubbles becomes a bit weird.

And I get that you see the position "market prices will always go up" is speculation but where it differs from a speculative transacation is that such assumptions underpin long-term investment. The lender enters into a 30 year mortgage, for it's long term yield. Or they buy stock not with the plan of selling it in a week time because they think next week will be the most opportune time to sell but because regardless of market volatility if they sit on it long enough they will make a return on their investment.

and then people start bitching about risk management being wrong. — ssu

I think this was true of the last bubble. With wrong incentives and no skin in the game for a lot of people.

Now it's mostly driven by governmen/central bank policy. I think that's worse because there's no threat of bankruptcy dampening risk taking. The next bust is going to be horrible - much worse than 2008. Everybody in finance knows it and they will dump all their shit and buy commodities before average Joe realises what's going on.

What we need, in my view, is smaller financial institutions that aren't too big to fail and quicker and more robust bankruptcy and resolution mechanism when they do fail. These risks will always return and be underestimated because today's black swan wasn't the one of 10 years ago. We shouldn't aim at avoiding black swans but aim at dealing with them quickly and decisively, cut out the cancer and move on with as little disruption to society as possible.

Sorry, but in economics this term is used. — ssu

That's simply not true. There's a distinction between speculation and investment in economic theory as well. Depends on what you read, really. But it's fine. I don't think we disagree in essence on what caused the bubble with respect to 2008 or the asset inflation we're looking at right now.

The speculator is just the lender. The banker assumes that the real estate prices will go up. If he is sure of that, NINJA-loans are totally logical. If the NINJA-loan taker cannot pay his monthly interest, no problem, the bank just takes the home and either the value has stayed the same or perhaps even risen. So "no" risks! And a huge amount of new potential customers. You see, the systematic risk you are talking about is actually the speculative bubble bursting. Then, what has not been seen in any statistics (which just have shown low risk and minimal amount of credit losses) suddenly change to something totally else. And similar thing with CDOs: just take your share and sell the risks to someone else, so no reason to think if the people can pay or cannot. After all, real estate prices go up! Have done that forever. — ssu

Again. If you look at it from my perspective, this is not a speculator because he's not agnostic about future values; he's invested in prices always going up. Combine that with shitty risk management and voila.

I never said it should be unregulated. I take issue with pretending stock markets are inherently insane. They're very useful.