SocraticGadfly: Obama touts 'just war'

December 10, 2009

Obama touts 'just war'

In accepting his Nobel Peace Prize, U.S. President Barack Obama touted the idea of Afghanistan as a just war. But, any person who has started a war and based that action, in part, on moral grounds, could make the same claim.

Osama bin Laden on 9/11? Well, he did. The Crusaders? They did. And many people in between. It's a slippery slope, Mr. President. And, given that justice isn't absolute when administered by finite people, and has trade-offs (is it just to burden your own nation with more debt? with fewer civil liberties?) the idea of a "just war" is philosophically unviable in other ways.

Wonder what the Peace Prize committee thinks?

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