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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.

Over the course of the United States lifetime we have fought both small and large wars, large wars like WWII and the civil war but between these full scale wars there were many smaller wars like Grenada or Korea. Many of these small wars fall under the //Jus ad bellum// and //Jus in bello// criteria, for the simple reason that these criteria tell whether or not a war is just. The majority of the topics researched fell under Just cause and proportionality in the //Jus ad bellum// criteria, and Distinction and Military Necessity under the //Jus in bello// criteria. A majority of the small wars fought by the United States fit under these four criteria’s, like the Vietnam War, Grenada, and the Korean War because the reason “for intervention must be to protect life [or] to correct a grave, public evil” (criteria for a just war handout). These wars can be looked at using the four criteria’s, two under both //Jus ad bellum// and //Jus in bello//, to tell whether or not the wars were just. Two reasons to go war, //Jus ad bellum//, are having a just cause and proportionality. When the U.S. became involved with Grenada on October 3rd, 1983, they had both a just cause and good proportionality to get into a “tussle” with Grenada. According to Lucas and Elena’s wiki, when the Prime Minister Maurice Bishop was killed the island was then taken over with communism. On the island at the time were 1,000 American students, so when the Prime Minister was killed Ronald Reagan launched the invasion of Grenada in order to protect the American students from the communist who were entering the area. This event was just because in order to protect innocent life we had to intervene, and there wasn’t much fighting so the proportion of saving Americans to fighting, saving Americans easily outweighed the little fighting there was. This is very contradictory to the Vietnam war, there was non-stop fighting. Still, the Vietnam war was just because we were fighting communism, and during the cold war whenever there was a dispute from a communism country to a capitalist country the U.S. would support the capitalist side. This was one of the greatest reasons we had during the cold war; we were fighting the spread of communism. The initial proportions for the war were good, like Iraq a few terrorist cells and that was it but we were severely wrong. In Vietnam was the first time we had fought guerilla warfare and we didn’t know how to match it so we tried to over-run Vietnam with close to 500,000 soldiers but that just made big targets for the VC to shoot at (Emily and John’s wiki). Like the Vietnam war, the Korean war was a lot of shooting but we eventually won this war and once again we were fighting the Soviet Union. North and South Korea were in a civil war because they wanted to join and make one korea but the two argued about the type of government, North wanted communist and South wanted democracy, and the Soviet Union supported the North and the U.S. supported the South. Like the Vietnam war we were fighting the soviet union and that made it a just war but we also wanted to stop the expansion of the soviet union military force. The proportions for the was were don’t do anything, let a democracy fall, let the soviets win and expand their military power or support the south, fight for democracy and against the Soviet Union and in the end, win. The two reasons for going to war under //Jus in bello// are Military Necessity and Distinction. In Grenada was a big distinction between the military forces and civilians. Mainly because the military forces were Cubans and the civilians were Grenadians. We needed to go in because we had to rescue the 1,000 American students that were trapped on the island. When we went in we also stopped the building of a 10,000 ft. runway that could have been used to set up attacks against the United States. In Vietnam it was much harder to distinguish the enemy from civilians because the enemy was civilians, just rebels that picked up a gun a started shooting. In many occasions it was almost impossible to tell the difference because the Viet Cong could put down their guns and blend right in with the civilians. When we were there we destroyed hundreds of civilian houses thinking that they contained weapons that belonged to the enemy. Military Necessity was much harder to execute because the enemy didn’t really have bases or airfields that we could attack, they had a few but not many key places to attack. It was hard to find the enemy because when we went into an area they would pick up their guns and leave and when we left, they would come back. Their bases were wherever their feet were, a shed here, behind a tree over there. The Korean war was like grenada because we knew who we were fighting and didn’t have to guess if that guy was a VC member or a civilian. The enemy had bases that we attacked and convoys we could destroy. Totally unlike the VC, they had large squardrons of men compared to the 5 or 6 person group that the VC was consisted of. It was easy to distinguish wh the enemy was because they were regular army and they didn’t were civilian clothes. Out of the three small wars, Grenada, Vietnam, and Korea, Grenada was the most just, Korea is second, and Vietnam is the least just of the three. Grenada is the most just because there were American civilians in danger and they needed us to go and rescue them. We didn’t need to get involved in Vietnam or Korea, we choose to because we wanted to fight communism, we wanted to fight the Soviet Union. Grenada was much more dangerous to our home land because the Cubans could have launched attack planes or bombers from Grenada and they could have attacked us. It was a threat to our national security if we did not go into Grenada because it is so close to the U.S. Korea was the second just war because we knew who we were fighting and didn’t destroy towns because we thought a few VC members were there. We knew who we were fighting and we knew how to fight them. The Vietnam war was the most unjust of these three because of how brutal we were. We didn’t know how to find or enemy, we burned a good portion of the forest in Vietnam, and civilians were killed because we thought they were VC. In just three years of the war we dropped over a million tons of missiles and bombs on north Vietnam. We were brutal and we just said we were fighting the spread of communism.

RUBRIC: A quality essay will

Explain why you selected the two jus ad bellum and the two jus in bello the criteria, little evidence cited, not all 4 explained

Use the __four__ criteria to analyze why the three small wars are "just wars", incomplete analysis of all 4 criteria,

Support your analysis of each war with evidence from the Small Wars Wiki, incomplete, not each war

Rank the three small wars and explain why one war is more just than the other two, no evidence cited to support claims

Explain why the __second__ choice fell short compared to the __first__ choice but is more just than the __third__ choice, not done

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

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

Cite evidence __internally__ and in a Works Cited. many factual statements not credited; no works cited