Like Epicurus, Aristotle believed in the virtue of moderation in all things. Take, for instance, courage: too much can amount to recklessness, and too little in fearfulness. There is, he thought something pleasing about moderate behaviour. If you are faced with a crisis and seem to run away from making a decision about it, you lose the respect of your friends. If, on the other hand, you scream and shout, bully and bluster you also lose the argument, even if you are right. The trick is to keep cool, think and then make an executive decision.
Even if it turns out to be wrong it is better to make a decision rather than no decision. People who dither about decisions can make themselves distraught and unhappy.
“Dither thee in moderation,” I say. Deciding something wrongly may or may not be better than doing nothing in most life circumstances– unless it involves deciding to use force. Then “dithering” could save useless killing. E.g., in 1938, France and Britain should not have dithered because the Czechs, had they been supported, could have stopped Hitler.
The great danger in politics is that the extremes on the right and the left of the political continuum both endorse violence as a solution to problems that do not involve security. Lenin re Russian agriculture, Germany for territory, the West for empire and so on. The enemy, it seems to me, are those who advocate killing for goals that have nothing to do with security.