Can War be a good thing?

I cannot help but wonder, can war be a good thing? I know that death is tragic especially that of innocent death, but does war not lead to innovation and change for betterment?

I have many opinions on this but would like to hear from someone otherwise i just keep running the same questions around in my own head.

All actions done have a good and bad consequence. Now if there is more good then bad being done than that would be considered a good thing and vice versa for bad. Now for example I murder someone. Now I killed a human being and a person with a soul. But, on the other hand I have helped control world population. Now it's up to you to consider what is more important the good side of your action or the bad.

So, on the one hand we have millions of peoples lives and on the other we have a few inventions that make now a days peoples lives a little easier. But, most of these innovations and changes are just more efficient ways of killing people. So looking on both sides of the spectrum i'd have to say that it's a bad thing.

The thing is is that war has the good and the bad all rolled into one conveniently packaged ball of covenience. There is the mass loss of life which is always a bad thing but War is good for economy. When a country gooes to war the increase in production makes that country's economy ten time as good.
And thats just the beginning.

War as we know it would be a bad thing yes. However, the part of war that spawns innovations, whether they be good or bad, is conflict. It is the conflict that generates the drive to make these discoveries. There are plenty of ways to create a similar inviornment, but it has been shown that the best motivator for a work force is to tell them it's for a war they believe in. If they believe in the cause that is being fought for, the productivity shoots through the roof. If we want to see the same kinds of innovation booms that we see during wartimes, without the gallons of blood-shed, then we need to find a way of getting people to care about a non-violent conflict, such as a competition or what not.

from some standpoints war is a good thing becouse it can jump start an economy like with what it did with us back in WW2 or hinder us like it is right now. Also not all tech that come out of war are meant for killng people many medical tech that save people have come about. I am not supporting either side im just stating things here. As for what can be bad then yes there are the bigger and better ways to kill people like the NREPS or whatever they are called that bush is secretlly buiding. So war is not neccarilly a good or bad thing it really depends on what you think about it and from what point ur using remember the saying there is no good or evil just hate this can be applyed to good and bad as well there is no good and bad just ones opion and perspective.

Yes I agree with eliasan. War does produce a lot of healing tech as well. As an example the American Red Cross was founded just after the Civil War. you can not tell me that that was a bad thing.

What about war being justified? When the US revolted from britian, was that war not considered a good thing? Were the lives of the minute men spent in vain? If war is on the whole a bad thing then how can a revolutionary war a bad thing?

In our un perfect world war is neccesary. But is it a "good thing". Absoultely not. If we lived in a perfect world there would be no need for war. But Alas we do not. And if we were to be completely pacifist as a society then some stronger evil society (one of which didn't give a fuck about good things) would destroey us in a heart beat.

It makes you wonder if the desire to be better than someone else is a factor of human nature. We already know many of the wars were just the ability to survive exerting itself, becuase we already view oursleves as better than the other guy.

An interesting point regarding the pacifist society. The country of Costa Rica does not have a standing army or any armed forces of any kind and I don't see any big evil countries invading them. Just an interesting note that it is possible to be pacifist in this world.

note also switezerland even though it does have a army it has been neurtal in all the major wars of the 20th centurty including today.

with out war we would not have most of the technology we have today. we wouldn't even have the english langauge.

how would we not have the english language?

the english language comes from the indo-european langauge. then the celts moved to englnd with that language and broke up from internal feuds (wars), then the group from france, the anglo-saxons, invaded. then the latin. then the vikings, then rome again, then the jutes, then a group from germany, then the romans, and some more french people/ they were all at war with england, taking over almost every time, as such adding to the local language of england. it is actually way more complicated, but i dont feel like writing it all. just take mt word for it.

well we could still have our language without war, cultrues exchange ideas and languages all the time.