> WWII may have brought peace but it was with a horrible cost. I have great trouble supporting any violent action for most any cause and I pray that I never have to make an awful choice like the people in the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania.

The only way to justify violent action is in situations where the likely results of it will be better than if you *don't* take violent action. It's always going to be a tradeoff. You can't say WWII shouldn't have been fought, just because the world wasn't left perfect afterwards. Nobody ever said fighting makes things right. It just, ideally, should make things better than they would have been otherwise.

I can't even begin to think of the passengers' choice in the Pennsylvania plane as an "awful choice" in this context. You're saying you'd have *trouble* supporting violent action, if you knew it would kill three or four evil men, along with yourself and others who were 100% certain to be killed whether you did it or not, and in the process save a huge number of other people?

I don't think any of the difficulties with making this decision have ANYTHING to do with whether or not you think violent action is justified. A few lives against many lives, when you know the few are doomed anyway? Give me a break. If you're suggesting these people shouldn't have rushed a knife-wielding terrorist or smacked him down with a wine bottle or whatever the heck they did, because you're against HURTING him, you're taking passive resistance way too far.

Brunnen-"also, I agree with Stephen's reply almost to the extent of worshipping him as a god"G