In Ghandi’s words:
I do believe that, where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence... I would rather have India resort to arms in order to defend her honour than that she should, in a cowardly manner, become or remain a helpless witness to her own dishonor.and
I want both the Hindus and Mussalmans to cultivate the cool courage to die without killing. But if one has not that courage, I want him to cultivate the art of killing and being killed rather than, in a cowardly manner, flee from danger. For the latter, in spite of his flight, does commit mental himsa. He flees because he has not the courage to be killed in the act of killing.and a great deal more in that vein: http://www.mkgandhi.org/nonviolence/phil8.htm
Of course, he always concludes that non-violence is better. I think that someone who is not in a position to understand how badly some people are oppressed in this world isn’t really in a position to tell somebody else that they should have the courage to die without fighting back if that’s what it takes.
Your example of abortion clinic bombers, undertaken on the behalf of victims who never asked for your help, strikes me as much more similar to the USA’s invasions of other countries to liberate them in recent years.
Nelson Mandela’s case is more comparable to the citizens in Mexico currently banding together to fight off the drug gangs that had practically enslaved them.
There are cases, like that in Mexico right now, and the situation of the hill tribes in Burma and the Tibetans in Tibet, where the forces oppressing them have so little human compassion that non-violence doesn’t work. The fact that the Afrikaners are European leads a lot of people to assume that’s not the case with them, but I don’t think a sober evaluation of the evidence bears that out.
