[QUOTE=Martin Hyde]
I hope I’m not speaking out of turn by going back to the OP, though of course there’s never enough discussion-time spent on the Iraq war.
I take two separate views in regard to the term Pacifism. For one, I reject absolutely the claim that a pacifist is anyone who only supports defensive wars or only supports “necessary” wars. Simply because in the real world nearly any war can be labeled defensive/necessary if one is willing to be willfully ignorant.
Even wars that are legitimately defensive in nature my be brought about entirely by the defender. For example imagine a situation in which Country B gets all of its fresh water from a river that goes through Country A, let’s presume this is happening in a void in which there is no international organizations or even any formal agreements between these two states. Country A decides to dam up the river and Country B now has very little water for its people and pretty much no water for agriculture. In effect, Country A is killing Country B. Country A has done nothing to violate the territorial integrity of Country B, but Country A is most certainly destroying Country B, just without the hassle of using military means to do so.
Country B attacks Country A and destroys the dam that Country A built. A lot of us would agree with Country B’s action, some of us wouldn’t (some would say there’s never a justification to invading another country, period.) But either way, all of us would agree that technically speaking in fighting this invasion Country A would be fighting a defensive war. It doesn’t matter that the war would never have happened if Country A hadn’t built the dam, nor does it matter that Country A was in effect committing a genocide–technically speaking Country A was attacked and was not the aggressive party in the conflict.
My opinion is a true pacifist would oppose this war, because a true pacifist believes there should never be a war between states, period. Even by fighting a defensive war, you’re committing an immoral act.
I’ve never viewed pacifism as an “easy” ideology but rather one only people with very strong convictions can buy into (not defending oneself is naturally quite at odds with our base human nature to survive.)
I believe there are two types of pacifism. One is on the State/Geopolitical level and the other is on the personal level.
Someone may, for example, be a politician who advocates wars but still, on a personal level, buy into a philosophy in which they never commit any personal acts of violence.
However, I’d say the norm is that while some people may be pacifists in the geopolitical sense, fewer are pacifists in their personal dealings.
This question and answer is from a website which has a few answers from an Amish individual (obviously the questions were asked and answered through a third party individual who uses computers as Old Order Amish aren’t exactly tech-savvy.)
That’s what I’d consider “real” pacifism. Meaning that you support no wars and that you’d do nothing violent to defend even your own life or the life of loved ones.
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Interesting.
I wondered if by pacifism you meant the idea of no killing or if you meant no warfare. As you included the Amish post, I take it you mean no killing.
In that case, technically, Country B could take out the dam without killing anyone in Country A. If that were possible, they’d have been at ‘war’ but pacifistically.