Interesting, you know more than me but afaik it is correct. Both in facts and arguably in moral. Since you brought up Rome in discussing payback for warfare, y

Interesting, you know more than me but afaik it is correct. Both in facts and arguably in moral. Since you brought up Rome in discussing payback for warfare, you could also ask "Cui bono" here -- "who benefits?" A war is potentially just like a gold rush, the people getting rich are the ones selling the tools to dig or make war. Just look at my native Sweden, we managed to stay out of a few wars and shamelessly sold high quality steel to the countries fighting. It made Sweden go from the bottom to the top in Europe. What this implies about lobbying and how wars starts I'll leave to the imagination. (I might also add that IS has declared war on the democratic world. So trying to stop their expansion is arguably self defence.)