Retaliation for 911: The

            The most enduring, and difficult, philosophical question with regard to war focuses on the ethics of getting involved with it in the first place. Many people would make the claim that states can have moral justification for resorting to armed force in the international system. The idea here is not that the war in question is merely politically shrewd, or prudent, or bold and daring, but fully moral, just. However, when examining a number of recent situations, one must be more skeptical about the application of moral concepts, such as justice, to war. National Security and Power motivate states during wartime, and thus moral appeals are merely wishful thinking. .
             This is not to suggest, however, that war is not a vital and important means of accomplishing important goals in an anarchical world "only that it should be resorted to when all other means have been exhausted. There is no better arena to explore the question of a just war than a discussion of the conflict in Afghanistan. The horrific events of September 11th are held up as justification for the bombing of Afghanistan, a logic one can only agree with if we conclude that the lives of Americans are of greater value than the lives of Afghans.
             The successful outcome of the Gulf War, combined with the collapse of the Soviet Union, had left the United States in an unprecedented position of dominance in the Middle-East. As congress pondered over what to do with this new-found influence, some idealists argued that it was time to spread democracy to a part of the world that knew little of it. (Indyk) However, America's Arab allies had determined that such talk of democracy was very dangerous to their own grip on power in the region. Moreover, the United States was forced to consider that it could not afford the destabilizing impact that pressure for reform would generate in the deeply traditional and repressed societies of the Middle-East.