Heres some pointers I took from an essay on war i did about a year ago for a History question, suprised i still had it on my computer
I did mighty well on this one which is weird because i quit the subject eventually, i liked quite liked history but we used to go through so much pointless crap i thought i was wasting my time. I tended to get very psychological when writing essays in school, sometimes missing the point and trying to manipulate the teachers into giving me higher grades.. otherwise it'd be morally wrong not to and they'd go to hell. ahem.
Different points of view or things to consider..you decide which one is more "correct":
A war is just if it is the only way of averting consequences that are even worse.
It may be right to go to war to protect civilians from serious rights violations (such as genocide) at the hands of their own government.
BUT its not really possible to divide civilians and soldiers into the innocent and guilty, respectively.
The decision to go to war must properly represent the views of the people
on whose behalf the war is being waged.
The Case for Pacificism!
Deliberately killing a person in an everyday situation would be wrong – it would be murder. Making a formal declaration of war cannot make a morally significant difference to this. Therefore, killing in war must be murder too.
But it is not wrong to kill aggressors in self-defence, or in defence of others’ lives. When people are aggressively attacking, they are no longer innocent.
It may be permissible to kill enemy soldiers in defence of one’s own or another country against aggressive attack. It is absolutely prohibited, however, to target civilians.