Earlier quoted context omitted.
> When you volunteer ... you have a special moral responsibility for what happens during a war. A responsibility for your actions, or everything that happens during the war? What if your voluntary enlistment was due to false information, or steady conditioning by the state since childhood? Does intent play no role? Do you extend that line of thinking to the justice system where manslaughter and murder are treated dif…
You can't really push that sort of responsibility up. You own it. I'm a conscientious objector because of that, not because I'm a pacifist (far from it). Reduced to the simplest of arguments: if everybody thought that way the only people that would end up pushing for a fight would be the politicians but they never ever want to get their hands dirty, problem solved. Don't be someone else's tool. As for the 'righteousn…
That is pretty unrealistic. I agree with you about ignoring intent, but I also recognize the fact that at present this sort of philosophy would not work in a world dominated by states.
> ... the only people that would end up pushing for a fight would be the politicians ...
Or defense contractors. In a world where the majority of people believe in ghosts, it is not likely that things will work out in the way you think they would. I'm pretty confident that the US would start exercising its legal authority in drafting military aged males. I can already hear you saying "But they'd refuse!", but that would require you to ignore history.
> I'm not sure if we lived in the same world at the time but from a legal perspective...
I'm guessing not, because you seem to have forgotten all the games played with UN weapons inspectors and violation of no fly zones.
> That's not entirely true either. Flag worshipping...
Actually, the same logic that dismantles the moral authority of the state's power to wage war, dismantles the moral authority of every other state power. So obviously this sort of moral analysis is not occurring regularly, because the world is full of states. I have no doubt that there are a lot of countries full of people who are less predisposed to military expeditions than Americans, but my point is that it isn't due to deep moral reflection.
> That made all the difference in getting him re-elected in the first place, critical thinking does not enter into it.
And yet you are expecting widespread moral reflection from the very same people.
> I've decided that the buck stops with me.
That is great and all, but not every effective in terms of systemic change. If you really want war to go away, then you need to get rid of the state. That is the reason I got involved with development in the bitcoin ecosystem several years ago, popularization would likely deal a killing stroke to the state.