I would agree - I doubt war is rarely, if ever, justified. My ethics course, however, left just war theory down to a simple theory theory. By that theory, war isn't even justified if it's to defend yourself. Instead, the only just war is one in which more evil would be prevented by the act of war (cumulatively on all sides) then by the act of nonaggression. Unfortunately, 'evil' is a very VERY vague term.

Erich Fromm would take this further however. Fromm even goes so far as to propose an origin of all evil, of which, war can potentially take on the grandest form. He proposes two forms of aggression - one a natural defense mechanism that all animals share for the most part he did not claim to be evil, but rather helpful. The other form however, the one he associated with his 'necrophilia' (the love of death or death drive, not to be taken in the sexual context here), was a form of aggression designed purely to force another to do something against their will. By taking advantage of our fear of pain, humans came to learn that we could utilize violence to subjugate the free will of others.Essentially, by partaking in such actions, one is attempting to communicate that another person's body doesn't even belong to them, but that they must do your will or forever take ever increasing levels of pain until death. There is a chance that sounds familiar, in which case, war should really scare you.

Finally Leo Tolstoi would take nonviolence to a new extreme, denying even self defense or the defense of others close to you on the basis of the principle of non-resistance towards evil. Oddly enough, he would do so through one of the most (sadly) violent faiths on Earth, deriving his belief from a literal translation of the gospel. Other verses outside of the Gospels would contradict these, but being a Jesusist instead of a Christian, his holy book didn't have the others - so their words were effectively mute. Tolstoi actually did have impact to my understanding, which is exemplified by Letter to a Hindu, which is a correspondence with none other then M.H. Ghandi.

As for me - I doubt I could pursue things to Tolstoi's extreme (even if I believe he is right). I'm simply too weak as a person. No matter the situation though, I do not believe that war is an acceptable course of action. It certainly has no place amongst anarchs.

I completely agree, and even in self defense killing should never be an option. It's the whole notion of violence as a means of manipulation that scares /everyone/ into a system of conformity even if that conformity harms them self.

It's the whole reason why we have such violent acts against authority figures and the whole reason why the authority figures keep arming themselves to a deadly level. It's an arms race. The only way to get out of it is to set our weapons down... on both sides. Unfortunately those who retain power always have more means of defending it. So they /think/ that they need weapons to secure their authority.

It's the same with war, only more widespread and not locally between two individuals or groups. It's still the same thing though.
Why one would be considered "good" and the other "bad" when killing occurs is /I think/ because war is so large that we dont have time to individualize people and make it personal. Everyone is but a faceless "enemy" that needs to be eradicated.

The people on side A, being terrified by their leaders to fight side B, and vice versa. It's a game of chess where the individuals at "war" are far above, moving their pawns below and killing people blindly for their own goals and agendas.

If an individual has an issue with another individual, let those /two/ people duke it out. Dont kill the lives of innocents and do not brainwash people into your agenda.

I also cannot really justify it as a means of self-defense either. ESPECIALLY when said countries are seas and oceans away from each other. They pose no threat to the civilians of the other country, but yet they're slaughtered like cattle and we feel "fine" about it because we never heard their names or saw their faces, and we villified them into a stereotype to wash their self identities away.