A pacifist's view, not what you might think

[Guest guest]

This editorial appeared in today's Wall Street Journal:

WHEN WE MUST FIGHT

Even Pacifists Must Support This War

Those who refuse are reminiscent of the Oxford Union in 1933.

BY SCOTT SIMON

Thursday, October 11, 2001 12:01 a.m. EDT

Pacifists often commit the same mistake as generals: They prepare for

the last war, not the next one. Many of the peace activists I have

seen trying to rouse opposition to today's war against terrorism

remind me of a Halloween parade. They put on old, familiar-looking

protest masks--against American imperialism, oppression and violence--

that bear no resemblance to the real demons haunting us now.

Pacifism has never been exactly popular. But when I became a Quaker

as an adolescent in the late 1960s, pacifism seemed to offer a

compelling alternative to the perpetuity of brute force. Mahatma

Gandhi had overthrown an empire and Luther King had overturned

a racial tyranny with nonviolent marches, fasts, and boycotts that

were nervy, ennobling and effective. Pacifism seemed to offer a

chance for survival to a generation that had been stunted by the fear

of nuclear extinction.

I worked as a war reporter, but I never saw a conflict between this

and being a Quaker. If my reporting was sometimes drawn more to human

details than to the box-score kind of war coverage, those details

struck me as critical to explaining war. I never covered a conflict--

whether in Central America, the Caribbean, Africa or the Middle East--

that seriously shook my religious convictions. In fact, most

conflicts seemed to prove how war was rotten, wasteful and useless.

El Salvador's civil war killed 70,000 people over nine years. It was

hard to see how the political compromise that ended the conflict

could not have been reached after just six months.

But in the 1990s, I covered the Balkans. In Sarajevo, Srebrenica, and

Kosovo, I confronted the logical flaw (or perhaps I should say the

fatal flaw) of nonviolent resistance: All the best people can be

killed by all the worst ones. I had never believed that pacifism had

all the answers; neither does militarism. About half of all draft age

Quakers enlisted in World War II, believing that whatever wisdom

pacifism had to give the world, it could not defeat the murderous

schemes of Adolf Hitler and his cohorts.

It seems to me that in confronting the forces that attacked the World

Trade Center and the Pentagon, American pacifists have no sane

alternative now but to support war. I don't consider this reprisal or

revenge, but self-defense: protecting the world from further attacks

by destroying those who would launch them.

Some peace activists, their judgment still hobbled by shock, seem to

believe that the attacks against New York and Washington were natural

disasters: terrible, unpredictable whirlwinds that struck once and

will not reoccur.

This is wrong. We know now that there has been an ongoing violent

campaign aimed at bringing down diverse nations, with none being more

gloriously speckled than the U.S. People who try to hold certain

American policies or culture responsible are trying to decorate the

crimes of psychotics with synthetic political significance.

In 1933 the Oxford Student Union conducted a famous debate over

whether it was moral for Britons to fight for king and country. The

exquisite intellects of that leading university reviewed the many

ways in which British colonialism exploited and oppressed the world.

They cited the ways in which vengeful demands made of Germany in the

wake of World War I had helped to kindle nationalism and fascism.

They saw no moral difference between Western colonialism and world

fascism. The Oxford Union ended that debate with this famous

proclamation: " Resolved, that we will in no circumstances fight for

king and country. "

Von Ribbentrop sent back the good news to Germany's new chancellor,

Hitler: The West will not fight for its own survival. Its finest

minds will justify a silent surrender.

In short, the best-educated young people of their time could not tell

the difference between the deficiencies of their own nation, in which

liberty and democracy were cornerstones, and a dictatorship founded

on racism, tyranny and fear.

And what price would those who urge reconciliation today pay for

peace? Should Americans impose a unitary religious state, throw women

out of school and work, and rob other religious groups of their

rights, so that we have the kind of society the attackers accept? Do

pacifists really want to live in the kind of world that the

terrorists who hit the World Trade Center and Pentagon would make?

Pacifists do not need any lectures about risking their lives to stop

wickedness. Quakers resisted slavery by smuggling out slaves when

even Abraham Lincoln tried to appease the Confederacy. Pacifists

sneaked refugee Jews out of Germany when England and the U.S. were

still trying to placate Hitler. Many conscientious objectors have

served bravely in gritty and unglamorous tasks that aided the U.S. in

time of war.

But those of us who have been pacifists must admit that it has been

our blessing to live in a nation in which other citizens have been

willing to risk their lives to defend our dissent. The war against

terrorism does not shove American power into places where it has no

place. It calls on America's military strength in a global crisis in

which peaceful solutions are not apparent.

Only American (and British) power can stop more killing in the

world's skyscrapers, pizza parlors, embassies, bus stations, ships,

and airplanes. Pacifists, like most Americans, would like to change

their country in a thousand ways. And the blasts of Sept. 11 should

remind American pacifists that they live in that one place on the

planet where change--in fact, peaceful change--seems most possible.

It is better to sacrifice our ideals than to expect others to die for

them.

Mr. Simon is host of National Public Radio's " Weekend Edition With

Simon. "