• jj4211@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    I’d say Russia was pro-war, you have to be to initiate an unprompted offensive war. The US in the second Iraq War was pretty solidly “pro-war”, as they went in without provocation and the justification of “WMD” was revealed to be wrong (mistaken at best, probably fabricated). These are scenarios where the aggressor has a choice between peaceful status quo and violence and chooses violence.

    If you have the violence brought to you, then I think it’s weird to characterize self-defense as “pro-war” or “being a war hawk”. One may rationalize that Pacifism means in favor of rolling over for any abuse, but I think it’s wrong to characterize any willingness to employ violence to protect oneself as “pro-war”.

    For example, I haven’t thrown a punch in decades, I don’t want to throw a punch and I’ll avoid doing so if there’s a sane alternative. However when someone did come up to me one time and start hitting me on the head with something, I absolutely was not just going to take the beating and fought back.

    • OBJECTION!@lemmy.ml
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      2 months ago

      One may rationalize that Pacifism means in favor of rolling over for any abuse

      This is the main point I was making. In the context of discussing pacifism, which condemns all war, supporting any war is pro-war, at least relative to the actual meaning of pacifism.