Justified violence?

8. While war and anger are not the choice, there is a time when you must protect others. The common argument used against pacifists is what about Hitler and World War II. Would you have appeased him until he ruled the world. The answer: of course not! This was a maniac who strove to eliminate all people who were not him. But let me ask you this, would there have been a Hitler if there was no World War I. If we seek pacifism instead of violence, if we seek to mend situations of tension before they erupt into violence then we can avoid situations such as that which led to the rise of the Nazi party in Germany.

It is very difficult to deal with the issue of justified violence. It becomes way to easy for violence to be seen as justified. In the case of world conflict we use any number of excuses to "justify" war and violence. During the Cold War America used the argument of the Monroe doctrine to justify involvement in Latin America. The war on communism was used as an excuse to send troops to fight in Korea and Vietnam despite the internal nature of the conflict. Going back centuries the American ideal of the "city of the hill" justified the idea of manifest destiny in U.S. expansion.

In all of these cases the violence was "justified" by the idea of threat or destiny, but in most cases the choice of violence was avoidable. This is not always the case of course. Libya is in the throws of a violent revolution brought on by the crimes against humanity of Gaddafi. When their people tried to resolve the violence through protests and peaceful actions they were violently put down with no chance of a peaceful solution. The revolution was unfortunately bloody and deadly, but their seems now to be a hope of peace in the future. It pains me to say that the violence here was justified, but I can see no other way for this to have worked.

If we step back we see the issues that lead to the rise of the Libyan revolution under Gaddafi. Prior to World War II Libya acted existed as a colony of Italy due to Italian Imperialism. When the war was ended the United Nations resolved that Libya should be removed from the Italians and made into a country. The people of Libya chose a hereditary monarchy under King Idris with a constitution based on the rites given to citizens in Europe and North America. The discovery of oil in Lybia led to a rise of foreign trade and relations with many in the Western world. However, the profits from the oil sales were seen as going toward King Idris more then to the people of Libya. In 1969, revolutionaries led by Gaddafi became fed up with the abuses of power they saw and staged a coup d'état.*

It was the observed greed and lack of care for the common man that angered the people into action. Throughout history we see cases of justified war. The revolutions in America and France can be seen as justified given the lack of care for the people and the disruption of human rights, but in both of these cases it was the greed and lack of care from a small group that led to the violence. World War II was a clearly justifiable war. Hitler was not about accept appeasement to stop his ethnic cleansing, but he only gained prominence due to the unjust reactions of Allied Powers to World War I. In all cases the war and violence was possibly justified, but only due to the unjust actions of others. We cannot say that World War II was the result of an "evil" nation (seriously there is a new DVD set that claims this) because we can look back and see that we are in a large way to blame. Yes, Russia had nuclear weapons that
they were using to bully the world, but the U.S. were the first and only nation to use an atomic bomb in war and were stockpiling them to "encourage peace". Even the violent crimes against humanity perpetrated by Stalin were the results of a corrupt government more interested in power then the issues of equality they claimed to represent. Besides that, we support Stalin in World War II and turned a blind eye to his actions when he was our ally.
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*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libya#Italian_colonial_era_and_World_War_II_1911.E2.80.931951