Jack de la Parra Blog Post 4

 In our recent readings and discussions regarding the concept of global justice, I found the September 2019 bombing in Syria (against ISIS) to be an interesting point of dispute. This situation relates to the discussion of just war versus unjust war. I would argue that the U.S. frequently acts against "Just War". In a sense, more often than not in our history, we have seen the U.S. take much more severe retaliations to offenses against our homeland or our troops abroad.


Referencing back to the idea of the September 2019 bombing, in tandem with other retaliations in history, such as the dropping of atomic bombs in Nagasaki and Hiroshima have shown to be drastically increased levels of destruction in reaction to the bombing of Pearl Harbor. These completely destroyed the cities, taking numerous casualties in the process, whereas Pearl Harbor was more concentrated on a military base.


Relating to the concept of Anticipatory war, the United States have engaged in pre-emption more often than prevention in my opinion. For example, in the cold war, we have seen the buildup of arms against Russia in order to "prevent" attack, but in reality this just furthered tensions amongst the United States and other Communist Countries in the late 20th century. 


When it comes to civilian casualties, we have also been culprits of not being as careful as possible in regards to protecting the lives of those inhabiting the countries that we are at war or in conflict. According to the article in our powerpoint, we can see that the United States was extremely secretive and attempted to coverup their actions. This just contrinues to show how even if a country may argue that war is justified, the actions do not match their words. 


What can you do when attacked? This question is hard to put into perspective. Larger, more dominant world powers may not take a serious attack lightly, and feel as though they need to demonstrate their strength by "one-upping" another country. However, equal and opposite action may be the most realistic option. It can just be very hard to mandate this type of behavior for each countries' leaders. 


I would also argue that the invasion of Iraq, and the start of a very long war ( and continuation of conflict in the Middle East) may not entirely have been justified by the attacks on September 11th. While this was a revolutionary event in our country's history, the consequences of having thousands of troops continuously deployed in the area for over 20 years. The events of one day determined an entire generation of civil unrest.


Readdressing the concept of what is appropriate and proportional when attacked, the idea of signature strikes does not entirely invoke fairness in terms of the idea of global justice. Despite the concept that "all is fair in love and war" there are many limitations to this. Attacks on military bases are not always as accurate as intended and can destroy cities already crippled by civil war and unrest. 

Comments

  1. It is so hard to decide what is an appropriate form of attack when involved in wars. I like how you finished your blog post with the quote "all is fair in love and war". This was really a good way to wrap up your response and previous sentence.

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    1. Thanks, despite it being a cliche, the meaning has definitely changed over time. All is fair in love and war stems from a quote in a poem by John Dyly in 1572. Therefore, what was considered "all" back then was much less than what is "all" now considering we now have the power to wipe out entire countries at the push of a button. Also, with laws being in effect in order to punish people for war crimes, we can truly see this not to be true.

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