Just War Exercise

Just War Exercise

We brainstormed in class about various "causes of conflict". Take a look at the menu the class came up with (it's a good one).Review the lecture notes, the textbook, and the video on Thursday. Write an essay on the topic "When Is Military Intervention Justified". The objective here is to get you to think about those factors, about your own personal knowledge of historical and current events and to integrate those into a cogent statement of your own philosophy regarding legitimate conditions for military intervention. As I mentioned in class....you never know, YOU or one of your loved ones might be the one called upon to "intervene" in places like Iraq or Afghanistan at some time in the future.

You should limit your essay to three double spaced pages or less----in other words, identify and defend only the most compelling reasons which, in your view, would justify military intervention in another state.

Please pay close attention to crafting a good introductory and concluding paragraph with solid topic sentences for each paragraph. Remember, my rule of thumb is that if a paragraph has more than six sentences, chances are pretty good you've wondered outside of the limits of your topic sentence. Once you've concluded your draft, read it out loud to yourself and see if it hangs together both conceptually and grammatically. Then read only the topic sentences out loud to yourself. Do they make sense? Do they create a flow of thought from one paragraph to the next? Don't be reticent to change things; you'll probably improve the product if you do.

The essays will be due in your section meetings next week. wg