>>In a world where rich are getting richer and the middle and poor are getting poorer, the only thing which could prevent the future wars is to make living as good as possible for as many people as possible. Since that is somehow out of scope for voters, they all elect (or tolerate) governments which continue doing as they do. The imbalance this layout creates breaks out this way or another, sooner or later. Once it breaks out, it's too late for pacifism.
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>IMO this has nothing to do with money.

If his followers were middle-class, they wouldn't be his followers.

> Osama bin Laden has hundreds of millions that he could have used to help Afghanis. Arafat has literally had billions flow through his organizations. Why didn't he invest that in infrastructure?

He did, but you know which infrastructure.

>Now, envy and greed, in the sense of someone else wanting to take by force that which we possess I suppose you might have a point.

Good time for a famous quote (I wish I remembered who was the author): "big social systems are built on great human qualities: capitalism was built on greed, socialism on envy".

Let's face it, the third world is largely exploited by the first in many ways - from sweatshops to undermining the local industry, to suppressing the prices of their exports, to making them dependent on services (I think a phone call from Nigeria to Uganda still goes via London), to giving them loans they can never return etc etc.

I think they're not after the posessions of others, they're after keeping what they feel is theirs. I'm not talking about the radical fundamentalists, I have the whole third world in mind. Bin Laden is just an extreme byproduct of the whole scheme.

>This is not the fault of "the rich", whomever they may be. You should dig around a little and discover for yourself things like the terrorists museum that Arafat just had closed due to bad publicity. These people hate Israel, Jews and those who support them. Did you notice what the demands of the Taliban were? Essentially we need to abandon Israel. Ehud Barak offered Arafat everything he had been demanding over the years with the sole exception of absolute control over the Temple Mount. Arafat declined. Why? He needs the fight to stay in power and, quite candidly, these people have no desire whatsoever for peaceful co-existence with Israel. They want the total elimination of Israel and Jews. We are seen as enemies of these folks because we are seen as friends with Israel.

You can't expect them to have good leaders. Warmongering in order to stay in power is seen all over the world - I've seen it in almost all parts of former Yugoslavia, probably in several former USSR countries. Maybe only Australia never had that.

>>Besides, pacifism in only one country, and/or on only one side, is necessarily fruitless and seen as treason. It's the pacifists on the attacking side who would matter. It did happen, but somehow didn't get into the news.
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>Pacifists on the attacking side? <g> Isn't that like honest people on the side of criminals? <g>

No it's more like "I may accidentally wear a similar garment, but I'm not with these guys". In a classical Western movie, it'd be the honest folks in a little town ruled by a single family who owns the judge and the marshal and terrorizes the ranchers in the whole valley.

> Uhh.. Is this, for example, like the Palestinians who executed some of their own on the charge that they had collaborated with Israel a week or so back?

Well, if they think they're in a war with Israel, these were collaborating with the enemy. This is actually another example of pacifists being disliked on both sides once a war begins, and in the case of Palestine it's on for 52 years and counting. Funny how pacifists get their hands slapped every now and then - happened before both world wars, happened during Vietnam. At peace time, then, they're fine, but when it comes to preparing the next war, one of the first things on the PR agenda is to start denigrating them.

What I had in mind was myself and thousands of others like me, who refused to go fight against Croatia or Bosnia. Did you know that the draft had only about 10-15% success then?

>Sorry, but I'd disagree here quite strenuously, based upon the facts I've observed. Have you seen the footage of the Talibans shooting some of their own in summary executions? I have.

I don't have to see it to believe it happened. They're obviously losing ground, and exemplary executions are a favorite instrument of any totalitarian regime in such a situation. Presumably, the internal opposition should get scared from it. That's their version of court martial. Legal issues aside, the eventual result is pretty much the same - those perceived as traitors get shot.

Obviously, they perceive their own pacifists, or any other dissenters, as traitors. So did Stalin, so did Hitler, so did Milosevic... and US has also had its own witch hunt once upon a time.