Debate: Can we achieve peace through war?
Side: No

No, I mean that I read the book that was the reading material for a 2nd year politics course, passed with above average marks, and agree with the author, his opinion, his book and his arguments. If I took a course about the digestive track of elephants, and the course was based on one guy’s book, and I didn’t cross check any of the information presented to me with other sources, then not only would I pass the course with flying colors, but I would also know a whole lot about shit.I have explained why the principle of proportionality was met.No. No you haven’t. Not in any way actually. You gave a poor example and you THINK your example meets the criteria for the principle of proportionality based on your own personal understanding of a book, but you have not explained WHY to me, at all. Not until this most recent post of yours that is...It's not hard to understand that this action from America did actually save thousands of lives. That is what the principle of proportionality is about.So that is your reasoning? That in dropping the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the US saved thousands of lives? And that that meets the criteria for the principal of proportionality?It’s obvious that you do not understand what the principal of proportionality entails. For someone who passed with above average marks in a second year college course about politics, to not know something as simple as proportionality, it speaks volumes about the curriculum of the instructor/course you studied."It's not hard to understand that this action from America did actually save thousands of lives"Whose lives?This is a major factor in determining whether or not proportionality was met. If you mean that the bombs saved thousands of military members’ lives, than that is irrelevant to the principle of proportionality. Military members join the service with full knowledge of the possibility that we may die. We are willing to sacrifice our life for the good of our country. We willingly hand our lives over to the government to be used as tools in the war machine (often times in total opposition to the war effort but needing a way to make a decent wage in a decrepit economy). We are NOT casualties of war because we are not innocent of the war effort.Now, if you were to refer to innocent civilians as the lives saved, THEN you could use it as a factor for the proportionality principle. Casualties of war (innocent civilians dying) and civilian property damage are not to be at an excessive cost to obtaining the mission objective. Considering the territory of where the battle between the US and Japan was being fought was Japanese territory, then the principal of proportionality in international law applies, and the innocent civilians regarded are the Japanese civilians. So considering there were hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians who died in the bombing and their property was completely annihilated, proportionality was NOT met. Our mission, first and foremost is always national defense, defending the homeland. Since the battle of midway effectively prevented any further attacks on American soil, there was no need to drop any atomic bombs in that sense. The next mission after the nation was secure was to defeat the Japanese while keeping within the standards of the Geneva Conventions protocol. The Geneva Conventions specifically states in article 52 of Additional Protocol 1, that civilians and their property are not to be used as direct targets in accomplishing the mission and that only military objects are to be targeted where it would gain us a definite military advantage. http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/full/470?opendocument “Proportionality seeks to prevent an attack in situations where civilian casualties would clearly outweigh military gains. (notice the relationship between civilian casualties and military gains) This principle encourages combat forces to minimize collateral damage—the incidental, unintended destruction that occurs as a result of a lawful attack against a legitimate military target.” (I don't know about you, but two non-militarized civilian cities and the surprise decimation of all the structures and lives contained therein do not sound like a "lawful attack against a legitimate military target.")http://usmilitary.about.com/cs/wars/a/loac_2.htm I don’t know how else I can spell it out for you. YOU ARE WRONG. And you either do not understand the author or course you took, or the material on which the course was based is WRONG too.