I’m certainly not arguing against peaceful protests. I think that Gandhi and MLK, amongst others, did marvelous things for the world by showing what could be accomplished peacefully. What I’m arguing is that there are truly evil people on whom one must use force, or people who are so far gone that one cannot get their attention without force. We need to combine the factors.

On the Iraq war all I can say is that it seems to me both a moral failure and also a massive failure of good judgment. My problem in looking at it is that it looks so obvious to me that the Iraq war was a bad idea that I have a hard time understanding how supposedly intelligent, educated people could assume that the Iraq war was going to produce a good result. I also must note that I didn’t come to this conclusion by observing what happened in the war and becoming disillusioned. I was opposed to the war before it started. It has actually gone marginally better than I expected. I’m baffled by people who think there can possibly be any good result. Without the possibility of a good result, the expenditure of life is apalling. I’m willing to see life expended, and as a military veteran I was willing to put my life on the line. But I ask political leaders to spend those lives with at least a minimum of wisdom.

To harp on India again, while the UK built quite an empire, you guys are simply not that ruthless. As a nation you have a fairly sensitive conscience (ignoring our mutual transgression with regard to Iraq), and I think you did in India. What other nations might have seen as minor transgressions touched the English conscience.

Now I don’t ignore economic and practical factors. They play a role as well. I just think there has to be that unwillingness to be completely ruthless in there somewhere. Historical regimes that lack that element have been quite successful and eradicating peaceful protest. The Russian communists, for example, would have executed Gandhi before he got popular.

I don’t think I agree. Of course individuals are not going to succeed alone against really evil rulers. But when the peaceful process, perhaps initially inspired by an individual, becomes a mass movement, even the ruler with no conscience at all has to take note. For one thing, the ruler has a vested interest that his or her country should continue to function smoothly and prosper economically, and mass protests which threaten that have to be taken seriously. Also, even if the ruler has no conscience, sometimes the security forces do, and when the forces start to sympathise with the mass protest the ruler’s days are numbered. The wise despot makes gradual minor concessions and manages to preserve his or her rule. The foolish despot often comes to a bloody end; the blood is not inevitable, but the end is.