In this post I asked people to donate to Antiwar.com. This prompted a negative comment from Billy Beck in which he called Tom Knapp a fool.

This has since degenerated into a food fight, which has nothing to do with the original, hence a new post to make my position clear.

There are three comments with which I take exception:

1) Mike Schneider said: Tom? If you're "anti-war", then you are also, by *definition*, "anti-SELF-DEFENSE".

Tom does an excellent job of replying, although his points seem to have been missed.

The attributes of war have always been:
A) financed by theft (taxation, usually accompanied by inflation)
B) almost total disregard for the rights (life, liberty, property) of innocent non-combatants. The few exceptions to this seem to be weak attempts to preserve "historic" buildings. These usually do not belong to private entities.
C) no one is held accountable for the violations of rights.

The above is a restatement of Tom's points. I changed the word "generally" to "always" because in my reading of history, these features have been a part of every war. If someone can identify a war in which one or more have been absent I would love to hear about it.

2) Billy Beck said: One *cannot* be "against war in general" without being amoral about it. We could start with the American Revolution as a good example of what I'm talking about.

The American Revolution is a good place to start. American troops commandeered supplies from an unwilling populace, "paying" with worthless paper money. The British, when they commandeered supplies, usually paid in gold or silver. To name only one of the many repeated violations of rights committed by "the good guys".

This is not to say that the war did not have some positive effects, for some people. Of course if you were a British sympathizer, your property was confiscated after the war, regardless of your actual involvement.

Just because some good came out of it does not make it right. No sane person would argue that the Nazi use of slave labor to build highways was good because today Germany has a great road system.

The American Revolution, as conducted, was immoral. All three features were there.

3) Tom refers to war as a "necessary evil". He provides the following definitions:
"Necessary - 1. Such as must be; impossible to be otherwise; not to be avoided; inevitable." -- Wesbster's 1913 ed.
"Evil - 1. Having qualities tending to injury and mischief; having a nature or properties which tend to badness; mischievous; not good; worthless or deleterious; poor; as, an evil beast; and evil plant; an evil crop." -- op.cit.

Yet looking at this and the attributes of war, one sees that war is never necessary.

Let us imagine a situation where a community is attacked (or attack is threatened) by an outside agency, such as a foreign government.

First of all, taxation. If a people are going to defend themselves against an attacker, they will be willing pay for that defense. Taxation will not be necessary. In a society where the money is voluntary, it is doubtful that inflation will exist.

Secondly, the defenders will do everything they can to avoid the destruction of the property of innocents. After all they are fighting to protect the rights of those innocents.

Finally, if accidental damage does occur, compensation would be due. The compensation would ultimately be paid by the attacker.

As all three attributes are missing, this is no longer war, this is self defense, pure and simple.

War is immoral because it has those attributes, remove those attributes and the action is no longer immoral, it is also no longer war.

Also check out Anthony Gregory's speech on war and those who support it at LRC (thanks to Freeman for the link). It goes straight to the point, namely that war, all war, is immoral.