March 29, 2006
COROLLARY TO BURKE (via Gene Brown):
Peace isn't made when real wrongdoing goes ignored (Jonathan Gurwitz, 03/29/2006, San Antonio Express-News)
"The consequences of doing nothing in the face of evil were demonstrated when the world did not stop the Rwandan genocide that killed almost a million people in 1994. Where were the peace protesters then? They were just as silent as they are today in the face of the barbaric behavior of religious fanatics."
-Nobel Peace Prize laureate Jose Ramos-Horta, writing in the Wall Street Journal, May 13, 2004A peace laureate acting as an advocate for war might seem odd. Odd, unless you understand that war is not the worst evil known to mankind. And odd, unless you understand that the absence of war is far from being the same thing as peace.
"Some may accuse me of being more of a warmonger than a Nobel laureate," Ramos-Horta wrote. "It is always easier to say no to war, even at the price of appeasement. But being politically correct means leaving the innocent to suffer the world over, from Phnom Penh to Baghdad."
I recalled Ramos-Horta's powerful essay while reading the piddling statement from Christian Peacemaker Teams after coalition forces stormed a house on the outskirts of Baghdad and freed three of the organization's members.
All it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to focus on the means, not the end. Posted by Orrin Judd at March 29, 2006 9:57 AM
It's fine to be anti-war, as long as they recognize tyranny as a form of war, and the overthrow of tyrants as the establishment of peace.
Posted by: pj at March 29, 2006 10:37 AMIn general, today's peace "protestors" have a deficiency of moral courage. Not to mention deficiencies in understanding history and human nature. Of course, some of them just want the other side to win.
Posted by: jim hamlen at March 29, 2006 10:49 AMA bit off track, but if you haven't clicked on "Is Allen Ginsburg 'Howl-ing' in his grave?" in the sidebar on the left, give yourself a break and do so ... for a howl!
Posted by: Genecis at March 29, 2006 11:03 AM"Peace" is properly defined as the absence of conflict and the presence of justice.
By this definition, there was no peace in Iraq or Afghanistan before the war; there is none now in Lybia or Syria or Gaza or North Korea or Iran.
Posted by: Mike Morley at March 29, 2006 11:36 AMThe World Government reaching out to squash bugs like Afghanistan and Iraq is not war.
There was battle, there was magnificent exercise of military virtue, but it was not war.
Likewise, as Ramos-Horta teaches, suffering lawlessness is not peace.
Posted by: Lou Gots at March 29, 2006 2:13 PMExactly Lou. They were major battles in the "Long War." The alternative to the Long war is submission, dhimmitude and sharia law. Not an option for me or mine. The peace movement's condemnation of the USA exclusively should deny them the acceptance and cover that pacifists traditionally receive. In my view they're political seditionists and deserving of contempt.
Posted by: Genecis at March 29, 2006 2:34 PMWar and peace are mostly irrelevent to the peace movement, which is controlled by America's enemies and populated by dupes.
Posted by: David Cohen at March 29, 2006 3:57 PMIt would be more helpful, Orrin, if you used a phrase like "All it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to focus on legalities, not people."
Posted by: Ptah at March 29, 2006 10:27 PMBut that'll get the nativists all upset.
Posted by: oj at March 29, 2006 11:13 PMAll it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to focus on the means, not the end.
The end=state is the most important thing to keep in mind in any effort. But the means are also important. Both are trumped by a sense of what is morally right. We should not avoid war just to appease or avoid conflict. We should not prosecute war by any means possible, but we should apply morally acceptable tactics and enough force to see our end-state realized - assuming that said end-state is also morally acceptable.
Viet Nam was a good example of what can go wrong. We had an end in mind which was to have a free-standing democracy in the South, free from harassment and/or takeover by the Communist North. But the Johnson administration used all the wrong means. They handcuffed our military and banned them from attacking the supply lines and population centers of the North - for fear of bringing China into the conflict and for political correctness reasons. The result was an ever-increasing body count of US soldiers with the NVA and Viet Cong able to keep themselves supplied with the tools of war. Eventually, this "quagmire" turned US public opinion against our involvement. Nixon, using this unrest at home as a political ploy, campaigned on a "Peace with Honor" platform. Several years after his election, we signed a cease-fire agreement in Paris. Our troops came home (I was one of them).
Did South Viet Nam get peace? Not by Ramos-Horta's concept of it. It is estimated that over 2 million people in the South were herded off to prison camps and never heard from again. Many millions more were sent to "re-education (read brainwashing) centers to be programmed into good little Commies. Wholesale genocide took place in Laos and Cambodia. And Nixon declared peace. South Viet Nam is no more. They had nothing to say about it. The North saw to it.
To this day, I believe that if we'd have been allowed by LBJ to win that war militarily (at one time it is reported that the North was near defeat), South Viet Nam would still exist and be flourishing like South Korea. Millions of Southeast Asians would still be alive. We would have strong diplomatic ties and viable agreements for mutual defense and military bases in those countries right now. Instead, we got nothing but a monument in DC. Means matter too.
Posted by: Michael at March 30, 2006 12:26 PMWe always use immoral means, but the end is moral. It's not possible to justify Hiroshima in isolation, only in context.
Posted by: oj at March 30, 2006 12:32 PM