Should I Become more Pro-War?

[Eric the Green]

I hate war. So often it is needless destruction and pain, one empire, dynasty or nation fighting another; wars over boundaries of one group against another, for resources, etc. I am against those kinds of wars.

But these days, I notice something. I support and like the people-power risings that have happened all over the world increasingly since people power was invented at Berkeley in 1964, or perhaps by Gandhi in the 1920s and 30s in India. These risings powered the sixties/seventies peace, ecology and civil rights/black power and other ethnic and gender movements. From there they spread to the anti-aparteid movement in South Africa, and then the risings that toppled western backed tyrannies in the mid/late 1980s and the communist tyrannies in 1989. More such risings happened in Eastern Europe in 1997, in the enormous anti-Iraq war demonstrations in Feb.2003; and then from Iran in 2009 the people-power spread to Tunisia in late 2010 and all across North Africa and the Middle East starting in 2011. From there the number and places of these risings is almost too hard to count; in Georgia, Ukraine and Russia, in Brazil and other Latin American places, in Turkey, in Iraq and Lebanon, in Thailand, in Tajikistan and Belarus, to Hong Kong and north-western China, and frequently in the USA-- especially in the Trump era, and now to Burma, and to Russia again.

What happens to these risings? Most of them are crushed and result in more tyranny. Syria was an especially grotesque example, and the refugees this uprising and its brutal repression caused also led to nationalist reactionary movements in Europe, including Brexit and the election of Boris Johnson. Tyranny has accelerated everywhere, and is now as dominant a form of government as it ever was in the 1930s or in the age of kings, caesaro-papism or imperialism.

What occurs to me is this: why should the state have a monopoly of the weapons and the arms which they use to impose the will of a few tyrants over what their people clearly want: freedom and democracy?

So, shouldn't freer nations supply weapons to freedom-loving citizens of these tyrannies who are rising up and getting crushed, and who organize armed resistance and ask for assistance? These are revolutionary wars. Wars to defend the people against their tyrant. Bloody, perhaps futile; perhaps turning into proxy wars; but maybe justified, and the only hope citizens have to attain freedom? A freedom that admittedly can be lost again, or which the citizens can themselves vote to lose again, as citizens of Egypt, Poland, Hungary, Turkey and Brazil (and almost in the USA in 2016) recently did, for example? The new boss being the same as the old boss? But could this be the only way in which progress can happen again? (and, of course, it also depends on us knowing what progress is, which many Americans (i.e. Trump followers) do not know these days, or didn't know in the sixties either)

Or should we continue to place our hopes in non-violent demonstrations or civil disobedience, general strikes, etc, in which millions upon millions of people put their bodies on the line, and put them against the levers and the gears of the tyrannical machine run by a few tyrants in order to make it stop, as Mario Savio said at Berkeley in 1964? Put our hopes in that, and hope that it could still work, even though right now it has resulted in failure after failure?

I'm wondering, right now. Must freedom always be attained with blood? The cost of freedom is high, but Americans have always paid it, said JFK.

[Bob Butler 54]

(02-09-2021, 02:51 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: I'm wondering, right now. Must freedom always be attained with blood? The cost of freedom is high, but Americans have always paid it, said JFK.

I have long said that non violence works better in democracies, where leaders have some sense of conscience, where the vote hangs heavily on those that ignore the people.  The autocracies, it works less well.  You look at places like Russia and China and you wonder what could crush an autocracy.  I don't see it ending always the same way.  Sometimes too many people protest to arrest.  Sometimes you have to turn to revolution.  Sometimes, like the old Soviet Union or recently with the floods and coal buying fiasco in China, you get yourself in financial trouble trying to compete financially with the west.

But I am in no hurry.

[David Horn]

(02-09-2021, 03:03 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(02-09-2021, 02:51 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: I'm wondering, right now. Must freedom always be attained with blood? The cost of freedom is high, but Americans have always paid it, said JFK.

I have long said that non violence works better in democracies, where leaders have some sense of conscience, where the vote hangs heavily on those that ignore the people.  The autocracies, it works less well.  You look at places like Russia and China and you wonder what could crush an autocracy.  I don't see it ending always the same way.  Sometimes too many people protest to arrest.  Sometimes you have to turn to revolution.  Sometimes, like the old Soviet Union or recently with the floods and coal buying fiasco in China, you get yourself in financial trouble trying to compete financially with the west.

But I am in no hurry.

Note that Gandhi made a similar point about his methods of achieving independence for India.  He argued that it worked because, at heart, the British were a fair and decent people.  He said he would never have used those methods with the Nazis.

[Einzige]

(02-09-2021, 05:49 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(02-09-2021, 03:03 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(02-09-2021, 02:51 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: I'm wondering, right now. Must freedom always be attained with blood? The cost of freedom is high, but Americans have always paid it, said JFK.

I have long said that non violence works better in democracies, where leaders have some sense of conscience, where the vote hangs heavily on those that ignore the people.  The autocracies, it works less well.  You look at places like Russia and China and you wonder what could crush an autocracy.  I don't see it ending always the same way.  Sometimes too many people protest to arrest.  Sometimes you have to turn to revolution.  Sometimes, like the old Soviet Union or recently with the floods and coal buying fiasco in China, you get yourself in financial trouble trying to compete financially with the west.

But I am in no hurry.

Note that Gandhi made a similar point about his methods of achieving independence for India.  He argued that it worked because, at heart, the British were a fair and decent people.  He said he would never have used those methods with the Nazis.

Gandhi tried allying with the Nazis, so...

[pbrower2a]

(02-09-2021, 08:11 PM)Einzige Wrote:

(02-09-2021, 05:49 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(02-09-2021, 03:03 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(02-09-2021, 02:51 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: I'm wondering, right now. Must freedom always be attained with blood? The cost of freedom is high, but Americans have always paid it, said JFK.

I have long said that non violence works better in democracies, where leaders have some sense of conscience, where the vote hangs heavily on those that ignore the people.  The autocracies, it works less well.  You look at places like Russia and China and you wonder what could crush an autocracy.  I don't see it ending always the same way.  Sometimes too many people protest to arrest.  Sometimes you have to turn to revolution.  Sometimes, like the old Soviet Union or recently with the floods and coal buying fiasco in China, you get yourself in financial trouble trying to compete financially with the west.

But I am in no hurry.

Note that Gandhi made a similar point about his methods of achieving independence for India.  He argued that it worked because, at heart, the British were a fair and decent people.  He said he would never have used those methods with the Nazis.

Gandhi tried allying with the Nazis, so...

He didn't align himself with the Nazis. A cadre of traitors, the Azad Hind, established a puppet state aligned with Thug Japan during WWII in Japanese-occupied parts of British colonial India  and Mohandas Gandhi had nothing to do with this. He called off nationalist agitation during the Second World War, stating that the nationalist struggle for India would have more credibility against a strong Britain than a weak Britain. 




Subhas Chandra Bose, leader of Azad Hind, in meetings with Heinrich Himmler (above) and Adolf Hitler (below)



Enough said. Gandhi was never "pro-murder" as were the allies of Azad Hind.

[Eric the Green]

(02-09-2021, 05:49 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(02-09-2021, 03:03 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(02-09-2021, 02:51 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: I'm wondering, right now. Must freedom always be attained with blood? The cost of freedom is high, but Americans have always paid it, said JFK.

I have long said that non violence works better in democracies, where leaders have some sense of conscience, where the vote hangs heavily on those that ignore the people.  The autocracies, it works less well.  You look at places like Russia and China and you wonder what could crush an autocracy.  I don't see it ending always the same way.  Sometimes too many people protest to arrest.  Sometimes you have to turn to revolution.  Sometimes, like the old Soviet Union or recently with the floods and coal buying fiasco in China, you get yourself in financial trouble trying to compete financially with the west.

But I am in no hurry.

Note that Gandhi made a similar point about his methods of achieving independence for India.  He argued that it worked because, at heart, the British were a fair and decent people.  He said he would never have used those methods with the Nazis.

Good points.