A Case For Peace

Let’s get this out of the way: I am writing as one who supports the war on terror and those brave men and women who, according to George Orwell, "stand ready to do violence in [our] behalf."

But you might ask, "Doesn’t this run counter to the teaching of the Church?"

As far as I can tell the Catholic Church has not declared the war on terror absolutely unnecessary, although the hurdle for war had been upped quite a bit by His Holiness Pope John Paul II. However, the Church has condemned terrorism and has urged to combat the violence and to "stop the hatred."

So there! Why this incendiary topic? Well, July 7th happened. And there will be others. Experts are saying it is not a matter of "if it happens" but "when and where it happens."

Why the support?

Victor David Hansen has a great article in National Review Online, " Our Wars Over the War " that explains this better than I'll ever do. He is a military historian and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. If you happen to believe that war only begets war I implore you to read this article with an open mind.

According to Victor David Hansen, "there are three hindrances to the postmodern thinking, besides the primordial fear that so often leads to appeasement."

Our first hindrance is moral equivalence. For the hard Left there is no absolute right and wrong since amorality is defined arbitrarily and only by those in power.

Taking back Fallujah from beheaders and terrorists is no different from bombing the London subway since civilians may die in either case. The deliberate rather than accidental targeting of noncombatants makes little difference, especially since the underdog in Fallujah is not to be judged by the same standard as the overdogs in London and New York. A half-dozen roughed up prisoners in Guantanamo are the same as the Nazi death camps or the Gulag.

Our second shackle is utopian pacifism — ‘war never solved anything’ and ‘violence only begets violence.’ Thus it makes no sense to resort to violence, since reason and conflict resolution can convince even a bin Laden to come to the table. That most evil has ended tragically and most good has resumed through armed struggle — whether in Germany, Japan, and Italy or Panama, Belgrade, and Kabul — is irrelevant. Apparently on some past day, sophisticated Westerners, in their infinite wisdom and morality, transcended age-old human nature, and as a reward were given a pass from the smelly, dirty old world of the past six millennia.

The third restraint is multiculturalism, or the idea that all social practices are of equal merit. Who are we to generalize that the regimes and fundamentalist sects of the Middle East result in economic backwardness, intolerance of religious and ethnic minorities, gender apartheid, racism, homophobia, and patriarchy? Being different from the West is never being worse.

After you read the complete article, if you are still convinced that "War is not the answer," ask yourself who must decide which one of those you love or know will be given up for appeasement. After all others paid the price of appeasement.

Millions died in WWII because Neville Chamberlain believed in it. North Korea is a nuclear power and hundreds of thousands its citizens starved to death or executed because the Clinton administration and the United Nations were enamored by it.

Neville Chamberlain signed a non-aggression pact with Hitler late September 1938. Hitler began his march to take Europe through Sudentenland, which is a tiny section of the Czech Republic that following month.

In 1998 the Clinton administration thought it "necessary to move forward in a more positive way with North Korea. In exchange for a temporary freeze on its nuclear program and a mere promise to refrain from developing such weapons in the future, the Clinton administration extended nearly $1 billion in foreign aid for food and fuel oil, as well as promising to build two light water reactors for the North Koreans." Later that same year the North Koreans tested a new, three-stage ballistic missile.

Some might read this as another political blame-game. Unfortunately, these are just two of many historical facts proving that appeasement does not work.

Peace at all cost?