edited

Okay, I realize you meant in your first comment now. That said, the way that is posed does not come out as an open ended, fact finding question. It comes out as a rhetorical question to reinforce your views of what you think others say/feel/think.

Peace requires the active cooperation of all parties. War only requires the active cooperation of one party. This is a lesson we seem to regularly forget.

It’s no different than a fight between two people. One can refuse to fight, the other one can still do violence. The non-fighting individual could even concede everything the fighter wanted, and it would still not change the fact that both must choose to not fight, whereas only one has to choose to fight.

There’s a belief that a piece of paper that says all is now peace, love and flowers somehow makes it so. Even with all of the evidence to the contrary, including the behavior of the US in the past.

It is, of course, true that individual’s are, and always will be, responsible for their individual actions (see the various things I’ve written on sovereign individuals for details). The individual soldier must always make the choice to pull the trigger, or not, when confronted with a soldier in the enemy’s uniform. That said, none of that changes the fact that nowhere did Nick advocate killing Muslims because they are Muslim, or killing all Muslims. Those are words you put in his mouth.

Whether soldiers are choosing to fight because their alternative is death or imprisonment, or because they believe in the cause, or for some other reason, is irrelevant so long as two things are true:

1. The individual soldiers follow the orders they are given.
2. The individual leaders of various groups, parties, nations choose to make war.

History teaches that sometimes negotiation and diplomacy can, indeed, prevent war. And that sometimes it cannot. Sometimes we have to see that all the diplomacy and negotiation is doing is encouraging aggression, as was certainly the case in 1939. As was the case in 1950, in Korea. And China in the 1930′s. And many other places where we tried diplomacy when the other side was determined to fight.

When someone has declared that their intent is practice genocide upon you because of your race or religion, it seems unlikely that you can negotiate away the root cause of the conflict.

not to mention that the entire post was based on the premise of state vs. state, not individual vs. individual.

nope nowhere in there did I attempt to indict the common muslim or say that we should kill all muslims. I really wouldn’t want to kill my ex-girlfriend, my old roommate, our the guy who I’m going to hang out with tonight.

All I said was that you cannot negotiate for peace with a party/state/nation/group who does not want peace but your destruction.