h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Thoughts first:

Does the philosophy of a just war still apply in today's multi-cultural society?

Pass - but the philosophy of a *legal* war is becoming more and more important.


What conditions you would consider necessary to constitute a just war?

Provable genocide. Significant environmental damage (hey - everyone - let's go fight the USA...)


Where and with whom should the final decision to go to war rest?

An INVADED nation or, if no nation has been invaded, with the UN.



How should countries respond to terrorism?

By considering their own culpability, and working out how to tackle the political and social injustices which give rise to terrorism.


Do western countries really have the right to decide who is good or evil?

Absolutely not.


Have there been any just wars in the 20th Century?

The Second World War was - conveniently - justifiable the moment the Allies went into Belsen. Before that it was a war of self-defence by the Allies against invading powers.


And the poems.

Let me recommend to you Pinniped's disturbing poem "Solomon 2003" which asks us all uncomfortable questions about our own collusion: A990920

And here is Chaiwallahs equally but differently disturbing: "3/20" which is hidden in a conversation thread: F48874?thread=268871#p3356392

I urge you to read them both.

Ben

Here is a poem on the nature of evil/terrorism/war, written in the aftermath of Sept.11th 2001

Demiurge.

Deep in the lone heart, in the mountains
In the place of smouldering desolation,
High on his dark throne, fist on chin
He broods on the landscape of rejection.
In the grimace of his towering teeth,
Gritted against the acid fire within,
His seething hatred throws bright
Shadows of the blistering light
He cannot bear to see. Tentacled chains
Burn into the concrete conduits beneath
His knotted feet, where nations rush
Eager to do his bidding, choke
On the weary fog, where cities crush
The bitterness in his bite, smoke
Gushing from their greedy grip,
As he writhes in the bursting pains
Of birthing the contempt in his curled lip.
Here boils the sulking suphur sea
Where the blazing claws of love denied
Scrape and tear at the hopeless shore he
Lashes with the waves of his bloody tide.
Here the splintered rock-strewn skies
Give no relief, no open space
But crush in grief upon his eyes,
Press down sharp, the weight of grace
Denied. And every solitary taste
Is bitter, sour as leather on a tongue
Frantic in this endless dryness, laced
With desperate dust among
The broken hopes and pitiless bones
Littering his lightless, bleak domains.
Here each life burns with rasping breath
That suffocates on the lust for death,
Carrying his scalding seed. His prison-stones
Locked within our hardened hearts, his scream
Paralysing echoes of despair, remains
Until we free him from this lethal dream.