mbs: Well the internal inconsistency is the whole damn point!!!! But undeniably it's confusing because at least one of us is confused.
CCox: Here is a case where an exception does test the rule. At an early meeting of the coalition here I rose to note that it did not consist wholly of adherents of "non-violence"; that I for example approved of the Vietnamese use of violence to oppose the u.s. invasion and the U.S. use of violence to suppress the insurrection of the slavedrivers. Later on a woman from the ISU history department (speciality: Civil War history) remarked to me in private conversation that she _was_ a pacifist, but that she could not quite avoid feeling that Lincoln had been right to call out the army. I think the rule survives the test: she was quite clear in noting that her particular judgment clashed with her general principle, and she was quite clear what the general principle was. Accurate language -i.e., the possibility of communication -- is maintained while ordinary human complexity and sloppiness is honored.
mbs: YES: She is accurately describing her own inconsistency. She is a pacifist *but.* In other words, she is not a pacifist. But she is not vile.
CCox: But Max is trying by sheer violence (and I think considerable historical distortion) to apply the generic term "pacifist" (specifically qualified with "selective") to persons who never were nor never called themselves pacifists of any kind. They were/are just persons that independently of any general principles about war or violence correctly thought this that and the other war (e.g. the u.s. invasion of vietnam, the u.s. invasion of the Dominican Republic; the u.s. assault on Afghanistan) were criminal operations. If they can be called (selective) "pacifists," than every single blooming homo sapiens ever born was a pacifist, and the word loses all meaning.
mbs: "Violence"? Oh my. I will try to be a bit more pacific in this particular instance, and I promise only to use my power for Good and not for Evil. The people described who decided to condemn this or that war may or may not have been pacifists, depending on how they justified their criticism. If they said, I don't like the Vietnam War because I urge the victory of world communism, or because we'll get our butts kicked, those would not be pacifist arguments. If they said I oppose this war because I oppose all war, that would be a pacifist argument. Fine. But if they also said they oppose all war but they support, say, the Civil War, then we have a problem.
On this list, as noted in previous post, there are arguments against the U.S. campaign on grounds that the U.S. stinks and merits no support, ever. Fine. No pacifism, that. But they are also arguments that violence is always bad (or ineffective), that innocents will suffer, or that the war is engaged for ulterior motives. Those arguments condemn all wars (obviously including the Civil War), and you can't make them if you have a few favorite wars of your own.
Now communists have been known to oppose wars they don't like with rhetoric that caters to those who are uncomfortable with war per se. That may be smart politics, but it's opportunistic and out of place in a left listserv since it insults the general intelligence. I am not accusing anyone of doing this, but obviously it goes on. We had a discussion about revolutionary defeatism during the Balkans flap; I invoked that phrase and there ensued a convoluted debate about the justice of WWII. Hence my resort to a less ambiguous (sic) case of a war about which there would be a broader approving consensus, namely the Civil War.
My complaints are really directed at two different groups: we have pacifist rhetoric used a) by revolutionaries who would not reject the use of violence in certain situations, and b) by pacifists who cannot rationalize their philosophy in the context of certain wars in the past. The former are simply stooping to opportunism, although they are not vile. The latter are implicitly willing to weigh the goods against the bads in the case of good wars (i.e., the horrorsof the Civil War are justified by its consequences), but sometimes refuse to do so in the present situation (or the Balkans), instead resorting to shallow absolutes that are inconsistent with their judgements in other matters. In both cases, debate would be improved by a focus on real positive and negative consequences.
CCox: I come back to my initial judgment: the phrase "selective pacifist" is is seriously bad writing -- and one can't take seriously any discourse which seriously uses the term. (How's that for using a word three times in one sentence with a different sense every time.) Carrol
mbs: I have to say, in all honesty, I really, really don't understand your argument. The sense of it completely escapes me.