2. Wonderment:
I don't really want to get into the philosophical weeds too deeply because you don't really need a doctorate in philosophy to be (or not) a pacifist. On the other hand, I don't want to evade or ignore your arguments either, so....
Let me be clear about two things: 1) I don't think Absolute Pacifism is on the table. I'm not a Jain, and I'm not a person who thinks it's wise to remain personally defenseless against rapists and murderers. I just think it's always wrong to engage in political violence, and that we must work constantly to avoid doing so. 2) I am not confusing deontological arguments with consequentialist ones; I'm expressing a view that takes both into account.
So, as you later argue, my "cost-benefit" analysis (consequences) says no to political violence as do my moral sensibilities, i.e, my intuitions that waging war, like engaging in torture, is always morally unacceptable.
Well, that debate is always Monday morning quarterbacking. What you call justified "defensive wars" are usually bogus in my view; everyone always claims self-defense. Almost always, the self-defense card is played by parties who have failed to prevent war. In other words, they already flunked nonviolent communication, so they resort to violence and claim the other guy started it.
The genocide problem is much more complex. I do tend to accept the UN-mandated Responsibility to Protect. Samantha Power makes a good case for intervention in "A Problem from Hell." I think that with the right understanding and right practices the R2P doctrine can be enforced with an absolute minimum of deadly force. I see genocide intervention as more of a temporary policing action than as war.
No, I disagree with that characterization. The distinction I draw is between political pacifism as a principled program (the principle is to pursue and achieve your political goals without violence) and a private response to violence (the rapist with his hands around your throat or the murderer on the loose in your neighborhood.) To use your examples, I accept self-defense in ordinary homicide cases but not as grounds for premeditated political actions.
In general, I agree with Ocean's assessment that pacifism doesn't have to be a perfectly consistent political philosophy in order to be the best political philosophy (outcomes) or the most moral (values). It just has to be better than competing philosophies like militarism or the just war doctrine.
Quote:
| There is to my mind something gnawingly out of kilter in these arguments. Firstly, you are equating my sometimes use of force with the absolutist’s never use of force, except when the time bomb is ticking. Secondly, you are confusing, I think, deontological arguments with consequentialist arguments. |
So, as you later argue, my "cost-benefit" analysis (consequences) says no to political violence as do my moral sensibilities, i.e, my intuitions that waging war, like engaging in torture, is always morally unacceptable.
Quote:
| A problem you need to confront in both the moral argument and in your weighing argument is counterfactuals given certain historical examples of aggression. |
The genocide problem is much more complex. I do tend to accept the UN-mandated Responsibility to Protect. Samantha Power makes a good case for intervention in "A Problem from Hell." I think that with the right understanding and right practices the R2P doctrine can be enforced with an absolute minimum of deadly force. I see genocide intervention as more of a temporary policing action than as war.
Quote:
| I’ve already shown, I suggest, that to the extent your claim is for the pragmatic use of pacifism, civil disobedience—call it what you will—to be used in some situations and not in others, you are no longer a pacifist, just someone who will counsel the use of pacifism in some situations. But if pacifism isn’t to be used in “others”, then what is? Like pregnancy, you can’t be just a little bit pacific in the terms we are mooting. |
In general, I agree with Ocean's assessment that pacifism doesn't have to be a perfectly consistent political philosophy in order to be the best political philosophy (outcomes) or the most moral (values). It just has to be better than competing philosophies like militarism or the just war doctrine.
3. FRobison:
Quote:
| Originally Posted by Wonderment  What you call justified "defensive wars" are usually bogus in my view; everyone always claims self-defense. Almost always, the self-defense card is played by parties who have failed to prevent war. In other words, they already flunked nonviolent communication, they resort to violence and claim the other guy started it. |
I believe you to be a moral person, Wonderment, but I'm sorry, I simply can't accept that position as anything other than blaming the victim, and little different from the rapist's claim: "She shouldn't have been wearing that short skirt."
Quote:
| In general, I agree with Ocean's assessment that pacifism doesn't have to be a perfectly consistent political philosophy in order to be the best political philosophy (outcomes) or the most moral (values). It just has to be better than competing philosophies like militarism or the just war doctrine. |
4. Me:
I have read accounts of pacifism and what I have extracted from my reading is that absolute pacifism is its only iteration worthy of the name, i.e. internally coherent. So my first set of arguments was aimed at making that point and making the point that using pacifism pragmatically is oxymoronic. I have either made that case or I haven’t.
My latter arguments, responding specifically to Wonderment and concluding my first set of thoughts about pacifism, were aimed at discrediting it as an absolute position, which I have either done or I haven’t.
Maybe I have insofar as Wonderment says that “absolute pacifism is off the table” but maybe I shouldn’t flatter myself because perhaps for him it was never on the table. But, by my lights, calling one’s self a pacifist, as I understand Wonderment to do, commits one, necessarily, to a position of absolute pacifism. Otherwise, I have tried to argue, one joins the rest of us in the world wishing for and preferring peace and peaceful ways, some more than others, but acceding to violence, personal and political, as the inevitable, inexorable way of the world. Wandering off that precise point for a moment I can’t help but cite a great insight into Machiavelli that I have posted on these boards a couple of few times before, by Richard Posner:
“People… have difficulty grasping the distinctive and essential components of political morality, comprising the qualities necessary in a statesman or other leader. Those qualities are strategic and interpersonal (manipulative, coercive, psychological) in character. They are quintessentially social. They constitute the morality, misunderstood as cynicism, expounded by Machiavelli, the morality that Weber contrasted with an ‘ethic of ultimate ends’, his term for the uncompromising absolutist ethics that one finds, for example, on the Sermon on the Mount. The ethics of political responsibility implies a willingness to compromise, to dirty one’s hands, to flatter and lie, to make package deals, to forgo the prideful self satisfaction that comes from self-conscious purity and devotion to principle. It requires a sense of reality, of proportion, rather than self-righteousness or academic smarts. The politician must have an ‘ability to let realities work upon him with inner consciousness and calmness.’”
This answers completely, to my mind, the, respectfully, fantasy of saying—if I understand it—“ I just think it's always wrong to engage in political violence, and that we must work constantly to avoid doing so”—just as "political violence", the nature of world and our condition in it answer the fantasy of saying—“that waging war, like engaging in torture, is always morally unacceptable”.
And these fantastical statements abound in sheer conceptual confusion. They are of a piece with the very pacific absolutism that has just been taken off the table.
What, along the same lines, does one say to “...’defensive wars’ are usually bogus…”, to failing to prevent war means that responsible parties “already flunked non violent communication” and to “I see genocide prevention as more of a temporary policing action than as war”?
All of these partake of a certain, again respectfully, self righteous, holier than thou refusal to see the world as it is. It's trite to say all right thinking people want peace, will urge governments to work for peace and bemoan the tragedy and hell of war. But who is it who will detach himself from the existential reality of war, the existential reality of evil in the world, by assigning those realities necessarily to systems of prior failures rather than meeting them head with the only means available: war, lethal force and political violence?
Just war theory is a complete and superior answer to pacifism because it abhors war, does the opposite of privileging it, sets analytical standards for the occasional, inevitable, dreaded but necessary resort to it, and sets limits in its conduct through doctrines like proportionately. Fallibility is not the answer to, nor the enemy of, necessity.
I’ll end this by noting that my critique of Wonderment’s position finds a kind of small bore apotheosis in this statement by him at some other point in this thread:
… Have you failed if you don't give the bully your lunch money and take the daily punch in the gut…
....No, the society has failed in creating and maintaining the conditions that enabled the bully to freely and finally commit the act of aggression. Bullies don't sprout in a vacuum. Where, you might ask, were the adults?....
Dear Wonderment: Ever will be there be bullies; ever will be there aggression; ever will there be evil in the world. One, of course, should try systemically to ameliorate enabling conditions. But only amelioration is possible. One deals with the world with one's hand tied behind one’s back in not recognizing and arming one’s self for evil’s inevitable eruption, all attempts at social improvement granted.
After all, properly understood, every utopia is a dystopia. We necessarily proceed in this world from limits, man's imperfection and fallibility.
5. Florian:
Quoting Wonderment: The invasion of Finland and the slaughter of millions of Jews and other civilians was the consequence of a chain of failed opportunities to resolve conflicts -- to communicate -- nonviolently.No, WW II was not the consequence of a chain of failed opportunites. It was the consequence of the decisions and the actions of one man bent on wreaking revenge for German defeat in WW I and on establishing a racially pure German Empire: Adolf Hitler. It is true that Hitler might have been driven from power, and might have been defeated before he destroyed Germany and the rest of Europe, but neither eventuality would have come about by "non-violent communication." Saying that Hitler's rise to power and the war resulted from the failure to communicate non-violently is nothing but an empty tautology. It is also extremely naive: some people have no interest in communicating peacefully, and some people are congenital liars.
Your basic premise is simply wrong and has the unintended consequence of making everyone except Hitler responsible for the war.
6. Me:
Quote:
| Just war theory is a complete and superior answer to pacifism because it abhors war, does the opposite of privileging it, sets analytical standards for the occasional, inevitable, dreaded but necessary resort to it, and sets limits in its conduct through doctrines like proportionately. Fallibility is not the answer to, nor the enemy of, necessity. |
I don't see how the Just Warist avoids the real blood. In other words, if you support a particular war being waged in your name, is there any reason why others and not you should do the waging?
Take a concrete example: When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, were you ready to say, "Yes! This is something I'm prepared to die for." If not, respectfully, I think you fail the hypocrisy test for Just War.
I will grant that some warists are prepared to kill and die at the drop of a Just War hat. When John McCain said, "We're all Georgians now!" I think that's what he meant: each of us should be prepared to kill and die to protect human rights in Georgia. (No, thank you).
7. FRobison:
Quote:
| Just war theory is a complete and superior answer to pacifism because it abhors war, does the opposite of privileging it, sets analytical standards for the occasional, inevitable, dreaded but necessary resort to it, and sets limits in its conduct through doctrines like proportionately. Fallibility is not the answer to, nor the enemy of, necessity. |
I don't see how the Just Warist avoids the real blood. In other words, if you support a particular war being waged in your name, is there any reason why others and not you should do the waging?
Take a concrete example: When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, were you ready to say, "Yes! This is something I'm prepared to die for." If not, respectfully, I think you fail the hypocrisy test for Just War.
I will grant that some warists are prepared to kill and die at the drop of a Just War hat. When John McCain said, "We're all Georgians now!" I think that's what he meant: each of us should be prepared to kill and die to protect human rights in Georgia. (No, thank you).
8. Florian:
Quote:
| Originally Posted by Wonderment I think we've covered our points of convergence and divergence pretty thoroughly, so I'm almost ready to rest my case. But I would like to hear your response to this: Since you believe in Just War, are you personally willing to kill and maim innocent people and likewise be exposed to being killed or maimed by your enemy, assuming your democratically elected leaders decide to engage in what they view as a just war? I don't see how the Just Warist avoids the real blood. In other words, if you support a particular war being waged in your name, is there any reason why others and not you should do the waging? Take a concrete example: When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, were you ready to say, "Yes! This is something I'm prepared to die for." If not, respectfully, I think you fail the hypocrisy test for Just War. I will grant that some warists are prepared to kill and die at the drop of a Just War hat. When John McCain said, "We're all Georgians now!" I think that's what he meant: each of us should be prepared to kill and die to protect human rights in Georgia. (No, thank you). |
There is nothing hypocritical in entrusting the fighting of an unavoidable war to a regular army (volunteer or conscript). That is simply a consequence of the division of labor in a modern society.
9. Don Zeko:
Quote:
| Originally Posted by Wonderment I am simply saying that in the political process leading to acts of aggression, many opportunities to defuse the "bomb" are missed. Hitler, for example, did not come to power violently; he was elected. Prior to that, opportunities were missed in the settlement of WWI. Hitler exploited resentments in the German people that reflect grievances that could have been addressed nonviolently but weren't. The invasion of Finland and the slaughter of millions of Jews and other civilians was the consequence of a chain of failed opportunities to resolve conflicts -- to communicate -- nonviolently. |
10. Operative:
Wonderment, how familiar are you with the Rwandan Genocide? I ask because I think it stands in direct contradiction to your hypotheses. The Rwandan Genocide happened precisely because non-violent communication was starting to work. Specifically, Habyarimana, the president of Rwanda, was putting the final touches on a legit peace agreement with Paul Kagame's RPF. Because a peaceful powersharing was about to occur, the most militant factions in Habyarimana's regime panicked. They shot down his plane (the culprit has never been concretely proven but virtually every serious historian/political scientist who looks at it finds that it had to have been militant Hutus) and proceeded to initiate the most rapid genocide in the history of civilization. Had the war continued and Kagame seized power more slowly, the Rwandan Genocide probably wouldn't have happened. There is no conceivable way to allege that the Genocide was the result of a failure of non-violent communication, because it is abundantly clear that the leaders of the genocide were absolutely deadset on eliminating all Tutsis from Rwanda.
I think that the flaw in your argument is that it is essentially entirely conceptual, to the point of having fairly little groundwork in the major pertinent examples to analyze it.
Re: Wonderment (Rwanda)
Quote:
| Wonderment, how familiar are you with the Rwandan Genocide? |
Quote:
| There is no conceivable way to allege that the Genocide was the result of a failure of non-violent communication, because it is abundantly clear that the leaders of the genocide were absolutely deadset on eliminating all Tutsis from Rwanda. |
I think this is true of other modern genocides: Turkey's and the Nazi genocide, for example. The challenge for Germans and Jews in Europe (not to blame the Jews for being murdered by sociopathic monsters) was in eradicating anti-Semitism. These types of nonviolent struggles are very daunting, but possible. You have to work constantly to diminish the threat of ethnic violence. Education and activism are your best "weapons."
11. Wonderment:
There is nothing hypocritical in entrusting the fighting of an unavoidable war to a regular army (volunteer or conscript). That is simply a consequence of the division of labor in a modern society.That makes it simple for you. I must admit I feel a great deal of guilt and shame knowing that my government sent thousands of teenagers to die and kill in Iraq in my name and with my money. My only consolation is that I worked hard to prevent President Bush from going to war. It was even more painful to live through Vietnam when other boys my age died for me. I think it would have been deeply immoral in an especially hideous way to tell the Vietnam conscripts, "This is simply a consequence of the division of labor; I go to college, you go to die in the jungle."
11. Florian:
Quoting Wonderment: That makes it simple for you. I must admit I feel a great deal of guilt and shame knowing that my government sent thousands of teenagers to die and kill in Iraq in my name and with my money. My only consolation is that I worked hard to prevent President Bush from going to war. It was even more painful to live through Vietnam when other boys my age died for me. I think it would have been deeply immoral in an especially hideous way to tell the Vietnam conscripts, "This is simply a consequence of the division of labor; I go to college, you go to die in the jungle."I said "unavoidable" war. As far as I am concerned Vietnam and the second Iraq war were both avoidable, and should have been avoided.
12. Wonderment:
I said "unavoidable" war. As far as I am concerned Vietnam and the second Iraq war were both avoidable, and should have been avoided.But that's precisely the problem. What war is pitched as anything less than necessary and unavoidable? It's always a variation on Colin Powell at the UN or Tony Blair ranting about nukes headed for London. We would all like to imagine that we can discern which wars are "really" necessary, but why should I suppose my powers of discernment are superior to those of the best and brightest of the West Point generals who invariably line up to tell us how necessary every US military action is? (Ditto for other countries besides the USA.
13. Operative:
Quote:
| Originally Posted by Wonderment I'm well acquainted with the matter. For one thing, it is covered rather extensively in Samantha Power's book on genocide which I referenced in this thread. I also said that I am not opposed to the UN doctrine of R2P (responsibility to protect), which is pretty much designed for genocide threats and failed state chaos. The problem, I believe, is that you are seeing NVC from a top-down perspective. If the leaders would only negotiate properly, things would be fine. That matters, of course, but I tend to see the real power of nonviolence coming from the people. In that sense the Rwandans had opportunities in the years leading up to the genocide. The atmosphere of immense ethnic hatred was not addressed, and racist thugs not only took over the media, broadcasting that the victims were cockroaches who should be exterminated, but they also exploited resentments and conflicts that had festered for decades (or more). I think this is true of other modern genocides: Turkey's and the Nazi genocide, for example. The challenge for Germans and Jews in Europe (not to blame the Jews for being murdered by sociopathic monsters) was in eradicating anti-Semitism. These types of nonviolent struggles are very daunting, but possible. You have to work constantly to diminish the threat of ethnic violence. Education and activism are your best "weapons." |
You mention education and activism, but do you really think this was feasible in Rwanda? "Activist Tutsi" would be a synonym for "Dead Tutsi," long before 1994. For thirty years, Habyarimana and his predecessor used anti-Tutsi sentiment to maintain their control, periodically fanning the flames when times were bad--there were several waves of organized, systematic violence prior to 94; one such incident caused Kagame's family to flee to Uganda.
I think that you're discounting that there are some people who very much desire evil in the world--Hitler would be one such individual, as would Pol Pot. Most Hutus, like most Germans and most of the people who carried out Pol Pot's orders, were not naturally genocidal maniacs, but they were like most people in general--quite capable of doing evil things and, yes, enjoying it.
I'm sure you've read (or at least familiar with) Milton's Obedience to Authority. That, the Stanford Prison Experiments, and several other incidents (eg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strip_s...rank_call_scam) show that people are quite willing to do vile things upon urging by what they believe to be figures of authority.
So it seems to me that the better thing would be to eliminate evil leaders. Shoot them, drop a bomb on their house, whatever. Take them out. Take away Pol Pot and a few other senior maniacs, and Cambodia doesn't lose over a quarter of its population. Take away those Hutu extremists and there is no genocide etc. Yes, I'm very much not a Pacifist.
14. Florian:
Quoting Wonderment: But that's precisely the problem. What war is pitched as anything less than necessary and unavoidable? It's always a variation on Colin Powell at the UN or Tony Blair ranting about nukes headed for London. We would all like to imagine that we can discern which wars are "really" necessary, but why should I suppose my powers of discernment are superior to those of the best and brightest of the West Point generals who invariably line up to tell us how necessary every US military action is? (Ditto for other countries besides the USA)Herodotus: οὐδεὶς γὰρ οὕτω ἀνόητος ἐστὶ ὅστις πόλεμον πρὸ εἰρήνης αἱρέεται· ἐν μὲν γὰρ τῇ οἱ παῖδες τοὺς πατέρας θάπτουσι, ἐν δὲ τῷ οἱ πατέρες τοὺς παῖδας. (1.87) [For there is no one so foolish as to prefer war to peace: for in one sons are burying fathers, and in the other fathers are burying sons.]
But there is no one so foolish, or so ignorant of history, as to think that war can always be avoided.
Your remarks about WW II and Hitler make me wonder if you have a grain of common sense.
15. Me:
Addressed to Wonderment:
So, I’ll make a few, most likely, concluding remarks.
But first in the interest of some congruence for this thread I want to summarize briefly some of the telling points made against your position since my last post so ably by others even if some were made less well by me:
1. You have assimilated inconceivably terrible historical examples to a series of failed diplomatic and communicatory lapses, thereby bypassing the specific need to confront those examples as they exist in order to maintain your pacific argument;
2. You simply refuse to accept the existence of evil and of state and non-state actors who will not only not be deterred by strategies of civil disobedience but will thrive on them in what they purvey, laughing at, and emboldened by, their absurdity as deterrents to their agendas;
3. You are naïve in that;
4. Your sense of history is attenuated making your arguments airy;
5. You conflate just war theory with its misapplications;
6. You miss the distinction between more benign social and international settings in which strategies of civil disobedience may be effective and social and international national settings where such a strategy is as nothing and only shedding blood—including inevitable innocent blood in collateral damage—will be efficacious;
7. You exclude middles--education and activism or nothing—leaving no space for armed lethal force when only it will suffice. For example as was well put by Operative:
… You mention education and activism, but do you really think this was feasible in Rwanda? "Activist Tutsi" would be a synonym for "Dead Tutsi," long before 1994. For thirty years, Habyarimana and his predecessor used anti-Tutsi sentiment to maintain their control, periodically fanning the flames when times were bad--there were several waves of organized, systematic violence prior to 94; one such incident caused Kagame's family to flee to Uganda.
I think that you're discounting that there are some people who very much desire evil in the world--Hitler would be one such individual, as would Pol Pot. Most Hutus, like most Germans and most of the people who carried out Pol Pot's orders, were not naturally genocidal maniacs, but they were like most people in general--quite capable of doing evil things…
Now just to deal briefly with your brief post to me #132: the thrust of it are these questions to me:
…Since you believe in Just War, are you personally willing to kill and maim innocent people and likewise be exposed to being killed or maimed by your enemy, assuming your democratically elected leaders decide to engage in what they view as a just war…
and:
…Take a concrete example: When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, were you ready to say, "Yes! This is something I'm prepared to die for." If not, respectfully, I think you fail the hypocrisy test for Just War…
These questions are easy (too easy) for me to answer. I can (too) easily say “yes” to both of them. But that answer would be just as facile as the questions and, respectfully, your questions betray the problems infecting your arguments throughout. Your first question is overly binary, unfairly loaded by its unfair terms and, ultimately, does not bear analysis. Are those really my only choices: be willing to kill and maim innocent people in what my country says is a necessary war and be a”warist” or else be a hypocrite?
If I take my citizenship in a warring state seriously and if I thought as an individual a war was just I’d like to think –I can’t assert without qualification how I would act—I’d be willing to go war for my country.
In going to war I’d like to think I'd obey my orders unless for reasons of sheer conscience I couldn’t. My orders would not be, unless aberrant, to kill and maim the innocent. If they were explicitly aberrant, then that would be an instance for the discrete exercise of conscience in refusing to obey them—an abiding choice that your questions don’t allow for. I’d obey normal orders understanding that it would be possible in the fog of war that they might occasion collateral damage—the maiming or killing of innocent people. So sad to say, but that’s what happens in war and it’s too bad. In a war worth fighting—say policing genocide, to use your concession as an example—there will be in the nature of the case killing and maiming of the innocent.
Further, I’d like to think I’d do something else: if at any point I felt in good faith, deep conscience that I couldn't obey my induction or my subsequent orders, I’d squarely meet the legal consequences of my refusal.
It’s none of my business really. I’m not an American. But if anyone asked me, I’d say your country should have a draft.
And if I were of draft age and what was put to me was fighting to roll back Saddam Hussein from Kuwait--the first Gulf War, certainly a just one--I’d answer your second question as I have answered your first but as reframed and made sensible and contextual by me.
If your argument is that I should be ready as a 63 year old man--about to turn 64 on November 11th of all days, Armistice Day--to go and fight in a war I think just or else I’m a hypocrite—if that’s your argument—it’s absurd. No one is asking me or would. What attenuated abstraction of an answer would you have me give you?
I’ll call all this a wrap.
I have tried mightily to be sober and respectful in my responses and arguments to you. I have tried not to be dismissive, insulting or remarking of huge, overarching assertions born of incommensurate analysis and argument.
It hasn’t been easy.
One last joke of a note, I can’t resist: A Quaker farmer couldn’t get his mule to move, no matter what. Finally, he looked the mule straight in the eye and said to him . "Mule, you know I’ll never curse you, or strike you; but if you don't start moving right now, I’ll sell you to a Baptist who will!" The mule began trotting very briskly.
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