Pacifism, a Sure Recipe for War?

Pacifists Versus Peace by Thomas Sowell July21, 2006

"One of the many failings of our educational system is that it sends out into the world people who cannot tell rhetoric from reality. They have learned no systematic way to analyze ideas, derive their implications and test those implications against hard facts.
"Peace" movements are among those who take advantage of this widespread inability to see beyond rhetoric to realities. Few people even seem interested in the actual track record of so-called "peace" movements — that is, whether such movements actually produce peace or war.
Take the Middle East. People are calling for a cease-fire in the interests of peace. But there have been more cease-fires in the Middle East than anywhere else. If cease-fires actually promoted peace, the Middle East would be the most peaceful region on the face of the earth instead of the most violent.
Was World War II ended by cease-fires or by annihilating much of Germany and Japan? Make no mistake about it, innocent civilians died in the process. Indeed, American prisoners of war died when we bombed Germany.
There is a reason why General Sherman said "war is hell" more than a century ago. But he helped end the Civil War with his devastating march through Georgia — not by cease fires or bowing to "world opinion" and there were no corrupt busybodies like the United Nations to demand replacing military force with diplomacy.
There was a time when it would have been suicidal to threaten, much less attack, a nation with much stronger military power because one of the dangers to the attacker would be the prospect of being annihilated.
"World opinion," the U.N. and "peace movements" have eliminated that deterrent. An aggressor today knows that if his aggression fails, he will still be protected from the full retaliatory power and fury of those he attacked because there will be hand-wringers demanding a cease fire, negotiations and concessions.
That has been a formula for never-ending attacks on Israel in the Middle East. The disastrous track record of that approach extends to other times and places — but who looks at track records?
Remember the Falkland Islands war, when Argentina sent troops into the Falklands to capture this little British colony in the South Atlantic?
Argentina had been claiming to be the rightful owner of those islands for more than a century. Why didn't it attack these little islands before? At no time did the British have enough troops there to defend them.
Before there were "peace" movements and the U.N., sending troops into those islands could easily have meant finding British troops or bombs in Buenos Aires. Now "world opinion" condemned the British just for sending armed forces into the South Atlantic to take back their islands.
Shamefully, our own government was one of those that opposed the British use of force. But fortunately British prime minister Margaret Thatcher ignored "world opinion" and took back the Falklands.
The most catastrophic result of "peace" movements was World War II. While Hitler was arming Germany to the teeth, "peace" movements in Britain were advocating that their own country disarm "as an example to others."
British Labor Party Members of Parliament voted consistently against military spending and British college students publicly pledged never to fight for their country. If "peace" movements brought peace, there would never have been World War II.
Not only did that war lead to tens of millions of deaths, it came dangerously close to a crushing victory for the Nazis in Europe and the Japanese empire in Asia. And we now know that the United States was on Hitler's timetable after that.
For the first two years of that war, the Western democracies lost virtually every battle, all over the world, because pre-war "peace" movements had left them with inadequate military equipment and much of it obsolete. The Nazis and the Japanese knew that. That is why they launched the war.
"Peace" movements don't bring peace but war."


An excellent analysis of pacifism if I've ever read one. Most normal people are horrified by the thought of war, and they should be, but pacifism has made war not only more inevitable but more infinitely terrible when it eventually does come. There is an episode on Star Trek ( the original series) that brings this home in a graphic mannner. Capt Kirk arrives at a planet that has supposedly been at war with a neighboring planet for 500 years. This puzzles the Capt, because although the residents say how many citizens have been killed in this war, there is no evidence of any harm to the infrastructure and the citizens seem to be living an idyllic life. Kirk is horrified to discover that the way this has been accomplished has been by "sanitizing" the horrors of war. They have turned the conduct of the war over to computers, which periodically announce virtual attacks and virtual damage. As soon as an attack occurs, computers decide how many people would have been killed, who they would be, and orders those people to report to a "disintegration chamber" where they are vaporized to a very real death. Neat, and all so very civilized. Kirk destroys the computers that run the war, causing the leaders of the planet to panic because their enemy will now start a real war. Kirk says : "Actual war is a very messy business. Very, very messy business. Death. Destruction. Disease. Horror. That's what war is all about. That's what makes it a thing to be avoided. "

Real war should be avoided because both sides want to negotiate to avoid or end its horrors. "Peace" movements, because they remove the cost for nations who want war, no matter how well intentioned they may be, just as they did after WWI serve only to make non aggressive nations less able, or even unable, to defend themselves against emboldened aggressor nations.

One side can not continue to to be forced to attempt to negotiate while the other side continues provocations with impunity. That is a recipe for the horror never ceasing since one side does not bear any serious consequences for initiating hostilities. There is no "tit for tat" here, unlike the media seem to want to portry , Israel has attempted to spare civilian lives as much as is possible, while Hezballah, and others like it, seek out civilian targets. In fact they often boast of how many Israeli civilians they have killed in this manner. The major figure Hezballah wants released is in an Israeli prison for attacking a family IN THEIR home, taking a four year old girl and the father captive, taking them both to a beach, shooting the father and killing the little girl by smashing her head against a rock. There will be no peace in the Middle East unless and until the Islamists are held to same standards of judgement as the world holds Israel to. Hopefully Israel will be able to ignore "world opinion" long enough this time to do decisively what should have been done before, defeat their enemies to the point where the cost of war will impel them to make a real and lasting peace.