Over the years, letter after letter from peace advocates has made its way into The Enterprise. After monitoring their lengthy editorials, marches, yearly candlelight vigils, books for bombs, or whatever the latest attention-getter happens to be, a few points stand out:

* Their criticism of military intervention is often disproportionately high against the United States compared to other nations, including rogue terrorist states. For example, they staged massive protests when the United States invaded Iraq, but where was this unified response when Russia invaded the former Republic of Georgia in 2008? And Georgia was hardly a terrorist nation with a despot dictator, while Saddam’s Iraq clearly was.

Similarly, did they protest North Korea, who was launching missiles at Japan; a completely innocent, defenseless country?

* Peaceniks more often than not portray the U.S. as the aggressor, even when the facts speak otherwise. Two shining examples are the Russian invasion of Afghanistan and the Vietnam war. In Afghanistan, the aggressor clearly was the Soviet Union because it invaded the country, yet the peaceniks continue to criticize the U.S. role as protector.

Similarly, in Vietnam, the peaceniks protested U.S. involvement even though it was the Soviet-backed Viet Cong that pledged overthrow of the South Vietnam government, and the U.S. was merely trying to prevent that from happening.

* Peaceniks frequently neglect to address the costs of lives and resources of the very policies they themselves support. For example, if the U.S. sat back and dithered after 9/11, more than likely our own citizens would be exposed to future terrorist attacks. I fail to see how that scenario remotely fits within the definition of “peace.”

I rarely, if ever, see one editorial on their side address that grim part of the equation (and I have seen many). One wonders if peaceniks simply dismiss genocide resulting from inaction as blood stains not on their own hands, merely because they themselves did not pull the trigger.

But if World War II has taught us anything, when you sit by and do not act, that, too, has blood-soaked consequences.

David Musser

Davis

Comments

comments