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Comparison Essay: How Just Were the U.S.’s Small Wars?

The Just War Theory has two parts. Study the Just War handout and select the two most significant criteria for **//jus ad bellum//** and two most significant criteria for **//jus in bello//**. With these criteria in mind, select one war from each of your three tables that best meets these criteria. In the essay, you will analyze, compare and rank these three wars.

Write an essay that compares the three small wars and analyzes how well all three meet the four criteria that you believe are most important. Based on this comparison, select the __"most just"__ of the three wars and explain the reasons for the choice. Also, explain why your __second choice__ fell short and were not as just as your __first choice__ but is more just than your __third choice__.

RUBRIC: A quality essay will Explain why you selected **jus ad bellum** and **jus in bello** the criteria, Use the __four__ criteria to analyze why the three small wars are "just wars", Support your analysis of each war with evidence from the Small Wars Wiki, Rank the three small wars and explain why one war is more just than the other two, Explain why the __second__ choice fell short compared to the __first__ choice but is more just than the __third__ choice, Organize you writing in extended power paragraphs, Identify the source and establish its credibility with an appositive phrase, Cite evidence __internally__ and in a Works Cited.

In the jus ad bellum criteria, I chose just cause and comparative justice. A just war should have a just cause, or ligament reason to go into a war. A reason may not be that one country somehow hates another country for something that happened at least 100 years ago, and they now want to go into war. Another unacceptable reason would be going into a war that would involve killing millions of civilians. A just war should have very limited casualties. A good reason to go into a war would be to get revenge on a country who killed many civilians of another country, or an invasion, such as the attacks on September 11, or Pearl Harbor. For a comparative justice, it is only fair if both sides are diligently attacking each other and trying to "outweigh". For jus in bello, I chose distinction and proportionality because a the only goal is to kill the enemy, not other civilians. They did not not do anything to harm anyone, so why should they get to do when there are still surviving soldiers?

The three wars that I chose were the Second Iraq War, the Persian Gulf War, and the Tanker War. It was a good idea to have the Second Iraq War because there was a just cause of why we did it. Al-Qaeda came in and attacked the Twin Towers and many people were devastated. President Bush had troops go to Iraq to protect American citizens so something like that would not happen again. So far, we have not gotten invaded since then because other countries are afraid of invading the U.S. because they are risking us starting a war in their country just like we did in Iraq. In the Persian Gulf War, it was not very just that Iraq attacked Kuwait (because Iraq was in debt with them). Instead they started a war and risked getting into even more debt. However, it was just for the U.S. to get involved with the war because we were allies with Kuwait and they kept most of our oil. We did not want that taken away from us. The Tanker War was almost exactly like the Persian Gulf War except Iraq attacked Iran because Iraq thought they were getting spied on. Iran was another country that stored our oil so the U.S. came in and sided with Iran to help defeat Iraq.

All three of these wars had a just cause to them according to the jus ad bellum criteria. We were invaded on September 11, so we attacked back, and our oil was in danger, so we attacked the country that was hurting the country with our oil. We used comparative justice in the Second Iraq War because Al-Qaeda attacks us, so we fight back. Same with the Tanker and Persian Gulf wars. Iraq was attacking Iran, so we tried to outweigh Iraq by helping Iran. We helped Kuwait from Iraq as well. These wars also met the jus in bello criteria (distinction and proportionality) because even though civilians were injured or killed, the intntion was not to herm them and ended up killing way more soldiers than civilians. RUBRIC: A quality essay will

Explain why you selected the two jus ad bellum and the two jus in bello the criteria, criteria identified with little explanation

Use the __four__ criteria to analyze why the three small wars are "just wars", attempts to use criteria to analyze the wars

Support your analysis of each war with evidence from the Small Wars Wiki, little evidence used to support sweeping claims

Rank the three small wars and explain why one war is more just than the other two, no evidence used and reasoning is not always clear

Explain why the __second__ choice fell short compared to the __first__ choice but is more just than the __third__ choice, listed without a general rationale

Organize you writing in extended power paragraphs, paragraphs are not organized this way

Identify the source and establish its credibility with an appositive phrase, not done for all 3 wars

Cite evidence __internally__ and in a Works Cited. not done

Please write with an academic voice, not in the first person.