Can I be a Pragmatic Pacifist?

In an earlier post, I reflected on means and ends in politics as this theme related to the awarding of the Nobel Prize to Liu Xiaobo.   Those reflections relate to the broader question of whether good ends ever justify undesirable means.  Principled pacifists say no.

I remember struggling with this as a young man.  Subjected to the draft during the Vietnam War era, being a very early and precocious opponent to the war, I tried to convince myself that I was a pacifist.  I read the writings of Gandhi and A.J. Muste.   I looked into the pacifist activities of the Fellowship of Reconciliation.  Although I realized that making the claim of being a Jewish pacifist would be practically difficult, I wanted to explore possibilities.  But in the end, I gave up, because I couldn’t convince myself that I wouldn’t fight against Hitler, and I recognized then and  see now that there are many other instances where I cannot oppose military action as a matter of absolute conviction.

I was not an enthusiastic supporter of either the first war in Iraq or the war in Afghanistan, for example.  It was not clear to me that a military response to either crisis was the appropriate one.  But on the other hand, I couldn’t in good conscience oppose either war.   The slogan “No Blood for Oil” rang hollow.  America was attacked from bases that were protected and developed in the Taliban’s Afghanistan, and Saddam Hussein was indeed a brutal dictator who worked to create a totalitarian order, as Kanan Makiya, ably demonstrated in his gripping book, The Republic of Fear.

But, on the other hand, means do have a way of defining political action whether or not the ends are justified.  The way we have fought the wars, and the way our allies have ruled, have undermined the arguments for the war in Afghanistan.  And indeed the way the Gulf War was fought and the lessons that were drawn from the war cast into doubt its initial justification, especially as this was utilized for the George W. Bush’s war of aggression in Iraq.

I am not a pacifist as a matter of principle, but I still am trying to learn.  When I was a young man, I couldn’t commit myself to pacifism, because I appreciated that there were limits to non violent resistance.  Now I see, rather, the limitations of violence, drawn to that position, not because of absolute conviction, but for practical reasons.   For in the military resistance to fanaticism in Afghanistan and in the military resistance to tyranny in Iraq, the limitations of military action have become quite apparent.

The means have determined the ends.  Indeed, they make the end appear as domination, as an end in itself.  I hope that my fellow citizens and our President keep this in mind when the review of the Afghan War is conducted later this year.

I was not able to oppose the war to begin with, but I think I should have.  In retrospect, it is absolutely imperative to remember the limits of military power, and the unintended consequences that result when those limits are not recognized.  I am convinced that now the means of leaving must be creative and responsible, but leave we must.