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[Name removed]

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[Clete]

1. I think Ghandi's life could answer your question.

eom.

[Resistance Is Futile]

7. Not clear cut

Ghandi believed war should be used against those who would not respond to pacifism. He used passive resistance and civil disobidence against the British because they could be embarassed but was very clear that taking up arms would be the correct course of action if India was invaded by the imperial Japanese.

[Clete]

19. Not an unreasonable position.

If Canada took arms against us, I suppose we would defend ourselves. (Although, with our new regime I think Canada could walk in here without firing a shot.) Getting rid of a colonial occupation was a slightly different nut to crack. If the Iraqis were smart, they would do to us what Ghandi did to the British.

[Silverhair]

26. Thank You. I didn't know that about Ghandi.

I had always though he was a total pacifist. You have contributed to my education. You will understand however that I will seek to confirm that fact. In fact, I hope that you would be dissapointed in me if I didn't check it out. Once again, Thanks

[SahaleArm]

27. Quotes attributed to Ghandi.

"Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act of depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest. If we want the Arms Act to be repealed, if we want to to learn the use of arms, here is a golden opportunity. If the middle classes render voluntary help to the Government in the hour of its trial, distrust will disappear, and the ban on possessing arms will be withdrawn."

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/m/mohandasga122751.html

"Non-violence and cowardice go ill together. I can imagine a fully armed man to be at heart a coward. Possession of arms implies an element of fear, if not cowardice. But true non-violence is an impossibility without the possession of unadulterated fearlessness."

http://www.mahatma.org.in/quotes/quotes.jsp?link=qt

[HPLeft]

29. Gandhi enouraged his followers to not resist the Nazis

Just to be factual. In fact, Gandhi's and the Congress Party's approach in WWII gave Jinna the opportunity to gain influence with the British (which he would exploit later on) by his recommendation that Muslims fight for the allied cause. I love Gandhi, but IMHO he wasn't always seeing straight on this issue.

[Silverhair]

24. Ghandi or the sword?

Interesting. You refer to Ghandi as a model, yet your picture is of a warrioress holding a sword. Which philosophy do you believe?

I agree with the warrioress. She isn't attacking, but is definately ready to give a strong defense and send an attacker packing.

[WillyBrandt]

2. It depends

There's no easy answer to this. It's a question of judgment and courage.

Judgment for deciding whether war or peace, conflict or calm is the right choice. It was right for Roosevelt to steer America towards war; it was wholly wrong for Bush to do so.

Courage for following the needs of good judgment.

Either one can be betrayed. It's too easy to turn judgment into hyperrationality or into a narrow adherence to a single principle. It's possible to have too much confidence in one's judgment and take courage as arrogance.

Sorry if this reply is muddled, but it's hard to address these issues purely in the abstract. The world is messy, and there's a reason wisdom cannot be defined.

[Name removed]

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[RichM]

9. I agree that there's no answer to this question in the abstract.

I'll toss in that your question makes me think of the Cuban Missile Crisis - and that when I hear American accounts of it, I usually feel annoyed that Khrushchev is not given credit for being big enough to give in.

[WillyBrandt]

11. ...the pressure was on Kennedy to be more hawkish

It would have been politically easier. It's not easy to strike the right note. Life is very difficult.

[JitterbugPerfume]

4. The wind will distroy the

mighty unbending oak but

the willow will bend with the wind

afer the storm the oak is twisted and torn

but the willow still stand

the storm and the willlow learn to undersand one anoter

[Silverhair]

25. I know some tough Oaks.

In lower Mississippi we get some big hurricanes from time to time. Hurricane Camille in 1969 was a record setter with 250+ mph winds. Yet we had lots of 400+ year old oaks survive, including some that were right on the shore and in the eye.

What does an absolute pacifist do when confronted by an evil like Hitler's Germany? I know many of us like to compare W to Hitler, but I am talking about the real thing, not bombastic hyperbole.

[LWolf]

30. I am not sure what an "absolute" pacifist is.

Probably because I just don't deal in absolutes; there are plenty of gray areas in every arena of real life.

I am somewhat of a pacifist...by choice, not by inclination. I've chosen that path because it offers lessons that I'm in need of.

I'm going to avoid physical conflict when possible. Because that is the easy way out, and it does not solve the underlying cause of the problem. Might does not make right. It is much more difficult to negotiate, compromise, and actually learn to work with an opponent than it is to vanquish them.

I have no physical fear; I never have. My first reaction, if I did not restrain it, would be to simply squash whatever insect had happened to cross my path. It is really so much easier and less time-consuming. So, I've learned, slowly, to restrain that reaction and engage with the opposition. It's more productive.

All of that said, should someone attack me, I wouldn't hesitate to squash them. Quickly and decisively. I would not need to spend months working up to it, making statements about it, gathering popular support, etc.; I would also not need to spend months analyzing it after the fact.

But that is in the face of direct physical attack; it's not preemptive.

[DuctapeFatwa]

5. Courage is a rare thing, and is seldom seen on battlefields

Except on the rare occasions when some soldier miraculously receives the Gift of Testicles, and says "NO."

[WillyBrandt]

6. Courage is often seen on battlefields

It's a little self-indulgent to say otherwise.

Soldiers often risk their lives to save the lives of their fellow soldiers. Analyze that in whatever terms you like, but that takes courage.

[DuctapeFatwa]

8. If you mean they say NO and drag fellow soldiers away with them

sure.

But simply saving your friend from people who resist the efforts of both of you to kill them is not courage.

Even defending your family or your home from an invader is not courage. Nor is providing for your children.

Refusing to harm another human being because somebody else says you should takes courage, and is the closest that we see to courage, although if you think about it, that too is just common sense.

[WillyBrandt]

10. No, it absolutely is courage

You are twisting the meaning of courage. Courage means, intuitively, the bravery in the service of something decent. Pulling your shot friend out of the foxhole and to the medic is courage, plain and simple.

It might be pleasantly self-indulgent to twist the meaning of "courage" to what you find most appealing, but there's a bit of linguistic legerdemain required to do so.

[DuctapeFatwa]

13. I think your argument is better suited to people in favor of the Crusade

If you do not believe that the Crusade, or even increased revenues to Halliburton, are decent, then you can express your courage by getting both you and your buddy into a situation where you can both do something productive.

Just pulling him out of a foxhole where you are both busily slaughtering Muslim children to enable him to slaughter more tomorrow is not courageous, by my definition.

If, on the other hand, you pull him out and get both of you out of there, you have demonstrated courage.

However, if you believe that slaughtering the children is a good and noble thing and that you are doing God's will by sacrificing your own life and limbs to defend the freedom of your highest principle - namely defending the freedom of KBR to enjoy some very impressive numbers next quarter as a result of seizing the natural resources of Iraq, then your definition of many things is going to be somewhat skewed, and you will need all the legerdemain you can get, linguistic and otherwise.

[WillyBrandt]

15. What are you talking about

Courage can be--and usually is--very local and divorced from larger politics and process.

You're making it sound like I'm arguing that a solder who goes against the grain in order to, say, use more napalm bombs is courageous.

I'm saying no such thing.

And before you go on cussing every helpless goddamn grunt soldier as a murderer, I suggest you think about your words more carefully. And read Just and Unjust Wars by Michael Walzer to get some insight to how morality plays out on the battlefield.

Direct your anger towards the political cowards who push forward these stupid massacres, not those who are thrown into a battlefield with nothing but a machine gun, an "enemy," and an order.

[DuctapeFatwa]

17. I believe that each person is responsible for his or her own actions

While he who gives the order is solely responsible for giving it, he who obeys it is solely responsible for his own actions.

If they are religious, they are responsible to God, whether they are or not, they are responsible to their own conscience, their own values, their own moral standards.

Throughout history, people, including soldiers, have made individual choices to obey or disobey orders or instructions.

Just like the soldier with his order, no one can tell you what you should believe on this question. Nuremberg says one thing, but you are your own person.

The argument that military orders should always be obeyed is best made by those who include orders to harm their own family members.

You are the only one who can say if you are a good choice for making that argument.

[WillyBrandt]

20. Absolutely Wrong

These are pretty words, but are absolutely divorced from the lived reality that soldiers endure. These are the moral principles that balm those who are pleasantly seated, but have mixed relevance to a sweaty grunt being shot at from all sides.

You want to judge the "courage" of someone in the battlefield? OK. Imagine yourself in exactly his/her position. Imagine how it is like to be in that position for a number of weeks or months, with maiming and death occuring upon both sides of the front, with quick shouts of orders, your foot is bleeding, you're hungry, where kill-or-be-killed is a fact and not just a slogan, and you have no good choices, and two or three terrible ones. That is the context in which the analysis must occur, not in the rarefied world of moral analysis removed from individual reality.

I argue only that within that very local world courage is possible in many ways, including ways that do not play upon the larger politics at stake.

The comparison with Nuremberg is wrong. One of the guiding principles of Nuremberg was that those who committed those crimes had a number of realistic choices, and they went out of their way--for whatever reason--to indulge themselves in genocide and war crimes. This is simply a different moral planet than that inhabited by the individual soldier.

[DuctapeFatwa]

21. I would hope that any soldier who was ordered to harm your family

Would have the courage to say "NO."

AS I said, I cannot tell you what your opinion should be on the subject.

People have different moral standards, I can only state my own, I cannot dictate yours.

[Wyclef Jean Fan]

12. There is no right answer

If you are for war in a sea of pacifists, it would take courage to express yourself. If you are against the war in the same sea, that would take no courage at all, you would just be going with the crowd. It all depends upon your circumstances.

[Silverhair]

14. How would you have understood and made peace with Hitler?

Tojo? Pol Pot? Idi Amin?

[baldguy]

16. Making peace with your enemies?

or making war on the helpless?

Making peace, definetly.

[Silverhair]

18. American Civil War

So then I take it that if you had been a Northerner in 1860 you would have let the Confederacy go on it way and keep it's slaves. And yes, SLAVERY WAS THE CENTRAL ISSUE. The "States Rights" question was about the states rights to keep slaves. Slavery was abolished at Union gunpoint.

Would you have understood the Southern viewpoint and sought common ground with the slaveowners?

Sometimes great evil can only be resisted by force of arms.

[Name removed]

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[Silverhair]

23. Hmmm. OK, I inferred too much.

Sorry. I knee jerked. I obviously view some wars as regretfully unavoidable. I have no patient with the arguements of an absolute pacifist, as such a person would be run over by those who are truly ruthless.

Gandhi was facing the British and a modern free press. How would his tactics have fared against a genuine bad-ass dictator?

For that matter. We have all seen the film of the guy in China standing in front of the tank column and the tanks stop. Yes, it took courage on his part, and lots of it. But the guy who really stopped the tanks was the driver of the lead tank who refused to run over the protester. After all, he was the one with his hands and feet on the controls. How would the protester have fared it that driver had been ruthless?

Absolute pacifism always fails against those who are completely ruthless and have no conscience.

Democrats always lose elections if the general public comes to see us as the party that will not defend America. And you can believe that GWB will be blasting us as "surrender monkeys." We have had that problem ever since McGovern.

This does NOT mean that I support the current war. I was responding to the general question, not a specific one about Iraq.

[IrateCitizen]

32. You're greatly mistaken on the Civil War

Slavery was definitely an issue in regards to the Civil War, but it was far from being THE issue. If you look at Lincoln's comments and speeches during the war, it is clearly apparent that he was no great champion for the cause of racial equality -- he, along with most of the rest of the politicians of his day still expressed views that could be viewed as extreme racism according to today's standards.

The main cause behind the Civil War was economics -- just as it is in almost ANY modern war. The North and South were rapidly becoming two completely different countries -- with the North undergoing the process of industrialization, and the South being mired in a basically feudal society ruled by a few wealthy landowners. It was simply becoming apparent that the two completely different societies would not be compatible within the same Union.

Believing that this war was fought for the purpose of freeing the slaves is buying into one of the great myths perpetuated by history textbooks. The freeing of the slaves was secondary to the resolution of a conflict between two incompatible economic systems.

[HPLeft]

28. It all depends on the situation

In the end, making peace and making war can be equally courageous or equally cowardly, depending on the specific context. What is most important IMHO is that individuals look deeply into their own motivations, or that of their country, face whatever demons might be there, and then act appropriately in the outer world.

http://www.hpleft.com/031803.html

[LWolf]

31. Making Peace, without a doubt.

It's more difficult. It requires more refined, sophisticated skills. It's more time-consuming. It requires life-long changes on the part of the peacemaker as well as the opposition.

I think both building bridges and standing your ground are marks of character; you build bridges by finding commonalities that help you relate to one another and find ways to work together. You stand your ground on obvious issues, like those addressed in the 19th and 20th centuries: slavery; women's rights; and other issues concerning equal rights for all human beings.

The question would be, what are those issues in the 21st century? They may be different for each.

[IrateCitizen]

33. Making peace is definitely more difficult...

... as well as more rewarding and more just, in the long run.

Making war is easy. It is dependent only on humans embracing their more basal instincts -- their capacity for dehumanization, aggression and murder.

Making peace requires that humans transcend these self-destructive impulses. It requires that we reject these more basal instincts and instead embrace our more noble capacities for love, cooperation and understanding. It requires that we reject much of the false reality that we have been conditioned to believe as true.

Any review of historical figures who beat their swords into plowshares -- Gandhi, MLK, Jesus, etc. -- should be indicative of how difficult waging peace really is, because it requires you to directly challenge the paradigms under which we have been conditioned to operate, regardless of how ultimately true or false those paradigms are.