Buddhists are no more inherently peaceful than any other major religion. Japan historians will tell you that Kyoto is situated between two opposing Buddhist monestaries. These monks would regularly war on each other or terrorize Kyoto.

In addition, Buddhist monks have not been a force for peace in Sri Lanka, but quite the opposite.

I don't have a ready reference, but I'm sure I've read of some real bloody confrontations among the Buddhists many centuries ago. As I recall, violent and bloody enough to have eventually caused the morphing into the pacifism of recent times (so far anyway).

Pretty much all Buddhist regimes have excessive entanglement between state and monastery and there's a pretty good correlation between Buddhism and human rights violations. There's widespread forced labour in Bhutan, as well as enthusiastic and sometimes homicidal oppression of Nepalese citizens and immigrants. In Sri Lanka, you have the treatment that gave rise to the Tigers. In Thailand you're finally beginning to see their oppressed minorities becoming more violent. Japan's generally peaceful, but obviously has a less purely peaceful or unabusive past. Indonesia isn't Buddhist, but when they wanted an oppressive police state constitution, they turned to Buddhism for the best text. The jailers for the Cambodian and Vietnamese attrocities had Buddhist backgrounds (and many retained their faith). Burma is 90% buddhist.

Buddhists like Gere in the west support dictators elsewhere, but they do have the virtue of not actually being dictators in their own right. Not all of their eastern co-religionists can claim the same.

It’s hard to associate Buddhist monks with the notion of peace if you happen to be from Sri Lanka. The monks there are the driving force behind Buddhist nationalism and attacks against the minority. They hold an amount of political sway over the government that is comparable to the powers that the Islamic clergy hold in some countries in the Middle East.