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• Tuesday, January 13, 2009 01:28 PM

  @rrheard

  Plenty of blame to go around. Maybe if we broke out of the mindset that violence (or threats) solves problems rather than creates them (with rare exception) then maybe we'd stop believing in the phony myth of American exceptionalism and treat people not as children who need enlightening but as humans who've been on the blue ball organized into working societies a whole lot longer than us.

  I think that's exactly right.

  I wonder, though, if even that "rare exception" needs to get wiped out too, so that the advocacy of violence will have no place at all to hide.

  Usually, the sacred "exception" is Nazi Germany. While extinguishing the Reich certainly stopped many horrible crimes in progress, it's simplistic to say it "solved" them. Shooting a burglar doesn't address his drug use or the reasons for it, it just ends it, just as imprisoning him only moves it to another venue. And it creates other problems. Sometimes the overall effect is beneficial, but there are always downsides to using violence as a solution---even to the legitimized state violence we accept as part of the "rule of law."

  Germany probably suffered from 2 main problems that Hitler himself appeared to solve: (1) crippling sanctions/crippled economy (2) physical/psychological insecurity vis-à-vis Russia and Britain. What "solved" those problems---temporarily---was the Marshall Plan and the US Army and the comfortable SOFA that keeps it there. Not defeating the Wehrmacht---that simply allowed those real solutions to be put in place.

  In the final analysis, Germany's problems still aren't permanently solved. In the same way, even violence in self-defense only "solves" the immediate problem of fending off your attacker.

  So, let's not mince words. I don't consider myself a pacifist, but let's face up to the facts that are before us. Violence always creates at least as many problems as it solves.

  (If there's an exception to this, it's in the value of periodic, small foreign adventures that fail completely, kill everyone who volunteered for them, and remind the rest of us to never do it again.)

  —Baldie McEagle Read Baldie McEagle's other letters
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