Against Pacifism
Against Pacifism
by Damon W. Root
In 1941, with Hitler’s war machine furiously hacking Western civilization to bits, George Orwell famously observed that “objectively, the pacifist is pro-Nazi.”
Today, as Islamic fascists like Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda and the Taliban struggle to bring the world under another yoke of vicious, anti-Semitic totalitarianism, our own anti-war activists inform anyone who will listen that “an eye for an eye makes the world go blind.”
Since these folks would apparently rather see Islamic fascism run free than have America vigorously engage her enemies, let’s consider just what sort of world the modern pacifist is objectively in favor of.
Afghanistan, under the Taliban, is literally a hell on earth. Women and girls are deprived of every imaginable civil, social, political, and economic liberty. Their humanity itself is under brutal attack, every minute of every day.
According to Human Rights Watch, Taliban officials “beat women on the streets for dress code violations and for venturing outside the home without the company of a close male relative.” Amnesty International reports that “women who wear nail varnish could have their fingers chopped off.”
Forbidden to speak with or visit any male who is not a close relative (including doctors and dentists), women and girls regularly go without basic medical attention. In addition, the Taliban have banned music, films, television, playing cards, and other forms of entertainment. Musical instruments and books have been seized and burned. Civil liberties like freedom of speech and religion are repressed by force. For example, the punishment for converting to Christianity or Judaism, professing these religions, or distributing their literature, is death.
Amnesty International describes how two men convicted of sodomy “were placed under a wall of dried mud which was bulldozed upon them.” In Kabul, an unmarried man convicted of premarital sex received 100 lashes with a leather strap. Had he been married, “the punishment would have been death by stoning,” the report states.
With each passing day, similar accounts of misogyny and oppression come pouring in. Kim Candy, President of the National Organization for Women, observes that “when such extremism is allowed to flourish anywhere in the world, none of us is safe.”
Confront the moral relativists who infest our college campuses and progressive institutions with these unspeakable events, however, and they respond with juvenile slogans like “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.” In New York City, popular graffiti artist and left-wing dissident De La Vega has a statement hanging in his gallery that reads “Osama, whether right or wrong, is a fighter for freedom.”
Following the logic of this idiocy, we should elevate Hitler’s holocaust and South Africa’s apartheid into noble ideals simply because some illiterate thugs were willing to shed blood on their behalf. Thankfully, we do nothing of the sort.
Just what sort of freedom do people like De La Vega think bin Laden and the Taliban are fighting for? Freedom to throw acid in the faces of unveiled women? Freedom to torture and murder gays, Jews, and atheists? Anyone suggesting a similarity between the values of Martin Luther King and Mullah Omar ought to put down the placard, quit the protest, and hide their head in shame. The Islamic fascists have brought nightmare to life in their own lands, while their ideology calls for its export. To profess pacifism in the face of such horror is to appease evil itself.
———–
Damon W. Root is a writer for the Objectivist Center and graduated from Columbia College in 1999. The Objectivist Center is a national not-for-profit think tank promoting the values of reason, individualism, freedom and achievement in American culture.
Copyright, The Atlas Society. For more information, please visit www.atlassociety.org.
The logic of pacifists is baffling and at odds with their own principles.
On the one hand, they view the need for war as unnecessary and evil for it takes lives and maims. On the other hand, they accept the human atrocities heaped upon the unfortunate. They do not believe they are worthy of intervening to save them. In essence, their morals allow them to see another day of suffering in a far-off land while they sit at home, cozy, warm, surrounded by their soft existence, “Dancing with the Stars” and idiotic shopping sprees, coupons in hand, loading their day’s spoils into their gas-guzzling SUV to be hauled home in. They live a life of selfish righteousness and moral contradictions.
There are several reasons why America is in Afghanistan. To protect those described above and to end the nightmarish existence of those unfortunate to be born there is a morally justifiable reason alone. Unfortunately, not much attention is given to that fact.
Pacifism cannot be national policy
Pacifism as national policy for a nation is almost unheard of, for the obvious reason that it will only work if no-one wants to attack your country, or the nation with whom you are in dispute is also committed to pacifism. In any other circumstances adopting a pacifist stance will result in your country rapidly being conquered.
However, the idea of pacifism, and of seeking non-violent solutions to disputes between nations, plays a significant part in international politics, particularly through the work of the United Nations.
The logical case against Pacifism
Those who oppose pacifism say that because the world is not perfect, war is not always wrong.
They say that states have a duty to protect their citizens, and that citizens have a duty to carry out certain tasks in a Just War.
It doesn’t matter that pacifists are motivated by respect for human life and a love of peace. The pacifists’ refusal to participate in war does not make them noble idealists, but people who are failing to carry out an important moral obligation.
A second argument says that pacifism has no place in the face of extreme evil.
The war against Nazi Germany was a war against extreme wickedness, and in 1941 an editorial in the Times Literary Supplement wrote:
There are Justifiable Reasons to be in Afghanistan
There are several reasons to be in Afghanistan. Some say it is to rid the country of the Taliban’s threat to overthrow the fledgling democracy and to destroy Al Qaeda’s ability to launch another 9/11. While this is true, the other critical reason rarely discussed to length has to do with Pakistan’s stability.
The Taliban’s objective is to split the Pashto-speaking frontier provinces from Pakistan and join them with Pashto-speaking areas in Afghanistan to create a nation called Pashtunistan. The bombings in recent months and the daring attack on a police academy near Lahore were designed to avenge the excesses of Pakistani forces in the frontier area. Slowly the Taliban are moving to achieve their objective. Today Sharia law, tomorrow a separate homeland and later full nationhood.
Al-Qaida has its own objective amidst the turmoil – to grab a nuclear bomb or nuclear material and threaten the world. The Pakistani military is much more Islamic today than it has been in the past. It is possible that when pressured with religious zeal soldiers may put faith ahead of their duty. That could be the beginning of the end of U.S. and British-supplied security of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons. Individual soldiers are more prone to religious propaganda than their command structures; therefore they need to be watched.
The day a nuclear device ends up in al-Qaida’s hands will be a catastrophic day for the world. A dirty bomb may not appear in a city overnight, but it could be used to blackmail the United States, for example, forcing it out of the Middle East, Afghanistan, Pakistan and the entire Muslim world. India could have a nuclear war at hand.
In any case, it is no longer safe to trust terror-ridden Pakistan with nuclear materials. No amount of security can prevent their disappearance if the people guarding them are compromised. Al-Qaida, bent on acquiring nuclear materials, is a serious threat to Pakistan. It can no longer be taken lightly.