Pacifism seems to place infinite weight on sins of commission and none whatsoever on those of omission. It is a counterfeit ethics: for instead of grappling with the hard realities of our world, pacifism takes as its focus the imagined moral purity of the pacifist himself—who merely pretends to be good while others do the dirty work of defending

The destructiveness of war—short of total destruction, which is not war but suicide—is not in itself an argument against waging war unless one thinks (as few people actually do think) that violence is always unjustifiable, that force is always and in all circumstances wrong—wrong because, as Simone Weil affirms in her sublime essay on war, “The

Finally, Powers said, "even though we can justify the killing of bin Laden, we do so with a sense of deep regret and with a recommitment to develop nonmilitary ways to defend against terrorism and address its deeper roots, while cultivating the peaceable virtues without which no lasting peace is possible."