e at the same time denouncing the guerrilla activity in neighboring El Salvador. Many other governments assessed the two situations differently from the American assessment. It largely depended upon whose ox was being gored.
War is also justified on other grounds. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel thought that war was the catalyst through which the purpose of mankind was brought to fruition. Thus, according to this perception, humanity had to either accept war or stagnate. It was Friedrich Nietzsche who provided the most pervasive justification for war of any type, and the romanticized concept of a just war for a just cause. In Thus Spake Zarathustra, Nietzche said that "a good war hallows every cause." American historians often cite Nietzsche as the philosophical guru for the Nazis in the Germany of the 1930s and 1940s; however, Americans have justified their own wars right down, along with the actions of seemingly countless American surrogates, largely in Nietzchiest terms.
Warfare, thus, is a form of participation in the process of political development. Outright armed conflict is simply the last step in the process when all other efforts at persuasion and diplomacy have failed. The justness of armed conflict may not be judged by objective measures. The justness of a revolutionary action, a civil war, or open armed conflict between nation states will, in most instances, be assessed differently not only by each party to such an action, but also by each observer to such an action. The justness of a war, thus, depends largely upon the subjective evaluation by a specific individual, group, or nation state of an action involving armed conflict. The Israelis in their effort to create a Jewish state considered their revolution against British protectorate government in Palestine to be a just action in the late-1940s, although this perception was not shared by the Arabs then living in Palestin...