Well, I thought I'd try to think of things that war solves.

I certainly believe in war as self defense, & I have always thought WWII was a just war, but while it got rid of a Nazi government I don't think it got rid of Naziism. We used to some just up the road a few miles, though they didn't use the word "Nazi;" They liked to say "Aryan Nations."

We didn't need a war to get rid of Russian Communism. And I don't think every country had to have a war to get rid of slavery. And again, some countries are free of slavery, but the world is not. It's hard to win a war against an abstract noun. Fascism, drugs, poverty, terrorism.

War makes some people better off economically -- I remember a farmer in my childhood who wanted a good war to bring up wheat prices -- but the world as a whole is poorer by the amount of wealth destroyed.

I guess war does solve the Fearless Leader's problem of how to get the people to back him. So it works for that and self-defense, if the self-defense is successful.

And just to be clear I believe a pre-emptive war is not self-defense, for the same reason a pre-emptive punchout in a bar is not considered self-defense.

Clint