But as I've mentioned before, these are inappropriate times to be indulging feel-good follies like this. In the days of the Cold War, the mass graves of Communism were hidden out of sight and out of (progressives') mind, and the frontlines of the conflict tended (but only tended) to stay out of public view. Bloc politics were stark, unnuanced things, with lots of room in the interstices for those inclined to triangulation. Religious progressives could flatter themselves that they were witnesses for peace, voices of conscience, full of righteous prophetic wrath at Uncle, full of excuses for Ivan, save for the occasional, pro forma denunciation of the Socialist Sphere.
But in the present conflict there is no possibility of a balance of power. The enemy considers the death of his victims to be religiously meritorious, and his own death to be an ascent into paradise. There is no attempt on his part to humor the peaceniks' delusion that "everyone wants peace," as the Sovs would do with their "peace offensives" from time to time. The reasons to resist the blandishments of the Christian peace lobby are even more pronounced now than they were back in the Nuclear Freeze days: Losing the resolve to fight off The Jihad now increases the chances of a catastrophe that is beyond lamentation later.
In other words, peaceniks should really get a grasp on the idea that pacifism is morally acceptable only as a personal choice, not a government policy. They have no right, none, to offer my and my family's throats to the scimitar, for the sake of assuaging their flaming, self-congratulatory "consciences".
Let's finish with a laugh: One of the Peace Secretary's functions, from Kucinich:
The secretary of peace would have direct contact with the United Nations.
snort!
What for?
What the @#$% for?
Certainly not to protect America from the Religion of Peace©.
I'll agree that peaceniks can go overboard on their calls for "peace" (Kucinich being an especially overly zealous peacenik), but I believe that there are wars we are meant to fight and wars we should have stayed out of. We should be fighting in Afghanistan (whom we deserted for the Iraq war). We should not have been fighting in Iraq. Agreed, the first Bush should have taken Saddam Hussain out when he had the chance, but his son had no right to go in there. We had no right to go in there. And now Iraq's government is seeing a lot of pressure from the fundamentalist Muslims in the state because there is no dictator to hold down the fundamentalists.
ReplyDeleteBut that is another fight for another day
"Religion of Peace©."
ReplyDeleteHaha,
I love how Bush popularized it and now everyone else uses it yet thinks he's an anti-islamic crusading fascist.
Maybe he should stop saying "evil-doers as well" and start saying "disenfranchisers of the innocent." Ah, the language of appeasement is a hard tongue to master.
If we "should have" taken out Saddam in 1991, what changed between then and 2003? Certainly not his adherence to even a single article of the 1991 cease-fire.
ReplyDeleteSaying "we should have then, but have no business now" strikes me as little more than lip service in order to sound "reasonable." But it's logically, legally, and morally inept. You should simply have the courage of your convictions and say what you really think.
I loved this part:
ReplyDelete..."In other words, peaceniks should really get a grasp on the idea that pacifism is morally acceptable only as a personal choice, not a government policy. They have no right, none, to offer my and my family's throats to the scimitar, for the sake of assuaging their flaming, self-congratulatory "consciences".
Cheers - Dinah