Jsut so. Pacifism is morally and philsophically indefensible. There is no high ground there - just a morass of contradictions...
A true pacifist rejects all violence, for any reason. I have a rather disgusting thought experiment to smoke out fake pacifists.
You are tied up in a chair, looking through a one-way mirror. Under one finger is a button. On the other side of the mirror is your young child and a sadistic pedophile. If you push the button, he will die painlessly and your child will be saved. If you don't, you get to watch your child brutalized and killed.
If you refuse to push the button, you are a true pacifist.
If you push it, you aren't a pacifist, you are just posing as one. Any argument you have with Attilla the Hun or General Patton is not with the idea of violence as such, it is whether it is appropriate in a particular case.