When one's nation has been attacked, pacifism is profoundly immoral

PACIFISTS ARE NOT serious people, although they devoutly believe they are, and their arguments are not being taken seriously at the moment. Yet, it is worth taking seriously, and in advance of need, the pacifists and their appeal.

It is worth it, first of all, because the idea of peace is inherently attractive; and the more war there is, the more attractive the idea becomes. It is worth it, secondly, because the reactionary left-liberal crowd in America and in Europe has already staked out its ground here: What happened to America is America's fault, the fruits of foolish arrogance and greedy imperialism, racism, colonialism, etc., etc. From this rises an argument that the resulting war is also an exercise in arrogance and imperialism, etc., and not deserving of support. This argument will be made with greater fearlessness as the first memories of the 7,000 murdered recede. It is worth it, thirdly, because the American foreign policy establishment has all the heart for war of a titmouse, and not one of your braver titmice. The first faint, let-us-be-reasonable bleats can even now be heard: Yes, we must do something, but is an escalation of aggression really the right thing? Mightn't it just make matters ever so much worse?

Pacifists see themselves as obviously on the side of a higher morality, and there is a surface appeal to this notion, even for those who dismiss pacifism as hopelessly naive. The pacifists' argument is rooted entirely in this appeal: Two wrongs don't make a right; violence only begets more violence.

There can be truth in the pacifists' claim to the moral high ground, notably in the case of a war that is waged for manifestly evil purposes. So, for instance, a German citizen who declined to fight for the Nazi cause could be seen (although not likely by his family and friends) as occupying the moral position. But in the situation where one's nation has been attacked — a situation such as we are now in — pacifism is, inescapably and profoundly, immoral. Indeed, in the case of this specific situation, pacifism is on the side of the murderers and it is on the side of letting them murder again.

In 1942, George Orwell wrote, in Partisan Review, this of Great Britain's pacifists:

"Pacifism is objectively pro-Fascist. This is elementary common sense. If you hamper the war effort of one side you automatically help out that of the other. Nor is there any real way of remaining outside such a war as the present one. In practice, 'he that is not with me is against me.'"

England's pacifists howled, but Orwell's logic was implacable. The Nazis wished the British to not fight. If the British did not fight, the Nazis would conquer Britain. The British pacifists also wished the British to not fight. The British pacifists, therefore, were on the side of a Nazi victory over Britain. They were objectively pro-Fascist.

An essentially identical logic obtains now. Organized terrorist groups have attacked America. These groups wish the Americans to not fight. The American pacifists wish the Americans to not fight. If the Americans do not fight, the terrorists will attack America again. And now we know such attacks can kill many thousands of Americans. The American pacifists, therefore, are on the side of future mass murders of Americans. They are objectively pro-terrorist.

There is no way out of this reasoning. No honest person can pretend that the groups that attacked America will, if let alone, not attack again. Nor can any honest person say that this attack is not at least reasonably likely to kill thousands upon thousands of innocent people. To not fight in this instance is to let the attackers live to attack and murder again; to be a pacifist in this instance is to accept and, in practice, support this outcome.

As President Bush said of nations: a war has been declared; you are either on one side or another. You are either for doing what is necessary to capture or kill those who control and fund and harbor the terrorists, or you are for not doing this. If you are for not doing this, you are for allowing the terrorists to continue their attacks on America. You are saying, in fact: I believe that it is better to allow more Americans — perhaps a great many more — to be murdered than to capture or kill the murderers.

Michael Kelly is the editor of the Atlantic Monthly magazine and a graduate of the University of New Hampshire.

The Return of Moral Equivalence Chris Weinkopf

Like squirrels climbing from their holes after a long hibernation, the peaceniks are back. They’re scurrying about on the nation’s college campuses and in its big cities, digging up some old chestnuts they buried long ago, like "give peace a chance" or "1-2-3-4 we don’t want no racist war."

For the Left, this is very exciting. "In growing numbers," John Nichols enthuses in The Nation, "a new peace movement" is emerging. It has roots in "every region of the United States," but it’s strongest in "traditional hotbeds of antiwar activism such as Madison, Wisconsin; Ann Arbor, Michigan; and the Bay Area."

For leftists, ever since their side lost the Cold War, it’s been a sad, lonely, and quiet time. Sure, there was that last-minute burst of energy protesting the Gulf War, but that was ten years ago. Since then, there has been no enemy to whom they could provide aid and comfort, no good opportunities to decry imperialism or condemn the pigs. Outside of the occasional riot at an IMF or WTO conference, the times have been a’ borin’ for professional protesters.

All it took to wake them up from their nap was a single day of lethal, evil terror, and the prospect that America might actually retaliate against it—or worse yet, seek to obliterate the entire movement that brought it about. And then they returned in full force, with their old-time favorite rhetorical device: moral equivalence.

Moral equivalence, William F. Buckley Jr. once observed, is arguing that there’s no difference between pushing "an old lady into the way of an incoming bus" and pushing "an old lady out of the way of an incoming bus," because either way, you’re pushing old ladies around. During the Cold War, moral equivalence was the left’s strategy for rationalizing away Communism’s many sins. America had no business objecting to the Evil Empire, leftists argued, because America had its own skeletons.

The Cuban missile crisis? Well, we have missiles in Europe. Stalinist purges and a state-sponsored famine that killed tens of millions of peasants? That’s just Moscow’s version of McCarthyism. The Soviet invasion and subjugation of Afghanistan? Small potatoes compared to America’s support for the anti-Communist Contras in Nicaragua.

Never mind that McCarthy’s haranguing people before a Senate committee was hardly the same thing as brutally murdering them in a gulag, or that helping a nation to overthrow a tyranny is very different from imposing one on it. Moral equivalence is rooted in moral stupidity—the inability or refusal to make a distinction between the genuinely good, the merely unpleasant, and the patently evil.

The moral equivalence practiced by the cottage industry of anti-war protesters that’s resurfaced in the last two weeks is more subtle. It usually takes the form of a question, like that asked by a 30-year-old Berkeley grad student who was recently quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle. "What has the U.S. done to make so many people around the world so angry at us?"

The left’s answer is a list of U.S. foreign policies: America’s consistent support of Israel, its military bases in Saudi Arabia, the Gulf War, ongoing sanctions against Iraq, plus sundry others. Such offenses, the peaceniks insist, don’t actually justify terrorism, but they explain it; they put it in the appropriate historical context. If America weren’t so unbearably oppressive, its "despair-driven, desperate" adversaries, to use the language of a Nation editorial, wouldn’t be compelled to lash out in this way. We have no business going to war, because we really brought this problem upon ourselves.

It’s the same old moral stupidity.

Even if it were only anger over American foreign policy that drives Islamic radicals to kill Americans (it’s not), the U.S response to the Sept. 11 attacks should be no different than the comprehensive retaliation that’s being planned. Timothy McVeigh had every reason in the world to be angry about the U.S. government’s handling of Waco, but his "despair-driven, desperate" condition didn’t mitigate his moral culpability, or shift it in part onto the U.S. government. Nor did it spare him from the swift administration of justice.

When leftists cite their litany of American abuses in the Middle East, what they’re really saying is that somehow, in total, those policies are morally equivalent—or at least morally comparable—to hijacking American jetliners and deliberately crashing them into highly populated office buildings. As The Nation put it, "the malign influence of history and our share in its burden must surely stand in the dark with the suicide bombers."

By this logic, targeting innocent civilians is an offense roughly on par with defending the Middle East’s lone democracy, maintaining bases in a Muslim country with that government’s approval, liberating one Arab nation from the occupation of another, or using sanctions to thwart a tyrant’s unchecked nuclear-weapons program.

Moral stupidity, indeed.

America is not blameless; no country is. There should be a clear moral distinction between a country that occasionally falls horrendously short of its lofty ideals and a cultish philosophy than consistently engages in unadulterated evil for its own sake. It is that clear to nine out of ten Americans—just not the remaining few who live on college campuses or in places like Madison, Wisconsin; Ann Arbor, Michigan; and the Bay Area.* - from FrontPageMag.com

__________________________________________

Long time lurker, first time poster, here. I just wanted to share this, in case anyone missed it. Inspired writing from Weinkopf.

The following was received via e-mail the other day. I have used this article as well as a few of my own choice words in reply.

Sent: Thursday, September 27, 2001 3:44 AM
Subject: AD HOC ANTI-WAR COORDINATING COMMITTEE
> PLEASE FORWARD,
>
> Several academics, students and activists in the Hudson Valley have expressed
> an interest in an Ad- Hoc Anti-War Coordinating Committee. Such a Cmte. might
> organize anti-war dialogue, and events at Hudson Valley Colleges and
> schedule community activities.
>
>
> AHAWCC would explore topics such as what is justice, causes of the
> conflict, global Islam, role of multi-national corporations, villians and
> heroes, unintended consequences (U.S. as pariah/ garrison state and WW III),
> shifting nation-state alliances, global economic collapse, corporate media
> disinformation, alternatives to war, taking the American flag back, etc.
>
> We need an indication of your interest in attending a future organizing
> meeting, e-mail addresses of others who should receive this notice, your
> thoughts on an agenda, your favorite evenings of the week to meet or do you
> prefer week-ends, your general comments to guide AHAWCC on this proposal.
>
> Peace,
(name withheld)

I don't agree that we should attack the pacifists by calling them immoral. Such language only inflames passions, it does not stir debate.

Orwell's logic is indeed implacable, but so is the pacifist's. What we must do is expose the two logical fallacies of the pacifist's arguments. I believe they are:

A response is always an escalation of agression. This is taken from the Vietnam War where our plan was to turn up the screws just enough to get the other side to quit, but not enough to really hurt them. This approach failed and now we know it is a failure. Our response is to destroy the enemy or at least his capability to engage in warfare. Our current plan isn't simply to turn up the heat, it is to incinerate the terrorists. They will not be allowed to escalate further. The only response we intend to allow them is total and uncompromised capitulation.
The terrorists only attacked because they wanted us to change our foreign policy. If we make the change, they will stop. This is a fallacy on two levels. First, people don't attack to achieve a change of foreign policy, they attack to acheive a level of superiority over the state attacked. Second, if we give them what they want, we will teach them that this is a good method to get what they want. If we change our foreign policy they may be quiet for a moment, but they will attack again when they have a new desire.

Shalom.

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