She draws parrallels between the horrid murders of the school girls in Amish PA and the attacks of September 11 . That communities response to the evil visited on them is truly humbling. From the article:
She then extrapolates their response to what they would have done on September 12, 2001.
How would our nation, our world, be different if we actively waged peace? Would we have been overrun by the Islamic horde? Would we be sitting among ashes and cinders? Or would we have moved toward a more peaceful co-existance with those today we call our “enemy”?
It is a pretty short article and I encourage you to read it before you respond.
It almost seems better to die waging peace than to live waging war.
I don’t agree. I think there are things worth fighting for, worth killing others to protect. I respect the position of the pacifist, but I don’t share it.
First off, the US was in contact with members of the Bin Laden family, some of whom were here, cleared from being security risks, and allowed to go their way.
(Some have read conspiratorial meanings into this, btw).
Second, the anti-Amish shooter’s family were among his psychological victims. They weren’t collaborators with him. It is good & right for the Amish to offer their aid & comfort to them.
Third, Christ’s “pacifist” commands are for the individual not to retaliate against personal insult; not for people to abdicate responsibility to protect the weak from
attack from the strong.
Fourth, it’s easy to proclaim forgiveness when the only assailant is dead. I’m not ABSOLUTELY sure about Amish beliefs, but I’d bet that those Amish who speak of forgiving him also believe he is burning in Hell right now (and rightly so)… there
may be some differences with that in Mennonite circles.
If the Amish or Gahndi or any full pacifist were in charge of the “War on Terror”,
well, get ready to kiss the Quran & salute the Crescent.
Quote:
Originally Posted by newcrasher
It almost seems better to die waging peace than to live waging war.
That’s your right. It’s mine to keep my gun clean & ready.
The essential problem is one of scale - I can offer forgiveness of wrongs committed against me, and the leaders of a small, closely-knit, like-minded community such as this Amish community can reasonably offer forgiveness on behalf of those who have been wronged, but could anyone properly represent the USA in such a manner post Sept 11? Such national gestures are possible - Mandela’s response to the white community after being released from captivity, leading to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and how that was taken to heart by the black people of South Africa, is one that touched me personally - but very rare (at least rare in being successful).
I sincerely doubt that a pacifist approach can prevent further acts of violence.
But I think the healing of this community will be quicker and more complete than ours as a nation post-9/11. Forgiveness is just as vital for the forgiver than it is for the forgiven. Perhaps more so,
Oh, and I should note that a nation that acted at all times like the Amish would be far, far less likely to attract acts of terrorism than the actual US is.
They’d also be riper for outright conquest, at least in the days where the international community was more likely to let that kind of thing pass.
Perhaps. But it is quite clear that violence does not itself necessarily prevent further acts of violence.
The U.S. as the world’s bully has not been effective as a strategy in deterring terrorism. If anything, the Iraq War has exacerbated the hatred of the extremists, especially those who breed terrorists. Americans are not safer now than we were six years ago.
I’d imagine that at least some of them believe that he was mentally ill and than an understanding, forgiving God wouldn’t hold actions against him which were done while he was insane.
This is the most important point to me. In a case with a one-off attack, an approach such as this is excellent. If there is a campaign or series of attacks however, taking a pacifistic approach is not conducive to stopping those attacks.
And Alessan goes to the point. If all the terrorists were dead, sure, forgive them, what could it hurt?
Except what do you do with the other terrorists who aren’t dead? Roberts wasn’t part of a little girl murdering club, he was a lone nut. But what if there were such a little girl murdering club still active, it’s members pledged to kill more little girls? Are you going to forgive them, turn the other cheek, and do nothing as they gather their weapons? What about when they walk into the school? Are you going to stand there when they pull out a gun and start shooting?
Well, there is such a little girl murdering club out there, and they are gathering weapons, and they do hope to murder more little girls if they can. So what should our response be to the existance of such people? Do nothing and pray for them?
I’m not sure it makes a lot of difference; from what I’m reading, the proper view of the state of grace of any individual other than onesself seems to be null - simply unexplored.
AFAIK, no pacifist organization says that you’re not supposed to try to prevent violence or protect the weak from violence. In fact, according to the principles of Gandhian nonviolence, you must do so, even at the risk of your own safety or life. You’re just not allowed to commit violence yourself in the process.
Thus it would be perfectly acceptable for a group of pacifists to surround a school shooter to block his line of fire and to take his gun away from him. Some of them would surely get shot, but with luck they would save the other intended victims. (As I understand it, that was the rationale behind the offer of one of the murdered Amish girls to let the killer shoot her first: she thought there was a chance that he wouldn’t want to go on shooting after murdering his first victim, so the other girls might survive as a result.)
The thing is, for nonviolent resistance to work, the nonviolent resisters and their supporters usually have to greatly outnumber the violent attackers and their supporters. Nonviolent resistance has a “network externality” effect: the more people who practice and support it, the more effective it is.
So (assuming this FAQ is the truthful record it claims to be), it sounds like they simply would(should) not act violently, even under the most extreme provocation.
Gandhi successfully gained India independence from the British using non-violence.
Northern Ireland saw terrorist violence for decades. The British used an army, the SAS, courts with only judges and highly dubious interrogation techniques. What finally worked was negotiation.
