Violence is an option
Many people, probably even you, think that violence is something really bad and must not be used under any circumstances. If you would ask people on the streets about what they think about hurting other people, they will most probably answer that it should not be allowed. This is the common thinking among so-called civilized people. But what if we dig into the question?
It's a fact that denial of violence is the most common among people living under good conditions. The worse these conditions, the higher the acceptance of violence is. This is because good living conditions in advanced countries usually also mean good public safety and high moral values among the citizens. If, let's say, a pick-a-pocket thief is caught on the Amsterdam metro, the security guards or the passengers would call for the police. If this thief is caught on the Budapest metro, people would most probably beat him up before calling for the police; the same guy in a poor African capital will probably get knifed on the spot.
Elimination or large decrease of crime leads to a state where people deny all forms of violence, and usually think that they don't need it. Criminal elements are absent and rare, you usually only see them on the news, and usually even only when they're captured. This leads to a feeling of safety. This is particularly good, you don't need to worry for your children if you let them go to the playground, you don't need to fear dark alleys of your city and so.
But what if there's no good public safety? Let's see a common example. Hungarian police is poor, and is only actually working in major cities. There is no police in small villages and towns. Of course you can call for them, but it will take hours for them to get to you from the nearest city. Let's say, you're living in such a village, as 80% of our country's people do, and one day some people arrive, armed with baseball bats and knives, and simply take the cattle from your yard. This is an almost everyday type of crime at us, and police can't do much about this. In this case, you can call for the police, of course, but only after the robbers have left. They will never find them, as they're most probably from the other side of the country. What is the only thing that can stop them? Yes, shooting them dead. Would you do that if you'd be in this situation?
Have you ever been bullied in school? Have you ever met young people who think themselves too strong? Perhaps it is unbelievable for you that it might happen, but, just for an example, think about the problem of neonazis in German secondary schools. What if a group of skinheads start to threaten you just because you're a Jew or so? Yes, you can tell to the school director, or even the police, but the skins did nothing against the law - they just said that you'll be killed, while they punched you in the belly, and you have no witnesses. You can perhaps make them sacked from school, but this would perhaps mean your own death sentence.
What can stop such people thinking that they're so cool? Do they respect law? No, they don't. Do they respect responsibility? No, they don't. What is the only thing they respect? Yes, force. The only way to stop them is violence. Just think what happens if five people find one of these skins with some baseball bats, and break his skull so he spends weeks in hospital, and receives a wound for a lifetime. He will never think about threatening others again, so as his friends. Should his friends plan a revenge, they can be also bet up. Such people always think themselves invincible, this gives them the false belief of power.
There is a whole generation grown up in Western civilizations who are told that violence is bad from the first day of their lives. You suck the story of Hitler with your mother's milk, which is perhaps the most violent part of history, and you're expected to condemn violence on this purpose forever. And people do, since all they see is that Hitler is bad, he was violent, so violence is bad.
As there is really no need for violence in their very environment, such people often fall into the mistake of thinking that if they don't need force, there can not be need for it anywhere else either. A brilliant example of the harmful nature of this short-sightedness is the Yugoslavian civil war. The West had the power and ability to stop, for example, the massacre of Muslims in Bosnia by the Bosnian Serb paramilitary troops.
When the Bosnian war broke out, the West first handled it as a humanitarian disaster, not war, they just sent clothes and food to Sarayevo, and some good wishes to the Muslims, who defended themselves with ridiculous equipment against the heavy weapons of the Serbs. The West simply denied the fact that the goal of Karadzic, the leader of the Serbs, is to eliminate all Muslims, not simply to take their capital. Death camps had been set up, thousands of people had been transported and executed there. But the existence of concentration camps in modern Europe was so unbelievable for Western people that they denied them, stating it's impossible, and denied cancelling the weapons embargo against the Muslims, by which they would have been able to end this for all. They simply thought this: "Let's not let them buy weapons and ammunition, and the war will soon end. Weapons are bad, they cause the war, people are anyway nice."
If the West would have recognized Karadzic's and his friends' intentions, to eliminate the Muslim inhabitance of Bosnia, they would have been able to take steps against this. The general misacceptance of violence denied it. Finally, when the same was about to happen in Kosovo in 1999, NATO finally decided to launch airstrikes - which was basically a good decision - but they bombed not the paramilitary troops, which were actually performing the war crimes, but the peaceful citizens of Belgrade and other cities. As a result, the paramilitary units of Arkan, Seselj and such criminals are still intact, while half of Yugoslavia had been bombed to dust, killing several civilians. It's like, let's say, you'd be hearing that a group of German skinheads got armed and attacked Jewish communities, but as a response, Americans would bomb Berlin.
As a summary, we can state that violence is not something bad, it is sometimes a necessary thing to stop violence itself. You can say, violence is a tool, it can be used either for good or bad. You can't say that a hammer is bad, just because it can be used either to build or destroy. But as the above example shows, as every tool, violence has to be used with caution, never more than expected, and only for the purpose it is expected.