If war is murder, than it should be legal for anyone to murder anyone.

================================ Argument: For the first few sentences of my first argument, I explained how war is sometimes bad. My opponent responded with a series of questions and answers such as: "Which makes it right? " "It's always been that way so it must be okay? " "Shows how its wrong. " To all of her questions, the answer is no. I was simply pointing out the facts that war has its cons. However, simply because war has cons does not mean that it does not have pros. That could be said about pretty much anything, drug legalization, gay marriage, health-care, ect… This part of my debate is of course not me arguing my case, rather, stating an obvious fact that should be said. My opponent has admitted that defensive war can be good, what my opponent probably does not know is that most wars are defensive wars! Most of the time, there is an attacker and a defender. Let us take the Al Qaeda for example. The United States of America is looking to hunt them down for what they have done (blown up buildings, killed many Americans. ) The Al Qaeda is fighting the United States back with through war. Whatever position you take on this, one part of the war is as you say "righteous. " Now, I on the other hand do not take your point of view on the matter. I would rather the United States kill the terrorists instead of the terrorists killing the Americans, but my thoughts are not needed. What I am saying here is that we cannot know all the facts to every war, there are even some defensive wars that are bad. Who decides whose land is who? Many people say that it was wrong to take the Indian's land, but they took that land from another Indian tribe, and so on. You seem to be getting revenge confused with justice. Justice means to receive punishment for one's misdeeds. Revenge is to retaliate to gain satisfaction. Punishment is necessary, or people will continue to do it. There are different punishments for different causes. If I steal a cookie, I will get a slap on the wrist, if organize a plan to attack a building with air planes, I die. You say that we should try doing things to punish countries instead of having war with them. The best way I have heard it put is this, violence is the only language that is understood by everyone. Picture if you will, someone breaking into your house, armed to the teeth and determined on killing you. He will not stop to listen to your reason and so for you the only way for you to make it out of that alive is to grab the shotgun from under the bed and kill him before he kills you. Wars are similar, just on a larger scale. You cannot simply say 'we should talk things over. ' If that were the case, there would have been Six million more Jews in the world. Do you think Nazi Germany wanted to sit down and 'talk? ' Same with your response to my North Korean war scenario, North Korea does not want to talk. Many have tried, but they refuse. As stated before, humanity is not perfect. We could not get the whole world to agree to punish one nation by not trading with it, it would take away from so much freedom. There would have to be someone in charge of it all, to make sure the nations are doing what they are supposed to be doing. Moreover, what if the countries don't listen? Then should the Nation in charge ban trading from them too, until all the nations are blocked? What about the people being blocked from trading? Their people would suffer with not enough food, the rich would have all of it. If the rich get sick of it, then they start a war. Obviously this idea of yours would not work. We have something similar to it (sanctions) but it rarely works. As predicted, you get into Semantics with the Trolley scenario. Obviously, the fat guy is not going to sit down and have a chat with you. If someone was running towards you and trying to push you onto the tracks, you would run for your life. However, it would still be moral and just to throw you into the tracks. You respond to my British to American example by saying what you would do if you were Britain. However, the point is, you were not! You were not Britain, you were not the colonies, you are lovelife, a girl with different views than Britain had. Maybe if the colonies saw that England was willing to let go of the Americas, they would not have fought. But it was obvious this was not the case. Both sides of this war were righteous, we cannot look at Britain and think bad of them. Of course they were not going to simply give up. If the state of Montana wanted to separate from the United States, of course the USA would fight back. The war with Britain was not a 'dirty trick' as you describe it. It was the only way that either of them would listen. The northern states tried talking with the southern states before the beginning of the Civil war, but the south would not listen. Do you think it would have been better to let the south break away from the north, and even keep slaves? For my Canadian example, you say how it would be right for Canada to fight back against the USA, therefore engaging in war. Even though you say that they could not crash planes in the US, nuke the US, or in any way attack someone that is not a US soldier or leader, it is still war. And a righteous one at that. I asked you a question about World War Two, you ignored it and skipped to Hiroshima. Maybe you believe Hiroshima was wrong, but that is not the point. The USA still had no choice than to enter the war. Do you honestly think the Japanese would sit down to 'talk? ' Getting into the war and Hiroshima are two different subjects. But Hiroshima is a good example of what 'talking' does. The United States sent a message to Japan and said that they would bomb them with something huge if they did not surrender, Japan did not respond. The USA dropped the bomb, then sent another message warning that if they did not surrender, it would happen again, still no reply. So they dropped a second bomb, Japan finally got the message and surrendered. Again, this is not about Hiroshima. This debate is not even about the methods of war, it is about war itself. Now, you say that if you support the troops, if you support the war, you support murder. If this is the case then you indeed support murder. You yourself said that some wars are righteous. Your whole murder and war argument is extremely flawed. Remember, justice and revenge and two different things. We have already established that some wars are for justice and not revenge. But taking the law into your own personal hands is very different. There is a organization higher than us which is called the Justice System. The system is run by the government to insure Justice, not revenge. You say that If someone supports fighting for these causes, with innocent people being bombed, raped, attacked, orphaned, abused, tortured, just for living in the wrong place, or believing the wrong thing, it should also be acceptable by their standards, to support it on a much smaller scale. Again, war is not the things you listed. War is when soldiers attack soldiers. You continue to use the methods of war instead of concentrating on what war actually is. You keep taking the worst-case scenario, which of course is not a good example. I could say that swimming is bad because you are stung by jellyfish, eaten by huge sharks, and sunburned, this does not help my case, because that is not what swimming is. Your examples of why murder is right if war is right is way off. If we went around and took the law into our own hands, we would be doing it for revenge, not justice. Wars, although can be for revenge, can be for justice. I look forward to your response. Sources: (1). . http://www.globalsecurity.org... (2). . http://dictionary.reference.com... (3). . http://dictionary.reference.com... (4). . http://www.cfo.doe.gov...