Okay, as far as the difference between the person acting on their own and the person actin as the hand of the Libyan Rebellion, I think I’ve worked out where my ill feeling comes from. I think maybe the person who shot Gaddafi acted in both those roles. I think in their role as the hand of the Libyan Rebellion, their actions are understandable. But I think that as a person shooting a gun at another person who is not an immediate threat, that their actions are indefensible. It is not a thing that a person should do. I think my disagreement with the original post- and with you- is that we’re weighting their role as the hand of the Rebellion very differently.

As far as the difference between an executioner of the state and a person with a gun who belongs to the rebellion hoping to form a state, the difference to me is that there’s a discussion involved. Before you can get to an executioner, you need to have a trial; before you can have a trial you need a justice system. You need the executioner to be hired or appointed by representatives of the people, and I don’t see the person with the gun as representing the Libyan people in any real way.

I don’t think we can talk in a useful way about the symbolism around a very real person’s death. I think doing so detracts from the fact that he was shot with guns, not executed by the combined will of the Libyan people; even if his death was collective, I’d just be talking about several murderers instead of one.

I’m learning a lot from this conversation, though; thank you so much for talking with me about this. As recorded in my earlier comments, I can get super defensive when talking about pacifism and violence, and I really appreciate that you’re taking the time to discuss things with me instead of dismissing me as naive, or trying to correct my opinion.

The reason I disagree is that the person who killed Gaddafi was a member of the rebellion and the stated goal of the rebellion was to kill Gaddafi (see, for example, the lyrics of this popular rebel song, cf wiki: “Muammar: You have never served the people
Muammar: You’d better give up
Confess. You cannot escape
Our revenge will catch you
As a train roars through a wall
We will drown you.”) In that sense, I don’t see how he *wasn’t* acting as a representative of the Libyan people, or of the rebellion to narrow it a bit. I’m not sure how someone being hanged is more “by the people” — there’s still one hangman pulling the lever of the gallows — given that the death of Gaddafi was something explicitly sought and endorsed by the rebellion at large.

Moreover, it seems from the video record that the event of his death was collective in nature despite the fact that it’s possible to pinpoint a single gunshot wound that killed him. By this I mean both that it’s probable that he would have died from his wounds even without that one shot (in which case it’s much more of a Caesar-style execution) and that in a much more symbolic sense, many people took part his death (again, cf wiki): “Several videos related to the death were broadcast by news channels and circulated via the internet. The first shows footage of Gaddafi alive, his face and shirt bloodied, stumbling and being dragged toward an ambulance by armed men chanting “Allah is great” in Arabic. Another shows Gaddafi, stripped to the waist, suffering from an apparent gunshot wound to the head, and in a pool of blood, together with jubilant fighters firing automatic weapons in the air.”

That’s a really interesting point of view (also it is so difficult to say that on the internet without it sounding sarcastic- I genuinely find it interesting). It’s a line of thought I’d not considered fully, so I will go away and think on it after replying here.

The only problem I can see with it at present is that there’s always, always an individual’s hand behind every individual act of violence. I believe we should all strive not to perform, personally, acts of violence. I don’t think that’s an unreasonable or impossible thing to ask of ourselves as individuals, and I think if every individual there had not attacked Gaddafi then he’d still be alive, and if justice for the Libyan people demanded his death- and I can totally see the argument that it did/does- then he could be hanged in the light, by the people, instead of murdered after being dragged out of a car.

I think I understand your argument- but I think a Libyan person decided to kill him, as an individual, rather than Libya-as-a-group de-escalating the situation by killing him by acting through a Libyan on the scene. I don’t think violence can be justified by appealing to a higher power.

But I don’t think you can ever reach the minimum possible level of violence in the world if you start with the mindset that violence is sometimes necessary. I don’t believe there’s a good justification for striking someone who is not striking, or atttempting to strike, you or another person (intervening when someone strikes another is, again, something I completely understand).

I understand striking back. I do, I really do, but I believe that it’s only okay to use violence in direct response to violence, and that it should be used as far as possible to defuse and de-escalate the situation. For example, if someone pulled Gadaffi from the car, and he was unarmed, and they shot him- that person did murder Gadaffi, and that was wrong for them to do. If he was armed, if he posed a threat, then these things happen and that’s much more defensible to me. Either way, I will say I’m not sorry he’s dead. He was a tyrant who was strangling his nation and oppressing his own people, and one of the worst examples of corruption in a position of unearned power.

Sorry if my initial comment was combative- I think I reacted pretty hard because my pacifism is important to me, and while I can understand and respect your non-pacifist point of view, you framed your beliefs about violence as absolute truths, which I don’t believe they are. I think they’re your opinion about violence, and that’s totally okay and it was a well-argued position, but I don’t think there are absolute truths about the use of force; I think it’s a complex moral area, and you have what you believe about it, and I have what I believe about it, and while we might hope the other takes our position in time I think it’s okay that we disagree.

I feel personally attacked by it- I can feel the bottom of my gut disappear. I don’t buy it. I don’t buy that a boot to the face is sometimes necessary, and I think that to believe violence is necessary is as naive as you said pacifism is.

I think violence performed with full knowledge of its consequences can make some good changes happen faster. I can, and I hate that I can, imagine situations in which I would be violent and feel justified in being so. But I don’t think striking someone else is ever a thing that will do anything other than damage us both, in different ways.

I believe that to say violence is sometimes absolutely necessary is more indicative of a privileged existence removed from actual physical violence than to say pacism is possible and desirable. It is a foul and horrible thing to strike someone, to be struck, for that to happen day in and day out. It poisons us. It makes us less than human.

Please do not call pacifists naive. It does not help. It has made me so, so angry. Peace cannot, will not, is never won by punching someone so hard they just lose the will to fight. That’s how fear of reprisal works. Not peace. No.

@Lindsay Beyerstein – Frankly, if I were Libyan, I don’t think I’d want the hearts and minds of Quaddafi supporters, I’d want to kick them out of my country.

Whether U.S. intervention in Libya was the right thing to do will depend on what kind of regime replaces Gaddafi. If we’ve helped replace a brutal dictator with another repressive regime, we’ve achieved nothing.

If the regime is going to become a democracy, it has to establish legitimacy in the eyes of the people at large. Torturing a vanquished leader to death isn’t going to win the hearts and minds of Gaddafi supporters or undecideds.

Someone followed up the killing of Gaddafi with a mass murder of 50-or-so Gaddafi loyalists outside a hotel. Many were found with their hands bound, according to Human Rights Watch.

It’s not like summary execution is some kind of universal Libyan ideal that we Americans don’t understand. Undisciplined troops all over the world get carried away and kill people they set out to capture. It’s a universal problem.

A Libyan military commander said that rebels’ initial goal was to take Gaddafi alive, but that the situation got out of hand: http://bit.ly/uKtSEP

“….If they had any conscience, they wouldn’t have committed those acts in the first place….”

a quote from your previous comment.