[snowrip]

I regard war as an evil thing. No good has ever come from any war. That does not mean that things might not have been worse if the war was not fought, only that things would definitely have been better if there had been no war.

Wrong. The Civil War, WWI and II, and the Gulf Wars are all excellent examples of wars that not only needed to be fought, but had consequences that were exceptionally good. Sure, they were bad for the losers, but the losers were the ones who forced wholly unecessary armed conflict on the rest of world to begin with.

[Jack Black]

Why did WW1 need to be fought? Why should the USA have entered it in particular? Why did we care who ended up on top in the endless European top of the heap contest?

Why did the Civil War need to be fought? Could not the South have been allowed to evolve their way out of slavery. Slavery was abolished in every other Western nation in the 19th century, no one else needed to have a million dead to accomplish it. Could not FedGov have bought all slaves and freed them for far less money than the war cost. Was this even considered?