Just Say Whoah

The Strib's Doug Grow - who's an honest fellow, albeit as reflexively pro-DFL as anyone in the Twin Cities' media, amazes by writing - hold the presses - a soft-focus piece about a group of local "peace" activists! In this case, he's helping flog their current pet cause: signs that say "Just Say No to War With Iraq".

Now, if you're not from the Twin Cities, you've not heard of "Women Against Military Madness", but every city certainly has a similar group with an identical cant - America is wrong, every tinpot dictator from Khadaffi to Andropov to Hussein is morally on the same plane as our own leadership, any war is inherently wrong (although WAMM was noticeably quiet about Clinton's involvement in the Balkans). Here's an example:

Back in September, Ott was becoming increasingly frustrated by how hard it was to be heard above the ever-growing roar for war with Iraq.

Ott and her husband, Gene, both have been to Iraq. Both frequently have spoken to groups about what they regard as the horrors of the international sanctions against Iraq. The innocents in Iraq are the ones being hurt, they say, and a war will cause only more agony for the powerless.

True, the international sanctions were horrific.

Has anyone asked the Otts why the sanctions are in place? Because Hussein is a ethnocidal madman who invaded Kuwait, killed thousands, and continues to develop weapons of mass destruction capable of destroying entire cities?

Worse, when dealing with "peace" activists, is the sense so many of them have that if you're not repudiating our leadership and prostrating yourself before the world, patria culpa, then you're the enemy.

Yet nobody I know wants peace more than the soldiers of my acquaintance. Nobody wanted peace more than those who went ashore at Normandy. I suspect every soldier that will be involved in any war against Iraq will be staunch advocates of peace as well.

But peace without justice - and I mean justice in the old-fashioned, "the wrong are punished, the good are saved" sense of the term - is meaningless.

The problem with "peace" activists? As long as governments are busy killing their own people, it seems it's all really OK to them.

Posted by Mitch at November 14, 2002 11:41 AM