What are the peace groups smoking?

Peter A. Brown
The Orlando Sentinel

September 28, 2001

During these times when there are serious subjects to be considered, I wonder whether writing about a misguided fringe political movement is worth my time or yours.

But to ignore such groups is to let their ideas go unchallenged. Wrong-headed thinking is more dangerous than those who promote it, for ideas all too often outlive their sponsors.

That's how I feel about the fledgling U.S. peace movement, which surely will grow as American forces sustain and inflict casualties. Peace-group members are neither necessarily bad people -- nor un-American. But, being charitable, I think that they are horribly misguided in their apparent belief that very little is worth fighting for.

A less-flattering interpretation of their motivation would be that they believe that the terrorists had some justification, that there is a moral equivalency between the effects of U.S. foreign policy and flying jetliners into crowded office buildings.

The small peace network at this point includes academics, clergy, Hollywood types and others who have never used the words "support" and "military" in the same sentence -- in other words, people for whom protesting U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War was the highlight of their political lives.

For example, at the University of Wisconsin, a hotbed of anti-war demonstrations a generation ago, the activists apparently haven't even bothered to come up with new rhetoric. The Associated Press reported the 400 students who took part in a protest against potential U.S. military action chanted, "1-2-3-4, we won't support your racist war," the same slogan their predecessors on that lefty campus shouted during the Vietnam War era.

The protesters are many of the same people who denounce the Boy Scouts for excluding gays, conservative Christians for letting religion dictate their political beliefs and feminists for challenging traditional sex roles. Yet, they are unwilling to endorse resisting the Taliban and its friends, a political/military movement that would execute gays, ban women from schools and the workplace, and install a theocracy in which Pat Robertson's views would make him an out-of-touch liberal.

The peace groups' argument is that, yes, America has been attacked, and more than 6,000 people killed. But let's not worsen things by doing anything rash, such as defending ourselves from future attacks by eliminating the terrorists.

The depth of their naivete is breathtaking. Can you imagine your grandparents, after Pearl Harbor, counseling turning the other cheek? It's a good thing they didn't -- otherwise we might be speaking German or Japanese.

The contemporary peace movement seems to think that if the United States did not retaliate, the terrorists would stop their murderous ways. It sure worked for Neville Chamberlain. He gave away half of Europe to Germany, then resigned in disgrace when Adolf Hitler went ahead and began World War II anyway.

What are those people smoking?

The irony is that the movement is made up disproportionately of well-educated Americans, just the people who should be able to look back at history and see that such tactics have never worked with bullies.

They are almost certainly correct that, during the multiyear war on terrorism that President Bush has promised, innocent people will be killed.

Does that matter?

Of course it does. But that is a different question than whether that should deter us from retaliation.

It most certainly should not.

Then there are those who, as said one of the numerous e-mails that are besieging anyone with an Internet connection, want to "bomb them with butter." In other words, give the Afghans money and humanitarian aid, and we can bribe them into inactivity.

That ignores two important facts. It fails to acknowledge that the United States is already the largest giver of humanitarian aid to Afghanistan. That largess sure has worked for us so far, hasn't it? But the most ludicrous idea of all is the notion that terrorists can be bought off. Whatever their failings, terrorists are serious people with serious objectives.

The notion that this is all just a misunderstanding, that if we and Osama bin Laden could just break bread together it could all be worked out, would be laughable if it weren't so wrong.

The terrorists and their supporters want to wipe out democracy and capitalism. They want to kill Americans because our value system is the antithesis of theirs.

I understand the terrorists' motivation. It's the peace groups that are hard to figure out.

Peter A. Brown can be reached at pbrown@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-5276.

Source: http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/opinion/orl-oped-brown092801.column?coll=orl%2Dopinion%2Dheadlines