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Hero For Christ

Peace



© 2007 Christopher Sunami
5/18/07


As a hardcore pacifist, I am often asked to consider the problem of the "just war." Most typically, I am asked to consider the position of America immediately prior to its entry into World War II. Hitler, the marauding maniac, was conquering country after country. Our allies England and France were in dire straits, and the wholesale murder of the German and Polish Jews was well under way. Surely, in that situation, war was the only possible moral choice. Hitler had to be stopped, and force of arms was the only option.

The danger in this scenario is that it places you, the decision-maker, in a late moment of history when all peaceful options have been eliminated. The question is designed to imprison the decision-maker in a situation with only one reasonable answer. If we were permitted to run the clock backwards, however, we would eventually reach a point where Hitler's rise to power could have been aborted without the misery and destruction of war.

For instance, it is widely accepted that the punitive nature of the Treaty of Versailles (which brought an end to World War I) was a major contributor to the later popularity of the Nazis, who exploited the simmering resentment of the German people.

Less well-publicized, but equally well-established is the fact that American investors pumped large sums of money into Nazi Germany prior to the outbreak of hostilities (but after Hitler's fascism and hatred of the Jews were already apparent). Without the support of such American businessmen (notably including Henry Ford and Prescott Bush) the Nazi regime would have been weaker financially, and thus less-well equipped with weaponry and artillery.

In other words, with different decisions at the end of World War I, and with different decisions by American investors in the time between the World Wars, it is possible that what we now know as the Third Reich might never have existed.

It is my firm belief that every war is preventable, but that it takes an average of twenty years to prevent a war, since the seeds of the next war are generally sown in the aftermath of its predecessor. Thus, the current Gulf War is the child of the previous Gulf War of the 1990's. This helps explain the failure of the antiwar movement to prevent the new Gulf War. By the time people mobilized to oppose the war, it was already inevitable.

I would advice all true pacifists to begin immediately to work towards preventing the next big war. The seeds of that war are obviously being scattered worldwide even at this very moment, particularly given the widespread anti-American sentiment produced by the current war.

In addition, the next war may be particularly crucial to stop, since it may not be a survivable conflict for humanity.

I am sure there are those who would complain that I have subverted the entire point of the original scenario, which was designed to show that even a dedicated pacifist must admit the inevitability or even the morality of war under extreme circumstances. I would counter however, that it is our insistence on waiting until the point of inevitability for decision-making that precludes the very real possibility of peaceful solutions to human conflict.

It is a similar question to the one also often posed to me to the effect of whether I would violently defend myself and my loved ones against an armed intruder in my home.

My answer is that I run a program which serves inner-city youth, and that every time a teenager passes through our doors, I think to myself that perhaps this is a person who will be a little less likely to drift into criminal behavior, and perhaps end up as an armed intruder in my home of the home of one of my neighbors.

Generally my interlocutor replies that I am avoiding the issue. Yet from my perspective, I am the only one confronting the issue head on. It seems to me if the only scenario we are willing to entertain is the one where the person has already embraced a criminal life, armed himself, and entered the home, then the only answers we can ever find will be ones of violence. If you want to espouse a non-violent philosophy, therefore, you must commit yourself to preventative action.

The same is true in the case of wars. I believe that it is immoral to be a pacifist UNLESS you are actively committed to goal of preventing war well-in-advance. One may not be passive and a pacifist simultaneously. While others may blindly enjoy the deceptive calm of a seeming peacetime, the true pacifist must be alert to any and all dangerous geopolitical undercurrents, and must respond appropriately.

In summary, I may not have been successful in preventing the war in which we are currently engaged, but I remain dedicated and optimistic in regards to the goal of stopping the next war before it starts.

See Also:

  1. War
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