Just War Theory Sweeping changes in the way wars are fought have brought current scholars' attention to the ethical concept of the Just War. The concept of the Just War is nearly as old as war itself; it is perhaps best codified in Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War. There have historically been two main approaches to deciding what is, in fact, fair in war: deontological and consequentialist. In short,

An all-too-common example of this is the Vietnam war, which may have been entered simply because, after the McCarthy Witch Hunt, no politicians were brave enough to avoid publically condemning communism for communism's sake: "As a consequence of McCarthyism, no U.S. politician [was] willing to appear to be 'soft' on Communism." Going to war was a reactionary measure, and by the time a concrete goal was formulated, it was: how

768). Yet the widespread slaughter of people in the name of total war was a principle varying point between Asian and Western powers during the 19th century. Despite whatever moral and philosophical objections Clausewitz might have raised to total war, he certainly saw value in involving as much of a population as possible in its martial efforts. In this respect, he conceived of war from a decidedly nationalistic viewpoint, in

S. forces were made to operate on ground and targeted operations were planned against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda fighters. There were significant individually planned battles and skirmishes between the U.S. army and Taliban often resulting in heavy losses to both sides. A tactic that Taliban often used in such conditions was the suicide attacks and planting improvised explosive devices (IEDs) that left the soldier carrying vehicles destroyed. The U.S. utilized

Fallout A section of commentators have taken issue with the manner in which the federal government denied suspected terrorist the due process of law as stipulated under the constitution. The government even commissioned the establishment of a torture chamber in Guantanamo Bay. This amounts to gross violation of human rights and civil liberties. There is another clause in the patriot act dubbed "enhanced surveillance procedures," which allows federal authorities to gather

War in Defense of the Status Quo The ironic thing about the Korean War is that it was begun (by North Korea) in an attempt to change a status quo that no party involved was particularly satisfied with, in search of an end result that all parties agreed would be ideal (the unification of Korea), and millions of deaths later ended by reestablishing the same static situation it had originate to