LeoCasey at aol.com:
> Absolutely, and that is one of the distinctions that lie at the core of the
> just war theory. A war of aggression is not, by defintion, just; a war of
> self-defense may be just. This begs the key issue of where one draws the line
> between wars of aggression and wars of self-defense, but it does allow us to
> begin to think more clearly and precisely about these questions.
I'm making a different distinction. One can plan a "just war". Absent direct revelation by the gods, "just" means "in conformity with a certain rhetoric which I hold to determine justice from the axioms I accept." Good rhetoricians should be able to make almost any war appear just once they have a grasp of the violence-enabling parts of their audience's axiomatic set, whether it's "the only good Indian is a dead Indian", "Deutschland ueber alles", or "Dieu et mon droit." At least, they should if the audience believes one or more of such sacred principles.
The distinction I'm making is rather between war and other methods of defense: escape, deception, distraction, seduction, bribery, subversion, corruption and so forth. Even violence, if it is local, unplanned, avoids the destruction of noncombatants, and is immediately terminated upon local success, cannot be called war -- in which all is fair, injured bystanders merely "collateral damage" and there is no substitute for victory, that is, death.