Angry in the Great White North
Is there really such a thing as pacifism?
Sunday, April 02, 2006 at 09:16 PM

Read other posts by Steve Janke published by the National Post
Leader

A thought that has been bouncing around in my head for a little while now. Three members of the Christian Peacemaker Teams were rescued last week by heavily armed coalition soldiers in Iraq. Held hostage for months, only one has shown any gratitude to these soldiers. Another has said nothing of thanks for the rescue. The other has suggested that the rescue was a charade to make the coalition look good.

The CPT is an organization that has been extremely critical of the US-led coalition in Iraq. But more disturbing is the way the CPT suggests that Iraq under Saddam Hussein was better off, that nothing could justify the invasion (not the gassing of the Kurds, the massacres of Shiites, the invasions of Iran and Kuwait, the horror of the police state), and that the murderous gangs operating in Iraq are somehow morally superior to the coalition soldiers.

Ian Robinson has a column today in which he notes that pacifism can only exist where the state is ready to use violence to ensure that a pacifist's right to express an opinion and to act on that opinion is protected.

That helped me focus my thought. I'll take it a step further. Pacifism is myth. It cannot exist, since its existence requires violence to be undertaken. Since it inspires that violence it is responsible for it. Pacifism by violence is not pacifism at all.

Here is what I mean. Take it for granted that pacifism only makes sense against a backdrop of violence. In other words, pacifism can be recognized in contrast to violence. A pacifist is a pacifist because he chooses to forgo violence as a means of reaching his goal.

Remember that the CPT is made up of radical pacifists:

Those who advocate a philosophy of total non-violence at all levels may offer pragmatic arguments for the benefits of non-violent resistance; however, a radical pacifistic position is in the final analysis a moral, spiritual or religious principle intended to be maintained at all cost, and therefore does not necessarily imply any optimistic expectation for the material benefits of this policy. Radical pacifists would believe that it is better to be killed while sticking firmly to their principles of nonviolence than to fight back and survive (principle over practicality). They would consider submitting to violence against them the only morally acceptable option, and consider their death noble martyrdom.

Fine. But if a pacifist puts himself in a situation in which he knows he is likely to have violence committed on his person, and in which he knows it is likely that yet another aggressive force will use violence to prevent it, he is encouraging violence by his actions.

The CPT certainly understood that to be the case, as witnessed by their letters imploring that violence not be used to rescue them if they were kidnapped, showing that they also knew that they were likely targets of kidnappers.

But can a pacifist precipitate a violent act in someone else and still be called a pacifist? And by precipitate, I mean knowingly create the circumstances in which a violent act, or more likely multiple violent acts, were inevitable?

Wouldn't a true pacifist recognize that his own presence would be a trigger to violence, and so to avoid violence which he believes to be morally wrong in all circumstances, ensure that he was not present?

But then a pacifist is always a potential target of violence. That a pacifist can live by and large unmolested in the West (a society these pacifists seem to hate so much) is because of the threat of state-sanctioned violence that deters those who would use violence to impose their will on the otherwise helpless pacifist, as Ian Robinson pointed out.

But my point is that the pacifist invites that attention, both from those who want to impose their will, and from those who see as their role to prevent that imposition.

Pacifism encourages violence, which means it isn't pacifism at all. And that is as true in North America as it is Iraq.

When the CPT went into Iraq, they were as responsible for the violent acts that followed as surely as if they went in armed themselves. By their own letters, they knew that to be true. That's not pacifism. In fact, I suspect radical pacifism is a logical impossibility.

Of course, being a logical impossibility doesn't stop the CPT from denigrating those who make the self-indulgent moralistic fakery of the CPT a possibility.

Donate to the AGWN Legal Fund
Main Story

Search for more opinions from Canadian bloggers on these related keywords