pub crawler said:
"STING2, in your opinion, how does one work toward becoming a pacifist?"
STING2 said:
Pub,
By being diplomatic and avoiding resorting to options that might include violence unless its absolutely necessary.
STING2, the ways in which I strive to be a pacifist are as follows:
1) I don't support war of any kind.
2) I never support bombing a country, and I am deeply troubled when I have the knowledge innocents might be killed due to a boming such as the apparently imminent U.S.-planned bombing of Iraq.
3) In instances of genocide, I
might support a military intervention. In the case of the Rwandan genocide of 1994, I would have supported military intervention because every day during that holocaust several thousand innocent people were literally butchered with machetes. Rwandan children watched their parents being chopped to pieces, only to then be murdered themselves. And we, the free world, watched all this happen and did nothing.
Even in Rwanda, though, I would only have supported a very limited use of force via ground troops -- no indiscriminant bombing. Canadian Gen. Dalliare was in charge of U.N. forces in Rwanda at the time. He asked for 5,000 troops -- he said he could quell the massacres within days with that number of troops. He didn't get his troops. I believe he should have. I believe we should have gone in and jailed the "genocidaires," as they were called. I DON'T think we should have gone in and indiscriminately blown them away with artillery. We would have been stooping to their level of barbarism. We should only have used the force necessary to stop the senseless murders.
My point being that, in my opinion,
Rwanda was a very clear case where military intervention was needed. But even so, the question of
how much force is a dilemma for a pacifistic person such as myself.
All that said, let's re-examine your answer to the question I asked, i.e., How does one works toward becoming a pacifist?
Your answer: "By being diplomatic and avoiding resorting to options that might include violence unless its absolutely necessary."
STING2, my difficulty with your answer is that it is absolutely ambiguous.
Question: What does it mean to be "diplomatic?"
Question: When is violence absolutely necessary?
Frankly, with your history of hawkish posting, I am astonished by your admission that you are striving to be a pacifist. That is why I am so curious about your statements about pacifism.
Here's the issue: If you're going to stick with the definition of pacifism you've given, then by that definition you're free to behave in any manner you so choose and you can still define yourself as a pacifist.
I'd be interested to hear what
specifically makes you a person who is striving to be a pacifist.