[Editor's note: Scott Simon wrote an editorial that appeared in the Wall Street Journal (9 Oct 01) and Milwaukee Sentinel (13 Oct 01). Gil Halstead responded to Scott's editorial on 15 Oct 01. Below is an edited excerpt from Gil's response]

Scott: Mahatma Gandhi had overthrown an empire and Martin Luther King had overturned a racial tyranny with nonviolent marches, fasts, and boycotts that were nervy, ennobling and effective.

Gil: You don't mention the work of Oscar Romero or the murdered nuns and priests in the war you covered in El Salvador. Yes they were killed but their commitment to non-violence did help bring that war to an end. People willing to be martyrs in this way like the monks in Vietnam also play an important role that can not be quantified and compared in any way to the number of "bad guys" killed by soldiers.

Scott: Pacifism seemed to offer a chance for survival to a generation that had been stunted by the fear of nuclear extinction.

Gil: There were pacifists long before the threat of nuclear extinction, and will be long after you are gone. And despite your characterization of them as Halloween pranksters many of the really committed ones do have a very important and effective impact on reducing violence.

Scott All the best people can be killed by all the worst ones.

Gil: This is an unproved worst case scenario. I can just as easily say a massive army of nonviolent soldiers could overcome the Taliban by sheer force of Satyagraha. It hasn't been tried and therefore can't be disproved.

Scott: I had never believed that pacifism had all the answers; neither does militarism. About half of all draft age Quakers enlisted in World War II, believing that whatever wisdom pacifism had to give the world, it could not defeat the murderous schemes of Adolf Hitler and his cohorts.

Gil: Here is where you give yourself away. It sounds like your heart was always with the half that joined up and went to war. What about the impact that the Danes had refusing their support of the Nazi regime there ?

Scott: Pacifists do not need any lectures about risking their lives to stop wickedness.

Gil: Yet you have chosen to give us one?

Scott: Quakers resisted slavery by smuggling out slaves when even Abraham Lincoln tried to appease the Confederacy. [Pacifists] sneaked refugee Jews out of Germany when England and the U.S. were still trying to placate Hitler. Many conscientious objectors have served bravely in gritty and unglamorous tasks that aided the U.S. in time of war.

Gil: Here of course you are right on, and as far as I am concerned this defeats the logic of the rest of your argument.

Scott: It seems to me that in confronting the forces that attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, American pacifists have no sane alternative now but to support war.

Gil: It seems to you... but not to me.

Scott: I don't consider this reprisal or revenge, but self-defense: protecting the world from further attacks by destroying those who would launch them.

Gil: Self defense is the argument that war supporters have always thrown at pacifist. This is the old "What would you do if your mother was being raped ?" question. How did you deal with this question before ? You must have ignored it all the time you thought of yourself as a pacifist. Placing yourself between the rapist/murderer/terrorist and his victim is what a true pacifist does. and we can still do that now.

Scott: Some peace activists, their judgment still hobbled by shock, seem to believe that the attacks against New York and Washington were natural disasters: terrible, unpredictable whirlwinds that struck once and will not reoccur.

Gil: I don't know which pacifist told you that the above describes the way they see things. Certainly not this one.

Scott: This is wrong. We know now that there has been an ongoing violent campaign aimed at bringing down diverse nations, with none being more gloriously speckled than the U.S. People who try to hold certain American policies or culture responsible are trying to decorate the crimes of psychotics with synthetic political significance.

Gil: Here the true jingoism of your argument comes out. You are an American before you are a human and that's where are paths part most concretely. You're argument allows us now to absolve the US of all its crimes simply because it has now had a heinous crime committed against it. I do not say that American crimes are responsible for the 9/11 attacks but our crimes in Vietnam, Central America, Chile , the Mideast, East Timor still exist and they are legion and have not been atoned for .

Scott: In 1933 the Oxford Student Union conducted a famous debate over whether it was moral for Britons to fight for king and country. The exquisite intellects of that leading university reviewed the many ways in which British colonialism exploited and oppressed the world. They cited the ways in which vengeful demands made of Germany in the wake of World War I had helped to kindle nationalism and fascism. They saw no moral difference between Western colonialism and world fascism. The Oxford Union ended that debate with this famous proclamation: "Resolved, that we will in no circumstances fight for king and country."

Von Ribbentrop sent back the good news to Germany's new chancellor, Hitler: The West will not fight for its own survival. Its finest minds will justify a silent surrender.

In short, the best-educated young people of their time could not tell the difference between the deficiencies of their own nation, in which liberty and democracy were cornerstones, and a dictatorship founded on racism, tyranny and fear.

Gil: It is disingenuous to use this historical analogy to support your argument while above accusing pacifist of always preparing for the last war not the next one. This is old history and is not reflective of the true pacifists who went to jail in the US or served in the "gritty" CO jobs you mention above.

Scott: And what price would those who urge reconciliation today pay for peace? Should Americans impose a unitary religious state, throw women out of school and work, and rob other religious groups of their rights, so that we have the kind of society the attackers accept? Do pacifists really want to live in the kind of world that the terrorists who hit the World Trade Center and Pentagon would make?

Gil: These are really ridiculous rhetorical questions. I Said above what's needed is a non-violent army massed at the border of Afghanistan and marching resolutely towards Kabul.

Scott: But those of us who have been pacifists must admit that it has been our blessing to live in a nation in which other citizens have been willing to risk their lives to defend our dissent. The war against terrorism does not shove American power into places where it has no place. It calls on America's military strength in a global crisis in which peaceful solutions are not apparent.

Gil: The jingoism and militarism rises to its peak here Scott. There have been and still are pacifists in other countries who face a tough time but they persevere and do have an impact on their countries militarism. Your argument is that because we are free to be pacifist we should not be them.

Scott: Only American (and British) power can stop more killing in the world's skyscrapers, pizza parlors, embassies, bus stations, ships, and airplanes. Pacifists, like most Americans, would like to change their country in a thousand ways. And the blasts of Sept. 11 should remind American pacifists that they live in that one place on the planet where change -- in fact, peaceful change -- seems most possible. It is better to sacrifice our ideals than to expect others to die for them.

Gil: I don't expect other people to die for me. I ask them to lay down their arms and fight WITH ME like Gandhi and Martin Luther King and yes Abdul Gaffer Khan have shown us we can.