I agree. For instance, (and it's been a while, so perhaps my reading is bad), Arendt makes a distinction between the justified use of violence, in which we suppose that violence is wrong but can see no other course of action, and legitimate violence, where we understand violence simply as our right as people with power.

A justified violent action is future oriented, hoping that the future will vindicate what will be a past action but knowing that at the moment, the action is "wrong" until it becomes redeemed through historical context.

By contrast, a legitimate violent action is past oriented, and understood as simply "right", because the power carrying it out has been granted legitimate state power. Here, we can see how people in the US who favor military action often see military action as the "right" of the US to protect its interests, coupled with the legitimacy of US power as a force for the promotion of human rights (not a view I agree with, by the way).

This might sound like a strange and useless distinction, but consider the difference between a police officer shooting someone because there is no other action, and doing even though it may be wrong, and on the other hand, a police officer tasing a "non-compliant" suspect because he believes he legitimately has that power and won't be harmed even if, in the future, people decide it was a wrong action.

At that point, it seems useful, at least to me, to understand that we live in an imperfect world and may have to do violent things, but can be strong pacifists by asserting that there is never a "legitimate" violence.

This lines up pretty well with what I was trying to say, I think. Violence is always bad. Sometimes, it may be less bad than the alternative, but it's difficult and dangerous to judge exactly when; and even if you guess right, violence is still bad. It doesn't retroactively become glorious.

I liked the approach in Iain Banks' Culture series. The Culture believes that war is sometimes necessary but resolutely refuses to glorify it, so all their combat ships are named things like "Thug" and "Gangster" and "Torturer".

But then you're not a pacifist. By definition (at least my understanding / interpretation), a pacifist considers violence unjustifiable in any and all situations.

Like most things, it's a spectrum. There are pacifists who won't partake in violence. Either by their action or the action of someone on their behalf (i.e., they'd argue against their nation going to war). There are also pacifists who won't partake in violence in their own defense, but might to defend others. And others will resist throwing the first punch, but are willing to defend themselves and others with violence if forced to. And there are plenty of other variations on this theme.

And if you really want to go to the definition, wiktionary [1] has it as:

    1.One who loves, supports, or favours peace;
      one who is pro-peace.
    2.One who avoids violence.
    3.One who opposes violence and is anti-war.

Opposition to and avoidance of violence. Not necessarily an absolute rejection of it (though that is likely the ideal of all pacifists).

[1] http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pacifist

No! Pacifism has no spectrum, like anarchism. You can't have a little bit of government with anarchism any more than you can have a bit of violence with pacifism.

Read up on pacifism and its history and various philosophies. I use spectrum to indicate that there are a variety of pacifist philosophies and I'm not wrong, because there are a variety of pacifist philosophies. They all desire a world with zero violence. But some are willing to defend themselves or others against violence with violence, while others are not. Some won't even allow you to defend them, they'd rather fall on the sword than let another perform a violent act for their sake. To think that there's a singular philosophy on this issue is a totally ignorant position to take.

How can you claim pacifism if you resort to violence? Pacifism is the rejection of violence, full stop. The ambiguity lies in the definition of "violence." Tolstoy called voting, paying taxes, and engaging in commerce forms of violence, for instance. Regardless, only using physical violence in defense doesn't make you a pacifist, it just means you don't attack people.

I think you can reasonably claim to be a pacifist if you think that violence is unacceptable in broad categories that most people find it acceptable in, even if you still support it in some situations. For example, wanting to abolish the military but not the police.

I think it would depend on exactly what you mean by "abolish the military". Are we talking "abolish standing militaries, but leave ourselves open to the possibility of raising one in the future if Ganghis Khan rises from his forgotten grave"?

In my personal opinion, abolishing standing militaries while leaving ourselves open to raising an army if the (perhaps unlikely) need arises is, while probably not a common attitude, still just a standard non-pacifist position. I am more than open to abolishing standing armies, but I do not consider myself to be a pacifist.

Well, it's certainly a subject of lively debate among pacifists. Ghandi would probably have agreed with you. Personally I think there should be room for people who are committed to peace as an ideology but e.g. think you should defend yourself if attacked in the street. I don't think you'll find a definition that is universally agreed-upon.

Most people don't think that violence is always the solution, most people recognize that most problems have non-violent resolutions and that non-violent resolutions are preferable.

That's not so much "pacifism" as it is "being a bog-standard sensible person". Of course standard sensible people like to give themselves all sort of nice sounding labels that they can wear like badges (egalitarian, pacifist, etc); there isn't anything wrong with that.

The word really serves no purpose if all it means is, "we should only fight wars when they're justified."

Can you be a virgin in most situations but sometimes have sex?

People can do a lot of mental gymnastics to justify exactly that sort of nonsense: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Born-again_virgin ;)

I guess the take-away here is that people can certainly claim these sorts of things about themselves, evidence to the contrary, but we shouldn't necessarily take them seriously.