I wonder. If I examine my own feelings over time. I have reacted with anger toward the pacifist position. Why? Because pacifists are arrogant? No. Because they demand that I be peaceful? No. Most pacifists are quite benign. I wonder.
I pick it up in comments about the proposed Study Action on Peacemaking. The pacifists are going to make us debate this thing. One wise minister expresses the feeling that putting the question in such with such clarity is manipulative! It will make us go to plenary and discuss this idea, an idea which most of us already reject. We would not otherwise go to the plenary. Thus we are manipulated.
Only some of the questions in the Study Action Initiative pose a pacifist challenge. Pacifists are a minority, does that mean that they should shut up? Does it mean we should not discuss a pacific option because most of us want to keep our options open? Many of us think that we might find something to fight for or against some day. Not now, but some day.
If I examine my feelings I think that part of my anger with pacifism is my own inner pacifism. I find my principled just war reasoning to be more comfortable, but when I put on that just war theological hat and look at real wars in real history I conclude that there never has been a just war. No war in history has ever been "just" given an honest application of the religious communities criteria for "Just War."
I ask another wise minister for her opinion, she was instrumental in bring the Study/Action Initiative to us this year. She believes that many of us are anxious about this proposed study action proposal because it challenges us to self examination. Most of our Statements of Conscience have been about "them." This is about us. We are asked to study a question that will ask us to look at our own propensity for violence, and what is a principled rational for just war.
I suspect those who think that the U.S. Civil War, or World War II or the American Revolution were just wars will be challenged to do some more reading in their history. Did they miss what many others have found unjust about these wars, or do they dismiss fire bombing of Dresdan, the slaughter of Cherokee villagers to remove their potential threat (on orders of G.W. Washington) or the war of starvation ordered by Lincoln against the civilian's in the Confederate states. All those are on the list of "do not do" for just wars. Just war theory doesn't say "have just motives," it commands us to fight with just means. No attacks on civilians. Limited means to achieve clear ends.
What that has left me with is a just war theology looking for a just state power to implement it. Why am I angry with my inner pacifism? Because it judges me absurd.
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