[CLUE-Talk] Sure its 'Not About Oil' was: Why Iraq? Why now?

[Jeffery Cann]

On Wednesday 05 February 2003 12:36 am, Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier wrote:
> To use other scenarios -- how could we have won independence from the
> British using pacifism?

Zonker, 

I suppose we would have achieved it by another means.  Non-violent resistance.  
Going to jail.  Civil disobedience.  It seems to me that these thinks worked 
for the liberation India, even though people were injured and killed by the 
British.

> While the concept of pacifism is certainly attractive it is not
> practical nor a tenable philosophy for any national government so long
> as other governments do not practice it.

Just because something isn't considered practical to a group of people does 
excuse the fact that using violence to solve a conflict is unacceptable.  The 
same is true for other governments.  The 'everyone's doing it (using 
violence) argument' doesn't change the fact that people are killed and that 
is wrong.

You haven't answered my question which is how by killing an aggressor are we 
somehow justified in our self-defense yet the agreessor is not justified in 
his attempt to kill us.  Should the agressor be punished?  Of course and that 
would be achieved if the world cared more about protecting life than ending a 
conflict by any means.  If someone is killed, the outcome is the same, no 
matter who started it.  

We're pretty smart people, you don't think we could find another way to curb a 
psychopathic leader rather than going to war?  But, as long as violence is 
considered the ultimate trump card, people / governments will not work too 
hard to learn other ways of dealing with the problems.

Do I have have the answers or new ways of dealing with these problems?  Not 
yet.  Does that weaken my position?  Perhaps it does.  But I think the 
'violence' conflict resolution position is just as weak for the same reason 
because no one has given me a justification to use violence, given my 
beliefs.

Jeff

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http://jefferycann.com/