PING!
Posted on 03/27/2006 6:42:29 AM PST by GMMAC
The tyrant's best friend
Lorne Gunter
National Post
Page: A18, Section: Editorials
Monday, March 27, 2006
George Orwell detested tyrants, Communist and fascist alike. But he reserved a special contempt for pacifists. "Those who 'abjure' violence can only do so because others are committing violence on their behalf."
Orwell saw pacifists as self-superior freeloaders capable of indulging their naive beliefs only because brave men and women were prepared to lay down their lives to defend them.
And Orwell didn't even know the Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) whose members had to be rescued in Iraq last week by daring British, Canadian, American and Iraqi commandos.
He knew their type, though.
In his 1945 essay Notes on Nationalism, Orwell explains, "The majority of pacifists either belong to obscure religious sects or are simply humanitarians who object to taking life and prefer not to follow their thoughts beyond that point. But there is a minority ... whose real though unadmitted motive appears to be hatred of western democracy and admiration for totalitarianism. Pacifist propaganda usually boils down to saying that one side is as bad as the other, but if one looks closely at the writing ... they do not as a rule condemn violence as such, but only violence used in defence of the western countries."
He certainly had the CPT pegged.
They are not in Iraq to stop war. They are there, instead, to thwart what they call the "illegal occupation" by Western forces.
By their use of words, they have chosen sides. CPT volunteers may not take up arms in support of the Iraqi insurgency -- their shallow thinking is at least consistent on that point -- but war is not their enemy, nor peace their sole objective.
They do not condemn the violence on both sides equally, even though that is what real pacifists would do.
The trio released last week claimed they had been in Iraq to uncover human rights abuses. Yet before their abduction, they had canvassed only Iraqis opposed to the coalition for lists of grievances. They weren't seeking to convince both sides of the futility of battle. Rather, they were looking to make a case against American and British action -- only.
And since being released, Canadians Harmeet Sooden and Jim Loney, and Brit Norman Kember, have made only excuses for their abductors. They have charged that the presence of foreign troops in Iraq created the conditions that led to their kidnapping, but never once disparaged their abductors' motives.
They haven't even been able to condemn those who murdered their colleague Tom Fox, the American CPT member kidnapped along with them last Nov. 26, whose bullet-riddled corpse was found near a railway line earlier this month.
But you can bet had Fox been killed or even merely injured during the rescue attempt, the CPT would have screeched indignantly about the brutality of coalition forces and demanded Congressional and Parliamentary inquiries, so great is their hypocritical commitment to non-violence.
There have even been reports in London's Daily Telegraph that CPT leaders back home were vaguely aware of ongoing intelligence and special forces efforts to free Sooden, Loney and Kember, but had demanded no action be taken until the rescuers could be certain no one -- not even a kidnapper -- would be killed.
How arrogant.
Not only were rescuers expected to put their lives on the line to free idealists who blamed the rescuers for their abduction (even though it was the idealists' own silly actions had gotten them kidnapped in the first place), the idealists' colleagues back in the West were demanding the brave soldiers, spies and informants double their risk just so their mission would be carried out in a way that didn't offend the idealists' beliefs.
Writing in Partisan Review in 1942, Orwell explained "This is elementary common sense. If you hamper the war effort of one side you automatically help out that of the other." That is why "Pacifists are the objective allies of tyrants," rather than crusaders or martyrs for peace, as they like to see themselves.
Because free countries tolerate pacifists' views and actions -- just look at the extraordinary efforts coalition countries took to locate and save the CPT hostages -- "pacifism can act more effectively against democracy than for it."
The smug moralists of the CPT may fool themselves by thinking they are making the world freer and more peaceful. In truth, they are likely achieving the opposite.
© National Post 2006
PING!
And to think I just updated my tag yesterday...
"Senior"? Eh, what's that, Sonny? Can you speak into my hearing aid?
My hope is that these raids were undertaken in order to kill terrorists and the discovery of these PoS was accidental. Let the headcases take their heads.
BTTT
bump for later
Excellent.
Simply a bunch of Socialists not worth saving under any condition. Actually they're better off dead! Next time, 'give peace a chance' and let 'em rot!
Well, heck - the Orwell quote has been my tagline for awhile now.
What a great editorial! Thanks for posting!
-
"George Orwell detested tyrants, Communist and fascist alike. But he reserved a special contempt for pacifists."Orwell's observations were keen and accurate."'Those who "abjure" violence can only do so because others are committing violence on their behalf.'"
"Orwell saw pacifists as self-superior freeloaders capable of indulging their naive beliefs only because brave men and women were prepared to lay down their lives to defend them."
But it's not only "pacifists." It's a larger category than merely "pacifists," but it includes them.
It is a huge segment of humanity--fools who flatter themselves that their intentions are good--fools who quite selfishly soothe the fears, pain, and anger that we all experience, living as we do in a world in which suffering and injustice sooner or later affect everyone, by indulging themselves in self-congratulatory and self-deceptive good intentions (while ignoring the good intentions of those of us who are less self-deceptive), falty logic, dishonesty, delusions, intellectual laziness, and misdirected anger and accusation.
Such people are the enablers of the worst of people--tyrants, sociopaths, sadists, oppressors, manipulators, paranoid delusionals indulging their visions of grandeur, and so indulgent are they of their own self-congratulation that they ignore the truth of who they are and what they do.
Such fools are the enablers of scoundrels.
And in fact they are worse than scoundrels and more dangerous.
It's a hard call, but in the final analysis a fool is worse than a scoundrel.
The Democrat Party itself--and the entire Leftist movement in America and the rest of the West--is composed of fools and scoundrels--self-congratulatory and well intentioned morons and sociopaths.
Tyrants--exploitive sociopaths and scoundrels--deserve to be detested, and they are detested by the honest, benevolent, and wise.
But the fools who are their enablers deserve a particular and unyielding contempt. And the honest, benevolent, and wise hold them in such contempt.
A fool is more dangerous than a scoundrel.
I am very glad to see these people called to task for all the harm they do.
I hope some in the press will take on the useful idiots who are trying to make the draft dodgers look like they are todays representatives of Canadian "values".
Wow. Canadian commandos in Iraq.....who knew????
(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie. Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")
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