Guru Coyote
Archmage
Have we mentioned starting a war to end all wars? That never earned anyone any cookies, although it's debatable if they had all their's in the jar to begin with.
I've placed a great deal of thought into this, and I've come to the conclusion that the worst reason to start a war is over a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
I mean, even if you don't like peanut butter, you've still got the jelly deliciousness (or vice versa). It goes great with a glass of Milk (cow or goat, take your pick). If you don't like to eat the crusts you can just eat through the center of the sandwich and end up with an adorable little "PB&J Joker's Smile" with peanut butter and jelly all over your cheeks (the top ones, not the bottom - that's a PB&J suppository).
To me, the PB&J reminds me of my childhood days of coming in from playing in the sandbox to a plate of sandwiches cut into little squares. Those little squares represented a worry free time of innocence.
Who the hell is going to go to war over that? Unless of course, you put banana's in your PB&J. But then again, if you do, then you probably put celery into your tuna fish, or raisins into your chicken salad, which might I remind you: are all war-worthy offenses.
The worst reason to start a war is 'to preserve peace'. The logic goes something like this:
Our country is peaceful and happy, but our neighbor is growing more and more powerful and is building up his military.
This country will one day endanger us, so we need to neutralize the potential threat.
So let's strike them first, wipe them out, (not to mention loot their land and take possession of it) then we can return to being a peaceful people.
Some examples from history include the ancient Egyptians who would often invade a neighboring land that they feared would pose a threat, slaughter a bunch of people, put up a big slab of rock telling the beaten people that they had lost and who had whipped them, then return back to Egypt with plunder, but without leaving as much as a garrison of soldiers in the conquered land. Of course they had to repeat the same war over and over again, as soon as the other nation regained their strength and found the courage to stop paying yearly tithes to Pharaoh.
Another example of War to preserve peace is many of the tribes of American Indians. Especially the Eastern Woodlands tribes, who would often go to war against a neighboring tribe just because they feared that the tribe was too prosperous and would one day attack them. They would invade the tribal territory, kill a bunch of the men, sometimes take their women and children back to their tribe and then just hope that peace would return, though they knew that usually it just led to years of ambushes and raids.