So do the ends justify the means? If we take the
negative literally, all force is immoral. If a burglar ties up and
threatens your family, you have no right to shoot him. After all the
ends don't justify the means. To the pacifist, to argue otherwise puts
you in the same category as the goosestepping stormtroopers who marched
into Poland.

As irrational as the pacifist premise that all force, all resistance,
all war... is immoral; it is at the heart of most anti-war arguments.
The entire system of philosophy, the works of Tolstoy, Gandhi, Bertrand
Russell, are built on arguing that all force is immoral... whether in
self-defense or out of resistance to evil.

Of course no nation, ...

So do the ends justify the means? If we take the
negative literally, all force is immoral. If a burglar ties up and
threatens your family, you have no right to shoot him. After all the
ends don't justify the means. To the pacifist, to argue otherwise puts
you in the same category as the goosestepping stormtroopers who marched
into Poland.

As irrational as the pacifist premise that all force, all resistance,
all war... is immoral; it is at the heart of most anti-war arguments.
The entire system of philosophy, the works of Tolstoy, Gandhi, Bertrand
Russell, are built on arguing that all force is immoral... whether in
self-defense or out of resistance to evil.

Of course no nation, no people, could survive for very long on such a
philosophy. But nevertheless the opposition to America, Israel or any
other country acting in defense of itself is based precisely on the
argument that all violence is wrong, whether it is a policeman shooting
an armed gunman, or a Predator drone targeting a terrorist's vehicle or
the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks being waterboarded in order to
gather intel about Al Queda's future plans.