> Clearly it does not, if you honestly believe that "violence never solved anything." Violence has solved all sorts of things. It is generally (and rightly) viewed as a last resort, but this doesn't mean it's not effective.
>
Violence should, I think, only be used to counter violence, and only if there's no other way. See below.

> I hate to always have to bring up World War II, but it's such an effective example because it's a famous instance where violence did in fact solve the problem of Hitler's Germany. No, it didn't retroactively prevent the Holocaust, but I know of no solutions, non-violent or otherwise (short of a flux capacitor), that would have done so.
>
I'd like to point out that Germany started the war, which was wrong, because war is wrong, and also because of what they were doing inside and what they were fighting for. Once it had started, it was impossible not to react. I can't exactly remember any time when starting a larger war did not cause further problems for several of the parties involved. After WWII, many cities in Germany had been bombed so hard most of their population had fled (the majority) or killed. Cologne, e.g., was down from about 800.000 to 40.000 inhabitants after the war. So war did not in fact solve anything for Germany, who started it.
The communists of Afghanistan thought they could achieve more freedom for the people, neither thinking of the fact that this had never ever worked anywhere (instead leading to more oppression) nor foreseeing that this would lead to a civil war that would go on for decades. So they (AFAIK) deposed the king, who I've read was slowly making Afghanistan a more liberal country, and provoked resistance from nationalists and especially Islamic fundamentalists (I'm not going to say anything about America's support for them, except that I think that would be beside the point), who afterwards started to fight amongst themselves, until the Taliban got more and more powerful, partially conquering, mostly buying local commanders. That united many of them against the Taliban, but that didn't help very much: where the Taliban are, there's oppression, and where they're not, they might soon attack. Also, Afghanistan's economy is completely broken. Because flour has become so expensive, people have to use their fields for opium production so they can afford to buy food, and so there's less and less grain produced, which causes the flour price to go up even further, which in turn forces more people to stop producing it. Now the US are bombing Afghanistan, it's becoming very hard for those of the international helpers that remain to deliver their goods. Of course supplies are being dropped too, but they are hardly enough, sometimes land in minefields, and are in several regions actually burned by angry locals who don't trust them, possibly remembering exploding food and toys the Soviets dropped earlier.
Of course, Afghanistan is one of the most extreme examples for this. But it really shows mostly everywhere. Saddam Hussein is still head of Iraq. Korea is still separated, though I've heard they've been coming closer peacefully. Killing Palestinian bomb builders aggravates the survivors even more, and making bombs is, I suppose, not that very hard to teach, so people that have previously holding back might start becoming terrorists. The only violent solution for the immediate problem would be to kill all Palestinians, but that would cause a lot of trouble with Muslims all over the world, or removing Israel, which wouldn't be right either.
When Germany attacked France in 1871 (although France had declared war), that did help a bit at first, but made too many people too proud of their country, creating the atmosphere that basically made WWI a world war; otherwise the event that started it (the assassination of the Austrian prince) might have merely caused the conflict between Austria and Serbia to become worse.

Fuzz"hopes that didn't all sound too arrogant"pilz