War is bad

I agree with your resolution and look forward to this engaging debate. Contention one. You state that war is sometimes necessary to defend against a threat. Why, exactly? Why do we need to defend against a threat? Well, first off, we must, as citizens, decide whether they are truly a threat. This is a very important step, because it separates the ignorant from the knowledgeable. First, we have to put ourselves in the enemy's shoes. What principles, morals, and other qualities do they have? What is causing their citizens to obey their orders? Is it because they are sheep who obey everything their leaders tell them to, or do they like what their government promises? They must have some reason for doing it. What if our government is the evil one? What if we are the sheep, being tricked into believing that the opposing party is bad when, in reality, they are the good ones? is all the information put out by our government propaganda and a lie? In other words, we must free our minds of bias. many evil dictators have had their good sides. Hitler was an artist before becoming contemptible. Fidel Castro promoted dairy products. We say that there is a black and white line between good and evil. There never is. People are complex creatures, both good and evil equally, and sometimes more one than the other, but if the propaganda put out by our government generally shows the opposing side as being evil without providing any reasons why they are evil, what morals they have, etc. then we should know that our own government is lying to us, and thus, we should be traitors, perhaps. Even if an oppressive government does take over, it only affects things legally, You are still the same person. You still have the same beliefs. And you can fight the other side, if you want, even after they have won. You can still consider yourself a part of your former country, even if it does not exist anymore. Taiwanese people, for instance, are constantly oppressed by China, and told that they aren't a country. But the Taiwanese people consider themselves a separate country all the same. It doesn't really matter what the government thinks you are. It matters what you think you are. Even if an oppressive government does win, they will eventually fall, and things might turn back to normal. Nazi Germany collapsed after just five short years, the soviet union died in less that a century, and so on. In Ancient China, there was a concept known as the mandate of heaven. It said that if a government did evil things, then it would fall out of power sooner or later. This is true. Every evil empire, any place with flaws or inconsistencies or a corrupt government, has died out. Eventually, the citizens see the evils being committed upon them, and choose to rebel. This is a universal law. Good really does, in most cases, win over evil. If citizens are opposed to a government, the government will die, no matter what rules it enforces. All rules are legal. the human spirit cannot be restrained by petty laws. Contention two-war is often justified. Is it, really? Americans always boast about how wonderful they are, how they are the greatest government on earth. This is a bias. Other countries believe the same thing. We all think we are the best. War is not justified. We are babies throwing temper tantrums to prove that we are the best in the world. it is a matter of the ego, and nothing but that. We Americans claim that our military is good, and just, and created of only the finest men, and that we are civil and justified when it comes to war. In world war two, Japan bombed us. They bombed us on Pearl Harbor, which was on Hawaii, a state which didn't even exist at the time. They bombed one military base. In world war two, we bombed Japan. We bombed them on two cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, both important to the well being of Japan's people, and we bombed several people who may not have supported Hirohito, who may have wanted to fight with us, but they couldn't, because we were bombing them. We bombed women, children, all civilians. We gave them cancer and death. How is this justified? In world war two, Hitler jammed thousands of Jews into concentration camps and gassed them. We did the same thing to Japanese people, thousands of them, and I am ashamed and degraded to say this, but one of those concentration camps was right here in Colorado. How was that justified? It seems the same to me. Killing people is never right. It is murder. Any system, such as warfare, that makes murder legal is wrong. If a man killed twenty people in Oklahoma, he gets the electric chair. If a man kills thirty people in Vietnam, he gets a medal. How about we set Charles Manson free while we're at it? war is never justified. there are always alternatives. When another country threatens us, we don't have to fight them. We can be the bigger man. We can step down. Maybe, if we step down, for once, the other country won't see us as weak, but they'll see us as a country with integrity who aren't savages, and aren't worth fighting, and they'll befriend us and stop being a bad country? But no. The world isn't like that. We're babies, and when another baby asks us to fight it, we will. We'll kick it around, and when the dust settles, there will be bandages and blood and knocked out teeth. war is bad. I await your next argument.