As an anarchist, I must be a pacifist, since the absence of the State would make war, as I define war, impossible. I'm not opposed (in the same way, at least) to personal self-defense, exact vengeance, or violence between consenting adults, but these are all different from war, which inevitably involves the killing, torture, maiming, imprisonment, terrorization and impoverishment of numerous innocents. There is no other kind of war, "just" or "unjust". However, I have not made a big point of this because I take it most of you, and most people in general, find such things acceptable in certain contexts and under certain rhetorics. Indeed, it has been very difficult for me to accept.
In any case, the war will continue whether the Left supports it or not, so the most practical question is not whether the war is just or or unjust, but how to deal with attempts to radically expand it, and with the repression and fascism which will accompany and follow it, as they do all wars and especially those of imperial acquisition. There may also be a depression connected with the organization of this particular exercise which will present other problems.
I don't agree, as someone may have suggested, that the present war presents an opportunity for promoting leftist politics. _My_ politics, at least, can't be advanced by the anger, grief, despair and catastrophe now being cooked.
-- Gordon