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How do you get people to view a selfish use of military force, harming people, as 'wrong'?
There is a strong bias to do the opposite, to support the selfish use of military that harms others.
It makes people feel powerful, it gives them a sense of pride, they say they 'won' things, it can result in gaining land, money, power, basically, 'the people who were there lost, and you benefit'. Whether you take things, or those people have to become subservient to your interests, etc.
And there a lot of blinders to not see why it's 'wrong'. They include - almost always - finding some sense of grievance to justify the action, or disliking the 'enemy', or many other things.
And there are many arguments against opposing the selfish action - you can be attacked as 'unpatriotic', or 'snowflake', or 'sympathizing with the enemy', or many other things.
In short, it's easy for people to look at *others* using military power selfishly and causing harm and saying 'that's wrong'. But not when it's 'your side' (or your allies) doing it.
For example, there are human beings in, say, Yemen. And a lot of 'corrupt' interests in the use of military there, powerful and wealthy interests (Saudi Arabia) who can use that wealth for violence for their own selfish agenda. You can point to wrong happening to human beings there. Now, try to get an American to care - even about our role, in supporting Saudi Arabia for selfish interests, selling billions in weapons, etc.
We in the US have the luxury of not being vulnerable to the wrong use of military power against us basically at all. And that seems to make it hard for people to care about the issue of when we do it, though people are quite happy to say they care, when it comes to what others do, if it justifies our attacking them.
For an example of how insane these blinders are, think about Vietnam for a minute. I won't get into the real issues, but even on its face, it was a war killing 58,000 Americans and millions of Vietnamese people who weren't a 'threat' to anyone where the trigger for the war was a claimed attack (that didn't actually happen) by a Vietnamese ship on a US destroyer involved in harming North Vietnam (though we lied it was out of their waters).
How much sense does that make? We're sending forces to their country, after supporting denying them freedom from colonization (we insisted France fight a way to colonize them and paid almost all the costs of the war), and because a rocket or two might be fired, we have that war?
Notice the blinders, how little that question was asked, and how immediately it was just about 'our honor' (so-called) and 'winning' and some perverted idea of 'patriotism', all that harm for what? How hard it was to say 'this is wrong'.
When has a country ever been able to say that? Rome? Nazy Germany? England? Us? Genghis Khan? Alexander the Great? Putin?
Yet, we're able to look at some other conflict and say 'that was bad'. Ironically, even that can be warped - Saddam attacking Iran, with a million casualty war, we didn't mind earlier because 'we don't like Iran', yet it was useful as evidence of Saddam as a bad guy when we wanted to attack him later.
It's easy to see injustice for the wronged side. We're quite happy to say how great it is we rebelled against English oppression in the late 18th century. That's not what's needed.
How can a 'great' or 'powerful' nation recognize its own use of its military selfishly and causing harm as wrong? That's what's needed to prevent wrong actions, not for the people who are wronged to notice it's wrong.
the United Nations was one attempt - a collection of nations who could look at each others' actions and say 'that's wrong' and it's not allowed and take action - but it's fallen apart, in the constant weakening caused by nations preferring the freedom to act selfishly, no one more than our nation. And it's largely been corrupted by nations using their power to get weaker nations to 'lie' to vote how the powerful nations want.
There is a strong bias to do the opposite, to support the selfish use of military that harms others.
It makes people feel powerful, it gives them a sense of pride, they say they 'won' things, it can result in gaining land, money, power, basically, 'the people who were there lost, and you benefit'. Whether you take things, or those people have to become subservient to your interests, etc.
And there a lot of blinders to not see why it's 'wrong'. They include - almost always - finding some sense of grievance to justify the action, or disliking the 'enemy', or many other things.
And there are many arguments against opposing the selfish action - you can be attacked as 'unpatriotic', or 'snowflake', or 'sympathizing with the enemy', or many other things.
In short, it's easy for people to look at *others* using military power selfishly and causing harm and saying 'that's wrong'. But not when it's 'your side' (or your allies) doing it.
For example, there are human beings in, say, Yemen. And a lot of 'corrupt' interests in the use of military there, powerful and wealthy interests (Saudi Arabia) who can use that wealth for violence for their own selfish agenda. You can point to wrong happening to human beings there. Now, try to get an American to care - even about our role, in supporting Saudi Arabia for selfish interests, selling billions in weapons, etc.
We in the US have the luxury of not being vulnerable to the wrong use of military power against us basically at all. And that seems to make it hard for people to care about the issue of when we do it, though people are quite happy to say they care, when it comes to what others do, if it justifies our attacking them.
For an example of how insane these blinders are, think about Vietnam for a minute. I won't get into the real issues, but even on its face, it was a war killing 58,000 Americans and millions of Vietnamese people who weren't a 'threat' to anyone where the trigger for the war was a claimed attack (that didn't actually happen) by a Vietnamese ship on a US destroyer involved in harming North Vietnam (though we lied it was out of their waters).
How much sense does that make? We're sending forces to their country, after supporting denying them freedom from colonization (we insisted France fight a way to colonize them and paid almost all the costs of the war), and because a rocket or two might be fired, we have that war?
Notice the blinders, how little that question was asked, and how immediately it was just about 'our honor' (so-called) and 'winning' and some perverted idea of 'patriotism', all that harm for what? How hard it was to say 'this is wrong'.
When has a country ever been able to say that? Rome? Nazy Germany? England? Us? Genghis Khan? Alexander the Great? Putin?
Yet, we're able to look at some other conflict and say 'that was bad'. Ironically, even that can be warped - Saddam attacking Iran, with a million casualty war, we didn't mind earlier because 'we don't like Iran', yet it was useful as evidence of Saddam as a bad guy when we wanted to attack him later.
It's easy to see injustice for the wronged side. We're quite happy to say how great it is we rebelled against English oppression in the late 18th century. That's not what's needed.
How can a 'great' or 'powerful' nation recognize its own use of its military selfishly and causing harm as wrong? That's what's needed to prevent wrong actions, not for the people who are wronged to notice it's wrong.
the United Nations was one attempt - a collection of nations who could look at each others' actions and say 'that's wrong' and it's not allowed and take action - but it's fallen apart, in the constant weakening caused by nations preferring the freedom to act selfishly, no one more than our nation. And it's largely been corrupted by nations using their power to get weaker nations to 'lie' to vote how the powerful nations want.