> > 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.

You mention several different situations, including some civil wars and rebellions. My country, the United States, has both a civil war and a revolution in our history. I think that in both cases our violence was justified.

The British government was no longer meeting our needs in 1776, and it was our right to take up arms against them. This wasn't really to counter violence (and I will punch anyone who says it was in response to something like the Boston "massacre"), but it was certainly the only method of achieving what we wanted.

About a century later we were faced with a rift within our country that had no solution. The north and the south had been compromising for a hundred years and we were at a breaking point. Lincoln, against all odds, ultimately kept the country together by fighting the bloodiest war in American history. In the end, we were a stronger country for it, because it really was the end of the separatism that had plagued the country from its begginning. (Okay, so technically the Confederates fired the first shots, but Lincoln by that point wanted a war.)

My point remains that violence is in fact sometimes an answer and that war is in fact sometimes right. There are times when violence is the ONLY answer. If you overlook violent solutions when looking at a problem, you're cheating yourself out of possible solutions based on some misguided notion that you can always exist in a peaceful state.

Stephen