Peace Movement Still Marches

by John Thompson

03/29/04

By way of explanation, one of the occasional liberties of a columnist is that one can occasionally forebear to provide an argument or illustrate a point, and just go for a rant instead.

Yesterday, in the streets of cities across the World, tens of thousands of moral cripples and the usual Marxist ingrates were on display. In a time of near war, here were masses of our own citizens giving aid and comfort to our enemies, displaying their ignorance or else actively working to our downfall. Yes, it was another day for the so-called Peace Movement to go on parade.

First, don’t get me wrong, I do not mind the truly non-violent conscientious objectors of the world. In the First and Second World Wars they were some of the finest combat medics in the Allied Armies, or else provided a high intellectual tone to our prison population (and fared even worse when found among the populations of totalitarian nations). If one has true moral principles, one should be prepared to stand up for them regardless of the cost, otherwise your principles are just opinions and worthless.

An American Vietnam Era draft dodger who went to prison for his beliefs is worth a measure of respect (as the boxer Mohammed Ali does for refusing to serve). As for those who faked insanity to throw their draft medicals or who ran for Canada… well. they just had opinions, and cowardly ones at that.

The famous science fiction novelist Robert Heinlein pointed out that there should be laws about shooting pacifists — anyone who does so should be charged with discharging a firearm in city limits or with creating a traffic hazard. I can see his point.

Someone who can’t recognize a threat is someone that wouldn’t have lasted long enough to stay in our gene pool in the days of yore (I just can’t see some Paleolithic vegetarian trying to explain the cave lion’s perspective while being stalked by one). Someone who refuses to defend a society is not someone who deserves its protections. However, these are enlightened days and we must support the incapable among us… feeding the indigent, tending to the infirm, and letting Peaceniks posture are acts of mercy and tolerance, I suppose.

The purpose of yesterday’s posturing was to condemn the war in Iraq, a year after it began. A year ago, on the eve of the invasion of Iraq, there were hundreds of thousands of protestors, rather than the tens of thousands of yesterday. They were frightened of war (who isn’t?); worried that it might provoke a wider conflict, and didn’t think the price would be worth it. Then, the usual core reprobates were also chanting "no blood for oil" as if the Coalition was bent on a war of conquest and acquisition, and questioning the intelligence that suggested Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

I’ll concede they might have had a valid point on that last issue (even the Peace Movement can’t always be wrong); but the only way to prove that Iraq was fully disarmed was to look for ourselves. Now we know that Saddam’s programs have been discontinued — and as an added bonus, he will never be able to restart them. This is one issue that has been decisively and permanently settled.

As for the rest, well, the Peace Movement never acknowledges their errors (with a very few exceptions — Joan Baez lost her "progressive" credentials in the late 1970s for unfashionably observing that the violence in Southeast Asia had worsened with the departure of the US). The invasion of Iraq did not spark a general conflagration in the Middle East — that one has started long ago, and the sending of firemen into an existing blaze is not a provocative act.

Tens of thousands of people were not killed in the Coalition invasion — and tens of thousands of people were not murdered by Saddam Hussein last year. But, so far, at least 300,000 victims of his regime were disinterred from their mass graves. Three murderous secret police forces are out of business (well almost, Iraq has a problem with terrorism and violent crime now that the terrorists and violent criminals no longer wear police uniforms).

The Iraqi people might not be falling over themselves with gratitude for their liberation although some of their gifts suggest otherwise. One sculptor whose career had been based on carving heroic statutes of Saddam Hussein just sent a life-sized bronze work of an Iraqi child consoling a grieving GI to the US HQ of the 3^rd Mechanized Division. A work of art like this sends a clear message — too bad the marchers of yesterday are too tuned out to understand it.

John Thompson is President of the Mackenzie Institute which studies political instability and terrorism. He can be reached at: mackenzieinstitute@bellnet.ca