What is a Just War?
I'm glad to have found St Thomas Aquinas' Conditions for a Just War which I first remembered encountering during the first U.S. vs. Iraq War baci in '90 and '91. At the time I wanted to go on the record as being a concious objector, simply put my religon had to all for concious objection and I had to be on record with some leader of my religon that I was one. Being Roman Catholic concious objection is allowed if the War was an Unjust War as defined by the above link.
engel
In general, these are good guidelines. I wonder if the first criteria presented (war must be declared by the head of the state) is presented correctly. Given that Aquinas WAS pretty conservative as far as keeping poltical strucutres intact... But to me it is not a valid criteria of war.
Also, under the same criteria, what happens when the leader of the country is not a valid representative of the nation? One could make a claim that in the French Revolution, the King was not the proper representative of the people. A duly-elected representative of the people would have been the leader of the country, not the King.
Darren
And is the current leader of the US fall into the category of 'duly-elected'?