Wars have many different reasons. In the past, most wars have been all about spreading religion (the innumerable crusades) and simply wars of conquering some extra land. Lately its been more about punishing all the citizens of a country for the actions and ideas of the few. This includes communists and Muslims. Or they are used as excuses in order to strike hostile governments down and substitute them for puppet theatres. This is far from being honourable.
“People define honour as whatever makes them feel honourable. It is a circle that goes nowhere, which is, I guess, what circles do.” – House
Most wars in modern times are directed at the governments, which don’t play ball with ‘The Western Civilization’. It doesn’t even have to be the leaders of the nation. It doesn’t matter, whom the war is against, it matters who get hit by it. Let’s be honest, the collateral damage created by constant bloodshed is far from minimal. Innocent people get tortured and/or killed, their families lose everything. War is not nice, everyone can agree on that. But is it righteous to start a war with a nation because some members of the nation disagree with some members of an another nation?
I am not saying wars have no point and should never happen, I am saying that something is not quite working right. Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau all agreed that the natural state of things is without states and countries. Without governments controlling our moves. But as Hobbes explained, that is the situation where attacks against other people are most reasonable. Locke and Rousseau said that fights would never happen because people are good at heart. Sounds naive, and quite frankly, they were.
Governments are supposed to be by the people, for the people. They can’t really not be of the people. But every man/woman stands for his/her own good and therefore a completely greater-good-oriented government can’t exist (unless you genetically modify them in some way, as some odd book proposed, but really, that’s hogwash). In this very real and existing case no government rules only for the good of the people. And this is pretty much what democracy is – people’s power to affect governments with fear to make them obey. However, if governments were to obey the people, there would be no reason to invade foreign soil (except on some occasions after a little prep work by some publicity companies). If that were the case, there would be no wars. Well, there would be fewer wars, let’s not forget, some people like war and killing people that don’t agree with them. So I am not claiming that only governments are warmongers, that would be folly.
I’m just saying governments want wars to look good. By maintaining a constant supply of goods from distant countries, the people remain content and governments in power. And there are always excuses to keep the country safe from outside troublemakers, security is important in any culture.