In this case, evil is not meant in the sense of religious evil or theistic evil but in a humanitarian sense.   Religion and God(s) have always found a way to justify war.  War is evil because it is not a zero sum game.  Only those that have emotional distance from war can treat it like a zero sum game.  Distance allows folks to fashion a marketing campaign to justify war.  Death affords no distance.  The life of the innocent child killed in war is never brought back to life.  The family lives in the hollow catacombs of their child’s death until they die.  The tragedy can’t be made right; it is absolutely irrecoverable and irrevocable.  Women, children, the old, friendly fire, collateral damage is not a number that is offset by the `would have’ number, the number that `would have’ died without the war.  There is no erasure of tragedy for those that have lost loved ones.  There is only the empty void where a life used to be.  There is no just war; only a necessary war.  The marketing of a just war is a huge rationalization for evil.  Only those devoid of the emotional impact of war can deem it glorious.  The tragic loss of a loved one to war is organic.  No amount of words can overcome the inert downward pull of that pit.  Only ignorance and emotive indifference can once again renew the call to fight the glorious battle.  Was Iraq and Afghanistan necessary?  Was our country going to be over-thrown by these thugs?  No.  Did we suffer tragic loss in 911?  Yes.  Will our killing rampages in the world change our tragic loss?  No.  We tell ourselves by cleverly crafted tomes that we will prevent more loss of life by our action and thus, justify our wars.  By killing others we create a `greater good’.  What is that `greater good’ in the case of Iraq and Afghanistan?  We have created many more enemies all over the world and given Al Qaeda a recruitment bonanza.  Even our old friends have more ambivalent or even negative relations with us now.  We killed more of our young people now than were killed in 911.  We killed hundreds of thousands of non-enemy combatants (babies and kids to start with).  All the discussion of a `just war’ does not offset or equalize the tragic loss of one child.  It only provides an easy escape for those that would perpetuate this tragic loss.  If you perpetuate war you are as guilty as if you pulled the trigger on the baby.  You can tell yourself otherwise but your justice rings hollow.  In the ears of tragedy, your defiance to allow the full weight of your rationalization to indict your personal responsibility is absolutely detestable.  Your good has become evil, a humanitarian evil.  You have become part of the problem not the solution and the more you deny and justify, the more you create the problem once again.  War is a black tar baby that every generation has resolved to leave behind only to re-entangle us again.  We create a new generation of patriots and a new generation of patriot haters.  Go ahead, hold your ears and scream of my evil intentions but evil begets evil and graves only cry for more graves.  Until you live with the gravity of your ideas on a daily basis you have yet to live in the reality of tragedy.  Don’t tell those of us who live that on a daily basis that justice has anything to do with erasing our loss.  Don’t tell us your virtuous intentions give us emotional buoyancy or offset our organic reality.  You only soil yourself in our view.  Go ahead gather your warmonger friends and have your death parties all over the world but no one can silence the hellish voice that you perpetually resurrect in your violent zeal.  Peace does not come from war, only death and tragedy.  Perhaps evil is necessary in extreme times but no one should take any pride or glory in evil unless one is evil.