Well, thanks to everybody for comments.
As for my statements, I still will stay by them and I cannot say anybody has fronted any arguments to persuade me otherwise. War is not "natural" as killing is not "natural" - we are not born with fangs or claws. We are born with big brains and we should use them. War is a crime. Maybe a crime done by countries as well, but also done by everybody involved. And that makes soldier criminals. People who decide their job will be to fight wars = participate in a crime.
I have more arguments, based on various value systems, that will maybe be more acceptable to some people who commented:
- Nations are made from individuals - police protects individuals - therefore, nations should be protected by police
- War is illegal as there is no law allowing countries to go to war. There are international conventions on how they should BEHAVE when in war, but no law ALLOWS countries to go to war. Therefore it is ILLEGAL (as in - "not in accordance to the law")
- War is not the form of diplomacy. Diplomacy is (according to the The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language) "The art or practice of conducting international relations, as in negotiating alliances, treaties, and agreements." and also "Tact and skill in dealing with people"
- Soldiers don't make a difference - money makes a difference (as US – but not only US - has proved number of times). Soldiers just die for other people's profit. That doesn't make them less guilty, it just makes them worth of our pity. And if they pray for peace, they shouldn't be the instruments of war.
- There is a big difference between the police and the army – the police protects the laws and rights that the nation itself decides it should have. The purpose of the army is to break those rules. If the aim of the decision-makers was only to protect the nation’s borders, we would have one arm of the police force with access to heavy weaponry which would serve as regular police during the peace times and take arms when the country was attacked. Setting the army as a separate organisation (as most of the countries in the world do) means preparing for war.
And if you cannot see the logical error in the “If You want peace, prepare for war” (‘Igitur qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum.’ – by Flavius Vegetius Renatus, Roman military strategist), there's really no point in arguing. I don’t prepare for rain with a sun lotion. By the way, that argument was made cca 1600 years ago so it seems some of us haven’t really progressed much, haven’t they?
While we are quoting, let’s see another one:
"War is delightful to those who have had no experience of it. " - Desiderius Erasmus, Dutch humanist, ca. 1466–1536
I’d like to say I’m from a country that has known war on it’s own soil in the last 15 years and had more than 1 % of it’s population killed and more than 10 % lost their homes. So there.
- And should I be apprehended for my thoughts? Probably in Nazi Germany or Stalin Russia (those countries with large armies). Thank my mother that I live in the free world.
- I'm not really religious, but as I remember it, there is a commandment "Thou shall not kill" - and id doesn't say "except in self defence".
At the end I would like to make an apology for posting this article to the forums as well, which was done by mistake - as I don't usually put my articles in the forums, knowing they could offend somebody and keeping them in my blog on purpose.
