Truth Detector

The peace racket
A growing movement is pushing a worldview that ignores history's lessons about strength and appeasement.
By Bruce Bawer
September 2, 2007

'If you want peace, prepare for war," counseled the Roman general Flavius Vegetius Renatus more than 1,600 years ago, echoing the sage advice given nine centuries earlier by the Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu. But in a film I saw recently at Oslo's Nobel Peace Center, this ancient wisdom was turned on its head: "If you want peace," it said, "prepare for peace."

This purports to be wise counsel, a motto for the millennium. In reality, it's wishful thinking that doesn't follow logically from the history of war, the real lesson of which is the one that Sun Tzu and Vegetius taught: Conflict happens, power matters, and it's better to be strong than to be weak. Human history has demonstrated repeatedly that you're safer if your enemies know you'll stand up for yourself than if you're proudly outspoken about your defenselessness or your unwillingness to fight. Yet this truth is denied not only by the Nobel Peace Center film but by the fast-growing, troubling movement that the center symbolizes and promotes.

I'm not talking here about a bunch of naive Quakers or idealistic high school students, but about a movement of savvy, ambitious professionals that is already comfortably ensconced at the United Nations, in the European Union and in many nongovernmental organizations. The peace racket, as I've come to think of it, embraces scores of "peace institutes" and "peace centers" in the U.S. and Europe, plus several hundred peace studies programs at universities such as UC Berkeley and Cornell.

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As for America's response to terrorism, David Barash and Charles Webel tidily sum up the view of many peace studies professors in "Peace and Conflict Studies," their widely used 2002 textbook: "A peace-oriented perspective condemns not only terrorist attacks but also any violent response to them." How, then, are democracies supposed to respond to aggression? Should we open an instant dialogue? Should we make endless concessions? Should we apologize? Neville Chamberlain's 1938 capitulation to Hitler at Munich taught -- or should have taught -- that appeasement just puts off a final reckoning, giving an enemy time to gain strength. But the foundation of the peace racket's success lies in forgetting this lesson. What its adherents learn is the opposite: If you want to ensure peace, appease tyranny -- and there will be no more war.

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George Orwell would have understood the attraction of well-off young people to the peace racket. "Turn-the-other-cheek pacifism," he observed in 1941, "only flourishes among the more prosperous classes, or among workers who have in some way escaped from their own class. . . . To abjure violence it is necessary to have no experience of it."

If so many young Americans have grown up insulated from the realities that Vegetius and Sun Tzu elucidated centuries ago, and are therefore easy marks for the peace racket, it's thanks to the success of the very things the peace racket despises -- American capitalism and American military preparedness.

As for the peace racket's recommendations, if democracies consistently followed them, they'd eventually reap the kind of peace found today in Havana or Pyongyang.

THE REST OF THE STORY:
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-op-bawer2sep02,0,2697346.story?coll=la-opinion-rightrail

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Truth Detector

The Leftists in this country want to naively believe that the attackers of 9-11 did so because of our interventionist policies in the Middle East mimicking the propaganda of the terrorists themselves.

In a fit of naive bliss, they also want to promote the nonsensical notion that if we just pulled completely and unilaterally out of the Middle East, attempted to be more tolerant and understanding of Muslims and their intolerant ideology, terrorists and despots would cease trying to murder our citizens.

This article is 100% right on and I hope Americans are not stupid enough to fall for the naive and historically lacking arguments being foisted on them by a biased Media and Democrats more interested in consolidating power than protecting American citizens.

Colin

Quotes from cool Romans aside, the Iraq War has cost American tax payers in excess of half a trillion dollars (and counting) and has done little save destroy America's credibility overseas, undermine the country's strategic hegemony and create a whole new generation of pissed off Muslim extremists.

Gitmo has exposed the hypocrisy of the United States and its close allies, and been an absolute mockery of democratic values and civil liberties. It has also significantly hurt America's credibility internationally.

Yippee to the bogus War on Terror and the President's foolish rhetoric.

The_Bear

The question is not one of whether or not we should pursue policies of defense or appeasement.
The question that I have is that is a policy of trying to root out terrorism through aggressive military intervention (IE iraq/afghanistan) good policy?

I speak of good policy in regards to its sustainability. Is it a policy that can be continued for years, decades, possibly even generations? If it is not something that there is a foreseeable future in, then it is not a good policy. For instance, Hitler invaded the rest of Europe, prompting them to declare war on Germany, which resulted in the downfall of the nazi regieme. Therefore, it was not 'good' policy.

Iraq is costing about a billion a week or so, depending on the figures that I've heard.
However, more than that, it is costing much in the departments of resources. I speak of course about the men that have been lost due to the physical conflict, about the machinery that has been destroyed or damaged because of the IED's. Money is just that; money. However, once these things: troops, machinery, and all other 'resources' get destroyed, then it becomes a serious drain on the national economy. What it then becomes is that things that Americans could use to get to work and create wealth over here, are instead being blown up over there - or skilled labor that is over there and ends up maimed or killed, is draining the communities and economies of wherever these people were from; not only are they not able to fully work, but they have become an additional cost to the nation in the form of medical care and/or rehab.

If you wish to cite chamberlin's appeasement of Hitler as futile in terms of international diplomacy, I will cite:
- Hitler's invasion of Europe as unsustainable policy.
- The many wars that Rome engaged in, whih brought about her downfall.
- English tyranny over the American colonies
- French tyranny over its own people
- Ghengis Khan and the Golden Horde - although this was the most massive empire in history, it fizzled within a century because its mode of control was unsustainable
- The African's kings willingness to sell its people into slavery

And many more examples, of the failings of policies that were not sustainable.

If we "pull back" from the world, as the article states, will we suffer a defeat in prestige? More then likely we will. However, we will still be here as a nation, and we will hopefully be humbled a bit. Yet, examine the differences between pursuing bad policy, versus losing prestige; history shows that empires, and or nations, that fell, did so because they pursued bad/unsustainable policy.

The ignorant ask "what is my effect on the world?"
The enlightened ask "What does the world know about itself?"

The Bear

I am The Bear
The Bear

Fishmint

That is the reason. Why do you think they did it, sexual frustration?
I don't necessarily support that, but it is not naive to do our best not to inflame more moderate Muslims.

Defensor

What other reason would they have to "murder our citizens?" Osama bin Laden himself told us the reasons for Islamic hostility toward America- all having to do with unwarranted American meddling in the affairs of the Middle East.

Fishmint

Good first post, welcome to PH.

mdmx96

"Unwarranted"?!? The ME's sole export is energy. Huge amounts of it. If it wasn't in our national interests, we would not even give them a second thought. Now, if they would simply pull their collective heads out of their collective asses and stop trying to fight everybody, they could have some of the greatest societies on the planet.

Freedom is not free when you bleed Red, White, and Blue.

I reject your reality and substitute my own ~MythBusters~

Their will be no peace in the Middle East until the Arabs love their children more than they hate the Jews. ~Golda Meir~

The Founders would be ashamed with us for what we are putting up with. ~Ron Paul~

Defensor

They are not "trying to fight everybody." They are trying to fight the people who are destroying their homes, their families, and their way of life.

No amount of oil is worth human life.

mdmx96

They are killing each other by the thousands on a regular basis. Should we just ignore that and the fact that we need the energy reserves that they should be utilizing?

Freedom is not free when you bleed Red, White, and Blue.

I reject your reality and substitute my own ~MythBusters~

Their will be no peace in the Middle East until the Arabs love their children more than they hate the Jews. ~Golda Meir~

The Founders would be ashamed with us for what we are putting up with. ~Ron Paul~