Comment 35819

By Tammany (anonymous) | Posted November 27, 2009 at 15:23:46

The only problem with the idea of "criminalizing" war (and it's pretty much a fatal problem) is that one would have to employ war-like measures to enforce the criminal sanctions against the war mongerer. The imposition of sanctions, etc. have been shown to be ineffective means of restraining aggression, promoting human rights ,etc., etc.

This is basically what happened with world war II. The treaty of Versailles had essentially made it criminal for Germany to wage war or allow itself to be capable of waging war (I know it was much more complicated than that, and use of the term "criminal" is not at all accurate, but this characterization will suffice). Of course, when Germany violated the terms of the treaty the allied powers knew that the only way they could effectively enforce them would be through acts of war, so they were reluctant to act, the very purpose of the treaty having been to maintain peace in Europe. Of course war erupted anyway, so go figure ...

The point of my story being: criminalizing war sounds nice in principle but is unworkable in practice.

As for the whole military industrial complex thing, the Afghan war was not initiated just to line the pockets of defense contractors. There was a clear and undeniable political imperative on the Bush administration to do something, and do something violent, as a response to the 9/11 attacks. The Afghan war was the immediate result. That is pretty obvious.

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