Tuesday, February 25, 2003

GS #80
Back to the mantra....
80. The horror and perversity of war is immensely magnified by the addition of scientific weapons. For acts of war involving these weapons can inflict massive and indiscriminate destruction, thus going far beyond the bounds of legitimate defense. Indeed, if the kind of instruments which can now be found in the armories of the great nations were to be employed to their fullest, an almost total and altogether reciprocal slaughter of each side by the other would follow, not to mention the widespread deviation that would take place in the world and the deadly after effects that would be spawned by the use of weapons of this kind.

All these considerations compel us to undertake an evaluation of war with an entirely new attitude.(1) The men of our time must realize that they will have to give a somber reckoning of their deeds of war for the course of the future will depend greatly on the decisions they make today.
Things just aren't "business as usual" in the area of war. We've got to rethink things. The old manner of applying just war theory does not sufficiently take into consideration the large-scale death and destruction that characterizes modern, "scientific" warfare. Or has U.S. technology really developed to the extent that our bombs are smart enough to just hit military targets?

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