The air is thick with argument just now about going to war. I don’t recall the public voice in recent times being quite so exercised over an issue and although that in itself is curious I won’t explore it. I’m more concerned here with the philosophical aspects of taking up arms.

My ideal position about war is that there is no justification for it - never. This follows the good pacifist traditions associated with the likes of Christ or Gandhi or Martin Luther King. It's a position that proves to be unrealistic though particularly when reasonable force is required for defence. It’s inescapable to note that the pacifists of history usually had no access to force anyway. Perhaps their positions would have been different if they had.

Those who do have such power to hand have a different kind of responsibility. Every system of law requires enforcement. In other words it requires the ultimate sanction of violence in order to give it validation. The authority in power has to be prepared to use that violence when necessary otherwise the bad guys would continually flout the rules and leave the rest of us so much worse off. There has to be a justification in some cases for taking up arms. In a democratic world that requires argument. Is the Iraq situation one of these cases? The simple answer for me is that I don’t know and I doubt if anyone else does at this point. Whether it is the right action will depend on the outcome. That judgement will be a matter for history.

I can imagine an international politics and law generations on whereby the nations of the world are governed by a shared set of broad standards, ones that allow for as many people as possible to live a peaceful and secure existence free from the kind of horrors that have blighted much of history. This would be a scenario which grants individuals and communities as much freedom as is manageable. It would be minimally coercive for those who adhered and severe on those who didn’t.

Contemporary liberal democracy is far from perfect but I believe it to be the best candidate for forming the basis for such a system. The dictators of the world would have no place in this. All available forces would rise up and ensure they are routed and not allowed to flourish. Perhaps the Anglo-American initiative of 2003 represents further fumblings toward such a goal. If that is so, and as I’ve said only history will tell, then the war in Iraq, despite the inevitability of innocent death, will prove to be justified.