Posted on 09/27/2001 7:09:10 PM PDT by Utah Girl
Pacifists are not wimps. Nor are they evil, immoral or on the side of terrorism, as syndicated columnist Michael Kelly ignorantly and illogically asserts in "The negative impact of pacifism.” Ignorant, because Kelly clearly doesn’t understand the worldview and long-range efforts of committed pacifists. Illogical, because Kelly equates the horrific attacks of September 11 with Nazi aggression during World War II.
THE DIFFERENCES between these crises and what unfolded in World War II or the cold war are vast and obvious. If we fail to understand this, if we view Kabul as Dresden and bomb the hell out it, expect more awful footage of American skyscrapers crumbling to the ground. Early and often.
MUSCULAR PEACEMAKING
For serious pacifists, peace is a proactive affair and a long-range proposition, not something passive and limp-wristed. That’s why it’s called the Peace Corps. That’s why dozens of non-governmental development and relief organizations, populated by legions of pacifists, toil in obscurity around the globe, digging wells, operating clinics, working generally to combat economic, social and political injustices. It doesn’t matter which particular government had a hand in fostering those injustices. They exist. They need to be addressed in order to create the stability required for peace.
Pacifists don’t need a full-blown war to place themselves in harm’s way or to sacrifice their lives for their country. Kelly should ask Coretta Scott King about that. Or he should talk to the Mennonites and the Quakers, who regularly dispatch platoons of “Christian Peacemaker Teams” to places like Hebron in the West Bank, where they confront head-on the Israeli bulldozers that flatten Palestinian houses during settlement-building. Kelly should amble on down to Columbus, Georgia, one November for the annual protest of the Army-run School of the Americas, a notorious institution noted for training abusive Latin American military officers. Dozens of nuns, priests and assorted pacifists regularly chain themselves to the gates and fences, aware that they’ll be roughed up by authorities.
TOUGH SELL
As for Kelly’s reference to the Nazis, I’ll admit, pacifism in the face of Hitler’s war machine was no doubt a tough sell in 1942, as it would be today. No denying that.
(It’s funny though: rather than highlight the obscure British pacifists of the 1940s, you’d think Kelly would have focused the highest-profile pacifist of all time, Jesus, and his attempts to pitch pacifism to his fellow Jews in 30 A.D., when the Romans were regularly murdering chariot-loads of Jews. But heck, Jesus is a pretty popular guy now, so I can see why Kelly wouldn’t want to call him evil and immoral.)
But Kelly truly misses the mark when he uses his elementary-school logic to compare the actions of the Nazis to those of the Sept. 11 terrorists. The similarities pretty much end with the fact that both groups are murderous thugs. True, as Kelly states, Hitler did not want the British to fight back. Osama bin Laden, on the other hand, clearly wants to be hit back hard. He wants America to create as much collateral damage as possible. That stuff makes for great recruitment videos. Bin Laden loves jihad. That’s what al-Qaeda is all about.
And that’s why, as U.S. investigators have pieced together, bin Laden had the charismatic leader of Afghanistan’s anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, Ahmed Shah Massoud, assassinated just days before Sept. 11. He fully expected the United States to wage war on Afghanistan, and he poked us in the eye by eliminating Massoud, an obvious and helpful American ally.
A POOR TACTIC
Ethical and moral convictions aside, as a practical matter, wide-ranging military action as a response to terrorism is just plain stupid. It will cause young, frustrated men in the Middle East to seethe, thus sowing the seeds of future terrorism. And President Bush will have a devil of a time holding together a coalition of Arabs and Muslims if we begin willy-nilly bombing Afghanistan. Fortunately, our leaders seem to be buying into at least some of this thinking, as they’ve so far proceeded quite cautiously.
Ultimately, pacifists want these heinous crimes properly investigated and the perpetrators arrested, tried and punished. They also want our country to reflect seriously on our foreign policy, to consider both the good and the bad things we do, and to make changes that will ensure long-lasting peace.
Pacifists want this because they’re patriotic, because they mourn for the victims of terrorism, and because it’s the smart thing to do.
I saw your post immediately after posting mine.
Maybe we could just have the pacifists tuck the 7000 children going to bed tonight without a Mommy or a Daddy why we shouldn't exact justice upon the perpetrators and their enablers?
I can picture it now..."Mr. Bin Laden, Osama Bin Laden, I am placing you under arrest..."
And our lad Osama just stands there waiting for the cuffs. And later phones a good lawyer. Sure, that'll happen.
Frankly, I believe people such as this "Kvin" to be deeply dissociative, although they suffer the delusion that they are more sensitive, and connected, and grounded on this earth than others. He must have led a life completely insulated from any frank accounts of the ways of this world.
Mr. "Needs to Buy a Clue" Kvin, is probably incapable of imagining a reality not defined and conditioned by the various 'caregivers': mother, nurse, teachers, therapists, etc., that have exercised authority over him during the course of his muted and delusional life.
Do not stone him. Just being himself must be punishment enough.
& ignore/loudly & relentlessly refute the
"Camel Butt"
fellow travellers & so-called "Pacifists".
LOL. I've been there...
All that's missing is the family dog. What was he doing...???
Voting here at Free Republic on October 24, 2001 in honor of the United Nations 56th Anniversary
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