War can be good

I realize now that he is relatively new to the site, and so I would like to offer my most sincere welcome to him to our quite lovely site here and hope he enjoys his stay here on DDO (Debate Dot Org), whatever the length of his stay may be. With professionalism out of the way, lets get started, shall we? >> What is Good? <<It seems counterproductive to go into a discussion about whether war is a good thing or not without even going into what "good" really is, since it is such a vague concept. What exactly do we consider good? What creates it, and how do we measure the goodness of something? Do we measure good in the objective sense that, much like mathematics, is always the same no matter of our understanding of it? Or is good measured in the subjective sense that, much like our personal feelings, we define for ourselves and can only apply as far as ourselves and not onto others, who have defined and applied to themselves? Well, thank god for philosophy, or otherwise I would've wasted my time asking a bunch of useless rhetorical questions. Instead of taking just one position and defending it to the death, I feel that both sides of the coin can and do serve my purposes. I propose two answers to what we define as good. Answer One: UtilitarianismUtilitarianism is a very simple idea with quite the mundane name. The idea and concept behind it is rather simple, really: when we ask ourselves what is good, we can determine what is good by the effects of the action. If the benefits of the action outweigh the harms of the action, then we know we have commited a morally "good" action, as it has done more help than harm. If, however, the harms of the action outweighed its benefits, then we could conclude that the action was not a "moral" one, but rather an "immoral" one, as it did more harm than help. Why does such a simple concept need such an overly long and confusing name? Beats me, but if you ask me it causes more harm to the well-being of my head than it does help. Of course, utilitarianism (shortened to util from here on out) does presuppose that morality is objective. But what if morality were subjective? Then we arrive at my second answer:Answer Two: EgoismEgoism, specifically weak egoism as I will advocate, means a lot like what it sounds: morality is all about us humans. What we consider to be a "moral" action is based off of what what we consider to be in our self-interest. Of course, this presumes that morality is subjective since not only do people have different self-interests (while you may be self-interested in seeing war abolished, I do not share the same interests necessarily, and so on) but also self-interests are subject to near constant change (while I may have been interested in blonde women in my early pre-teen years, I hold a much more massive interest in gingers today). I will be defending both of these, and I need only win one to prove under a circumstance that War can be good. It is up to my opponent to refute both successfully, as he must prove that war can never be good, as per the mutually agreed upon wording of the resolution. >> Why wage war at all? <<This is another fairly basic question that I feel needs to be asked before we can go any further. Sure we can define good nine ways from Sunday, but it doesn't do us any good if we can't figure out why people wage wars in the first place. Why do we attack someone? What purpose does it actually bring about? Sure we could bring up certain materialistic wants like land or weath or oil or something else along those lines, but that doesn't actually explain the war, as there are other ways to obtain those things. So why do we wage war? I believe Aristotle once wisely spoke the answer to this when he said that "We make war that we may live in peace", which perfectly explains why we would want war. Allow me to put it in a different way. This principle can be explained when taking in how two brothers act in a disagreement, especially if the disagreement is heated. The two brothers will argue it out, then voices will start to rise, then anger will start to rise, and eventually one of them just takes a swing at the other. Then comes a bit of a brawl and a tussle, as they fight it out, and eventually, it stops. They dust themselves off, and do what all good brothers do: hug it out and get over it. It ends the fight and the disagreement. Had they not fought, the disagreement would've continued and they would've been there eternally fighting or would've left discontent and still feuding, which doesn't solve the problem. The fighting allowed them to vent their anger and reach a decision or compromise that would end the fighting and return to being civilized brothers. So while war may be initially horrible, just like fighting is initially horrible, the lasting peace at the end of the war will outweigh the harms of having waged war. >> How can Peace come from War? <<Now you may be asking, much like how my opponent is probably asking, "How can peace come from fighting? Aren't they by nature contradictory? ". It seems like a valid point, but it really isn't. I will concede that wars suck. Wars are horrible. Killing people sucks. Ruining lives and families and tearing brothers away from their families and fathers away from their wives is a horrible thing to have happen. But, the more it happens, the more we realize it happens, and the less we want to do it for that very reason: it's horrible. As the brilliant Confederate general, Robert E. Lee once said "It is well that war is so terrible, lest we should grow too fond of it. " The more war happens, therefore, the less we want war to happen, and the longer we will achieve peace. It will eventually get down to the point wlhere after a war there will BE no more wars. We will eventually have ever-lasting peace. But that is impossible without wars. >> Why do we want Peace? <<So why do we want peace? Why is peace good? Peace has probably the easiest link back into both of the answers for what is good. The Link to UtilPeace links back into util because the effects of peace produce more help than harm. We're not killing people in peace, so more lives are being saved. That means whatever gets us peace is a good action, which in this case means war. The Link to EgoismPeace links back into egoism since it's in our self-interest to not kill off our family members through war. I mean, let's be reasonable here: I don't want to see my dad get shot in some unknown country in Africa or my brother get shot invading Russia. I doubt any person wants to see their family members killed in war. Thus, whatever gets us peace is in our self-interest, as we want peace. That means it's within our self-interest to wage war, as the end result is peace. Thus, I believe that wars can be good, as the inevitable end result is peace. Thus, the resolution is affirmed.