[fintstone]

Originally posted by CamB
[i]..Fint - please present an argument (other than, you gotta be joking) that pre-emptive war is not built on a foundation of "the end justifies the means".

My starting point is that war is a last resort - therefore, a pre-emptive war (by definition, not a last resort) can only be justified on the basis that the end justifies the means.

It would depend on what you mean by "last resort." Last resort before what? If you mean last resort before our country is destroyed...or pulled into a large-scale war with large US (or our allies) military and civilian losses.....I certainly would not wait until then if the means to prempt the enemy and fight the war on my own terms presented itself.

Iraq/Saddam had plenty of time...and many years to meet the terms of his surrender from the first Gulf War. He chose not to. Waiting longer just allowed him to grow stronger. Only a fool would wait. We should have doen it about six years earlier when he first refused to comply with the terms he had agreed to. Of course we did not have sufficient leadership in the White House at the time.
So you (if you were the US) would not have acted in Yugoslavia, Haiti, South Korea, or WW2?