But even if we could establish such criteria, the question of implementation would remain: Who gets to decide that they're met, that military action is justified or necessary?
I don't believe anyone is truly in a position to comprehend the millions of lives effected by military action, even on an abstracted level, with enough clarity to justify this level of responsibility in any situation, except unusually clear-cut cases as I mentioned before.
This is why I'm an anarchist. I cannot engage the line of questioning beyond this point, because I don't think there's any acceptable answer. Conceding ideology to reality can only go so far until you're completely betraying yourself. Given a concrete situation, I can lay out preferences for how I would like that situation to develop, but if asked who I think should have that kind of power in a hypothetical vacuum, my answer can only be no-one.
Now see, this is why I'm not. I say conceding reality to ideology can only go so far until your actions and beliefs become useless virtuals and hypotheticals that aren't worth the limited time I have on this Earth considering. Blood and flesh, pain and pleasure: these are the things that drive me. They cut, they sting, and they are oh-so-real. And decisions made by me and others can fundamentally affect this calculus. And if I believe that someone - for whatever reason, in whatever way: good or bad, noble or base, rational or irrational, intentional or accidental - can change this equation, alter the course of events, and manipulate the variables of my life and the lives of others, my only answer is to engage with what is.
I've re-read this several times, slept on it and read it again. I have to say I don't get it. Here's the best interpretation I can come up with.
"I don't care about details like outcomes, motives, justifications, etc. I just think people should do things because they can."
I'm sure that's a horrible interpretation.
Or maybe your statement is meant as nothing more than a stab at the practice of naval-gazing itself. But on that I would disagree... it's easy to say that abstract hypotheticals don't matter in the face of reality, but the less time a person takes to process those and figure out what principles really make sense to them, the less equipped they are to sensibly deal with complicated realities.
It's like math. People have to work with each other on some level to form a functioning society. If they can't find common ground on the ethical equivalent of basic arithmetic, then how the hell are things supposed to work out when faced with a reality that is the ethical equivalent of quantum physics?