This week was finishing off the War book, looking at the ways in which people try and justify acting outside the jus in bello conditions during war, invoking supreme emergencies and ticking bomb scenarios. All a lot of smoke and mirrors in my opinion and all very unconvincing, especially when Walzer claims that only nation states can be exempted but can’t provide a good reason as to why. If people want to torture or bomb civilians then they should own it, not try and weasel they way into moral acceptability.

We also had our second tutorial on Saturday which started off badly for me with discussions of war in relation to prescriptive realism (bwuh?) but ended in more comfortable territory with Battlestar Galactica. I wonder if I can reference Homeland in my upcoming assignment?