If you've listened to Philips' narrative, you'll know what my friend means when he says that the talk is a "theoretically admirable position", but he doesn't agree with it.
As Philips ultimately informs us, if the triggers on guns weren't pulled or if the buttons in the cockpits of planes weren't pressed and the bombs weren't dropped, it would be much more difficult to proceed with war.
The late Utah Philips described himself as a pacifist. I don't know that I'm a pacifist. I don't know that I couldn't be driven to violently defend someone somewhere under some circumstance. If a pacifist is a person who swears to never engage violently with another, no matter what the other has done or is doing, it would be difficult for me to be a pacifist.
However, I don't believe that Philips was suggesting that all soldiers become pacifists. He may have wished that could be the case, but, as a veteran of The Korean Conflict, he knew that people would defend against violence with violence if they thought their defense was the only way to protect the safety of, if no one else, themselves. I can't even summon the imagery of what it would look like to allow armies led by crazed yet charismatic people to enter one's space, to kill one's friends and loved ones at will and to merely stand there and wait one's turn to die.
This isn't a judgment call on my part. I'm not saying that it would be wrong or right. I'm merely saying that I can't imagine refusing to do something so intuitive as to protect one's self and one's friends and family. Philips, on the other hand, obviously didn't have a problem with that imagery.
I do, nonetheless, realize that if I had a weapon in my possession while an invading force was killing those around me, it would be I who would engage that weapon to stop the oncoming force. If I had a simple gun and I aimed it at another human being and pulled the trigger, the bullet would find its target or, possibly, someone close to the intended target. I may believe at that moment that pulling the trigger was an action that had to be done. Whoever the bullet finds, it may kill and, without any hesitation, I would have to confess to killing that person.
Civilian leaders and/or military leaders can order me not to pull the trigger or can order me to pull the trigger. However, it will always be my decision to pull the trigger or to not pull the trigger. This is the simple point that Philips makes.
What he says is that, by using the explanation that we are at war and we have no other option but to do what our superiors, both civilian and military, tell us to do dehumanizes us.
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