Pacifism and War

I was a registered conscientious objector during the Korean war, just finishing my medical residency. I sincerely believed that all war is wrong. Since then, I have spent a lot of my life dealing with the human wreckage the insurgents and armies have left behind.

I worked as a doctor during the Shan rebellion in 1961-62, when the Burma army controlled the countryside in the daytime, and the insurgents did at night. I learned that the insurgents had confiscated all the villagers' guns, and even their dogs, until people were defenseless. Insurgents came for a neighbor in the night time, and told him that if he came quietly, they would not kill his family, and then they slit his throat.

My wife and I were medical first responders in Thailand in 1979, when half a million Cambodian refugees poured across the border to escape the advancing Vietnamese army. In Sa Kaew camp alone, we were part of a 1,000-bed hospital for some thirty thousand people, and that was only one of several such camps. Many died before reaching the camps. All because one communist government was fighting another communist government over doctrinal disputes.

In the early 2000s we saw Burmese refugees fleeing into Thailand, to escape persecution by their own army.

There are wars in Libya, in Nigeria, Congo,Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Ukraine, Gaza, and now a Muslim radical sect intent on killing all who won't convert to their viewpoint. Hard to understand. Harder, even, than understanding greed for oil profits, or for cocaine, or for increasing weapons exports. But how do you stop indiscriminate violence, without becoming violent too? Sometimes it appears that war is the lesser of two evils. But what ever became of common sense?