Was it a Just War??

   Today in class we learned of the Just War Theory. Overall, I believe that the Spanish-American War was an unjust war. I believe that war can never be an option to a human being and goes against natural human instincts. It is against our nature to unnecessarily put ourselves in fighting position. EVERY other option should be critically analyzed and unanimously decided upon. The first rule of the "jus ad bellum" is to decipher if it is a just cause. U.S. involvement in this war was entirely unnecessary regardless of the economic and territorial gain. War was by no mean the last possible choice of action. Besides the pre-war justification, we followed the other guidelines of the Just War Theory except struggled with discrimination and treatment of POWs. Although Spanish and Cuban nationalists behaved inhumanely, it was the duty of the U.S. to "be the bigger nation" and withhold from this guerrilla warfare. After all, 2 wrongs don't make a right. American soliders also stooped to the level of killing civilians during the war. Cubans and Spaniards were also socially discriminated against post-war.