When does war accord with morality? How can mass killing and maiming, the very essence of war, ever accord with morality? Any tactics and weapons of war are present for a reason in Iraq today and moral codes will be broken. Same goes for the Middle East. There is no way that the Israelis can go to war without their many dangerous incursions into the West Bank leaving many civilian casualties. Defensive wars like the ones going on in Iraq and Israel today will always be aggressive. All means of negotiating peace have been exhausted; nothing can be more effective at this point as combat. The truth of the matter is that it is bloody. The Americans do believe they have a good chance of winning in Iraq. They can avoid a large number of American casualties, but the number of Iraqi civilian and soldier casualties cannot be predetermined. The Americans are in Iraq for a reason. They are trying to eradicate the world of evil. I do not believe effective military action can be undertaken in a way that will not threaten any civilian lives. By the end of the war in Iraq and at that of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Israel, hands will be left unclean. This is however the reality. There is no such thing as a moral armed struggle of good against evil. The situation is too complex to start building schools and educating children in Iraq or leaving UN inspectors searching blindly for weapons of mass destruction. This won't help. Neither will starting more peace negotiations with Arafat. This war cannot be fought in this way. It may be the moral pacifist way of going about a war but this will not happen. Two of the strongest armies in the world will not rely on such means when there is a threat posed on their country. Weapons, missiles, aircraft artillery and other war material are used and in turn there is bloodshed. Yes, war is so terrible and its consequences are so unpredictable. There were days when wars were fought by armies in battlefields far from centers of population.
