Consider the following scenarios:

Soldiers
The Murderous Army takes over the Peaceful Village. They start massacring resident civilians until the Defending Army arrives and drives them out. The Defending Army is (a) a cause of the Murderous Army's defeat and so (b) responsible for saving the Peaceful Village.

Protesters
The Murderous Army takes over the Peaceful Village. They start massacring resident civilians until some Nonviolent Protesters employ classical strategies of nonviolent resistance in opposition. The Murderous Army then leaves the Peaceful Village alone. The Nonviolent Protesters are (a) a cause of this withdrawal and therefore (b) responsible for saving the Peaceful Village.

I don't expect anyone to disbelieve (Soldiers). But what about (Protesters)? There ARE real-life examples of it: the Rosenstrasse and Le Chambon cases during the Second World War, for potentially the best examples.

But correlation doesn't entail causation: MA leaving after NP do their thing is not proof that NP caused MA to leave. Moreover, it seems as if an important difference between (Soldiers) and (Protesters), which difference rules out the truth of the latter scenario, is that in (Soldiers), the physical force used by the DA is what makes the DA the cause of the MA's departure from the PV. Civil disobedience and like activities, graceful as they may be, aren't really a force in the right kind of way to be also causes of what they are said to be in (Protesters).

I won't criticize that suggestion right now except to point out that it implies that the following scenario is false, too:

Bombers
The Murderous Army is attacking Peaceful Countries. The Defending Army decides to bomb the capital city of the Murderous Army's homeland, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians. This causes the Murderous Army to withdraw from Peaceful Countries in order to spare its homeland more destruction. So the Defending Army is responsible for ending the Murderous Army's rampage.

If front-line psychiatry (a program of action to affect a person's psychology, only not "armchair" as in a doctor's office but "in the field") is causally ineffective in (Protesters), shouldn't it be the same in (Bombers)? Part of me suspects that those who disbelieve in nonviolent resistance have a higher probability of also being those who do believe in, say, the air raids on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. How might they justify this divergence?

One possibility would be saying that (Protesters) involves appeal to constructive motives to sway the MA, and cynics might doubt that humanity really is susceptible to such motives. By contrast, the terrorism underlying (Bombers) understandably triggers the MA's digression.

I'm not a cynic. Part of me wants to believe (Protesters). On the other hand, the extremity of my libertarian conception of free will overrides that desire and so I don't really believe it. That leaves me denying (Bombers), too, but without having to resolve any inconsistencies. So you might say my final position on violence is something like Just-War theory.

Are there any other options, though?

The proponent of air-raid/carpet-bombing strategy rely on the plight of the native people, (the one which they had bombed), to pressure their own government to stop the war, hence make the strategy work. However, during WorldWar2, the Japanese and the Nazis did not stop despite being constantly bombed, instead, they use the bombing as a propaganda substance to gain more public support. Therefore, strategist believe; carpet-bombing strategy won't work on a country that is not democratic (or in country where resistance can't succeed).

Msafwan wrote:
The proponent of air-raid/carpet-bombing strategy rely on the plight of the native people, (the one which they had bombed), to pressure their own government to stop the war, hence make the strategy work. However, during WorldWar2, the Japanese and the Nazis did not stop despite being constantly bombed, instead, they use the bombing as a propaganda substance to gain more public support. Therefore, strategist believe; carpet-bombing strategy won't work on a country that is not democratic (or in country where resistance can't succeed).

If that were true, then what was the motive for fire-bombing Japan and nuking two of its cities? I know there was some "their industry is dispersed throughout the civilian housing" argument in play from Curtis LeMay's hand, but aside from that, I thought the reasoning was that those kinds of attacks should've driven the Japanese to surrender.

On the other hand, I do remember hearing something about most of the fire-bombing raids as vengeance, like after Tokyo was incinerated, the US decided to just keep burning Japan up for a kind of angry fun.

But in any event I don't remember that any democratic countries have ever been victims of mass-scale strategic air raids except the UK and maybe Yugoslavia (were they democratic before the Nazi invasion?).

Szavieur wrote:
... I thought the reasoning was that those kinds of attacks should've driven the Japanese to surrender.

On the other hand, I do remember hearing something about most of the fire-bombing raids as vengeance, ...

But in any event I don't remember that any democratic countries have ever been victims of mass-scale strategic air raids...
Carpet-bombing/fire-bombing (and idea of killing alot of civilians) is clearly unethical, and people know this. Therefore, to justify its use; there must be some sort of logical reason to pursue such strategy, or at least there must be some compelling reason to bomb civilians. And the reason was; to win the war by means of political pressure.

Unlike precision-bombing (which target military infrastructure), in carpet-bombing; you intentionally target and kill civilians. And you expect that this will dissuade the military establishment, (the one which reside in bunkers and hideout) to surrender as a respond to fear of civilian casualty. However, evident suggest that it doesn't work; bombing in German, Japan and even in Britain, did not stop the war.

That's one reason to NOT bomb people.

Atomic bomb may be an exception, but that may not be the sole reason for Japan's surrender during WW2. Naval warfare in the pacific had turn out to be bad for Japan, American forces had push and gained more and more island /land nearing Japan, Japan's aircraft-carrier also had loss its effectiveness, and the Alliance in general also had the upper hand in strategic-intelligence when both the Zero code (Japan's naval code) and Enigma code (for Nazi) had been broken. Therefore, Japan (politics) may have fallen into a severe pessimistic state, and the nuclear bomb (the terror) could have exploded at the right time to give them an honourable excuse for surrendering.

I like the idea of using ideas about causation to discuss nonviolence! Here's my 2c...


But correlation doesn't entail causation: MA leaving after NP do their thing is not proof that NP caused MA to leave. Moreover, it seems as if an important difference between (Soldiers) and (Protesters), which difference rules out the truth of the latter scenario, is that in (Soldiers), the physical force used by the DA is what makes the DA the cause of the MA's departure from the PV. Civil disobedience and like activities, graceful as they may be, aren't really a force in the right kind of way to be also causes of what they are said to be in (Protesters).

In theory at least, I think there definetly *are* ways in which civil disobedience can act as a force, albeit in a longer causal chain than violence.

1) By making oppression economically unviable. If the nonviolent resisters ('protestors' sounds too much like pointless waving of placards) were to resist in such a way as to cause the MA large expenses (destroying food supplys, delaying troop movements, blocking communications etc), they could quite possibly cause the MA to decide that the oppression was more trouble than it was worth. In this case, it is clearly *because* of the resistance that occupation is costing the army so much, and it is *because* of the costs that they decide to withdraw. Hence, I say that the nonviolent resistance caused the oppressors to leave.

2) By de-moralising the MA suffciently to make it in their best interests to withdraw. If a group of non-violent resisters can cause so much trouble that the soldiers oppressing them are de-moralised enough that it becomes in the self-interest of the commanders to order a retreat, then I believe this is a case of non-violence being responsible for the MA leaving, for the same reason as (1). The resistance are clearly the cause of the lack of morale (or they could, hypothetically), the very thing that caused the MA to retreat.

If you like, I think I could justify both these with my favorite theory of causation (Nozik), but I don't have the time right now!

Interestingly, both these are also tactics or 'forces' that millitaries employ in wars - just read Sun Tzu's art of war. Though it isn't strictly related to causation (unless you accept Hume's ideas?) - you might like to take a look at this report - www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/12174 - which suggests that nonviolence actually has a HIGHER success rate than violence.

Hope I understood your point correctly - look forward to hearing back!
OScoder

In the opinion of the people who have taken part in this topic, I would like to ask a question. Is penance a virtue that should be pursued? If so, maybe non-violence in all situations is a good act. (turn the other cheek) Ideas?