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Peace movement blames America
Seattle Post-Intelligencer ^ | Marc Berley

Posted on 09/25/2001 8:04:00 PM PDT by ppaul

Just as America must fight a "new kind of war," so it must deal with a new kind of peace movement, one that blames American foreign policy for the recent terrorist attack. Blame the hateful mass murderers seeking martyrdom in their radical holy war against America? Not the new peace movement -- it's a part of a global war against America.

Those who opposed U.S. military action in the past questioned the right of America to protect its interests in other countries. That questioning centered on two issues: the definition of American interests and our right to impose our interests on others. These have always been reasonable questions, whatever one's view in particular cases.

The new peace movement has nothing to do with reasonable questions. "Where is the acknowledgment that this was not a 'cowardly' attack on 'civilization' or 'liberty' or 'humanity' or 'the free world' but an attack on the world's self-proclaimed superpower, undertaken as a consequence of specific American alliances and actions?" So asks Susan Sontag in The New Yorker.

Never before have so many Americans been killed on American soil. But the new self-proclaimed peaceniks are anti-American cultural warriors willing to sink to unimaginable moral equivalencies.

Whereas the old peace movement questioned America's right to kill people in other countries when no attack on American soil had occurred, the new peace movement defends the brutal killing of thousands of Americans on the grounds that America got what it had coming.

The new peace movement doubtless recalls the old. The latter began with communist sympathizers who excused the Soviet Union its innumerable crimes against humanity, seeing capitalism as the world's great evil. Having adjusted to the end of the Cold War, the new peace movement hates America for being the world's sole remaining superpower. And it wants that power eviscerated.

Unmoved to anger against the perpetrators of the atrocious violence of September 11th, the new peaceniks merely heat up their longstanding anger against America.

Deplorably, they turn the death of thousands of innocent lives into an opportunity to point a cold ideological finger at America.

In its extremism, the new peace movement has something in common with Jerry Falwell: the refusal to blame those responsible for the September 11th atrocity, choosing instead to blame America.

Falwell blames America for harboring heretics. The peaceniks blame America for harboring Americans. Put the two together and you get the holy war of Osama bin Laden, the jihad declared against the U.S. by the Taliban.

So far the percentage of Americans who blame America is small. But those who do blame America congregate in places that shape the future of American culture: our nation's college and university campuses.

Anyone who thought that the loss of more than 6,000 lives on American soil might have led to unanimous patriotic compassion even at America's campuses was too hopeful. The Sontag sentiment is highly audible on campus.

The day after the September 11th attack, one of my Columbia students voiced this representative reaction: "I hope it will cause America to examine its foreign policy decisions."

Like the old one, the new peace movement is rooted in our universities. Thus, it is ruled by political correctness, which, after expunging America's virtues and exaggerating its crimes, credits America's most vicious enemies with political and moral validity.

As part of its anti-American campaign, political correctness teaches young Americans to identify their country as a global oppressor and to regard the rest of the world as blameless victims.

It not only urges identification with such victims but also encourages students to see themselves as victims too.

Thus they can simultaneously identify with the victims of the September 11th attack and blame the oppressive U.S.

Off campus, Americans are united, and their present unity is a beauty to behold. A New York Times/CBS poll shows 85 percent supporting military action against whoever is responsible for the recent attacks.

But once America starts fighting, opposition will grow. The same poll shows there is already less support for a protracted war than for a short one. And this "new kind of war" is likely to be a very long one.

If we are to win this long war against terrorism, the next generation will have to be another great generation. Lines at recruitment offices for America's armed forces suggest it just might be exactly that.

But courageous, patriotic young Americans will find their peers using the cloak of a new "peace" movement to make a war against them.

:


TOPICS: Editorial; Extended News; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: pacifist; peace
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To: ppaul
Thank you for the heads up, ppaul.
161 posted on 09/27/2001 7:52:35 PM PDT by harpo11
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To: ppaul
Well, it is time to open a large can of "Whoop Ass," IMHO, against those rotten bastards who plotted and carried out this evil deed against America and Western Civilization.

We need to send rough men to seek out and kill all of them, hurtfully and violently. Put the fear of God in the ones we don't kill, so they will not support, in any fashion, the hate and evil that terrorists spread.

162 posted on 09/28/2001 8:00:43 AM PDT by Taxman (fdavis@salestax.org)
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To: CardCarryingMember.VastRightWC
BUMP for later!
163 posted on 09/29/2001 7:52:44 AM PDT by mollynme
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To: mollynme
ping.

More goodies above.

164 posted on 10/12/2001 11:52:58 PM PDT by ppaul
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To: fone
ping.
165 posted on 10/12/2001 11:57:28 PM PDT by ppaul
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To: ppaul
>>>poll shows 85 percent supporting military action against whoever is responsible <<<

This is excellent news. It means only 15 percent of the population are morons! We are making progress my friend!

166 posted on 10/13/2001 12:06:57 AM PDT by fone
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To: micronaut
Turning the other cheek is a good way to get your lights knocked out again.

If you don't have the stomach for reality, watch reruns of "The Brady Bunch".

Meanwhile, better people than you are making the world safe for pacifist sheeple by KILLING the bad guys.

167 posted on 10/13/2001 12:16:28 AM PDT by LibKill
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To: micronaut
I question the motives of dear sweet Amber and wonder if her children will grow up agreeing with her pitiful "lay down and let them kill us" sentiment. I'd bet everything I own that her husband, if he were alive, would strongly disagree with such defeatism.
168 posted on 10/13/2001 12:26:32 AM PDT by samtheman
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To: ppaul
bump for future reference.
169 posted on 11/21/2001 2:25:39 AM PST by MeekOneGOP
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To: ppaul
Peace vs. Pacification. Those people are not about defending peace, they are about thrusting gaging pacifiers down our throats.

The peace movement is a danger to free speech and democracy in this world, from what they advocate.

170 posted on 11/21/2001 2:30:42 AM PST by lavaroise
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