Introduction

Abstract

Throughout human history, groups of people have committed mass slaughter at the behest of their leaders and in the name of justice, morality, and peace, invariably insisting that they must stop “The Evil Enemy.” Paradoxically, the two sides to every deadly conflict are united in their beliefs that (1) they are right; (2) their adversaries are wrong; and (3) their own cause will prevail, provided that they take up arms and fight. The wrongful practices of another regime, committed at an earlier time, are nearly always cited by leaders as the proximate cause of the conflicts in which they decide to deploy military force. For the 1991 Gulf War against Iraq to have been just, the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq had to have been unjust. Saddam Hussein claimed that Iraq’s territory had been unjustly appropriated by the Kuwaitis through their siphoning off of oil (Duncan 2003).