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The peace racket
LA Times ^ | September 2, 2007 | Bruce Bawer

Posted on 09/02/2007 9:06:28 PM PDT by gpapa

'If you want peace, prepare for war," counseled the Roman general Flavius Vegetius Renatus more than 1,600 years ago, echoing the sage advice given nine centuries earlier by the Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu. But in a film I saw recently at Oslo's Nobel Peace Center, this ancient wisdom was turned on its head: "If you want peace," it said, "prepare for peace."

This purports to be wise counsel, a motto for the millennium. In reality, it's wishful thinking that doesn't follow logically from the history of war, the real lesson of which is the one that Sun Tzu and Vegetius taught: Conflict happens, power matters, and it's better to be strong than to be weak. Human history has demonstrated repeatedly that you're safer if your enemies know you'll stand up for yourself than if you're proudly outspoken about your defenselessness or your unwillingness to fight. Yet this truth is denied not only by the Nobel Peace Center film but by the fast-growing, troubling movement that the center symbolizes and promotes.

(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...


TOPICS: Editorial; Foreign Affairs; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: peacedepartment; peaceracket; war

1 posted on 09/02/2007 9:06:29 PM PDT by gpapa
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To: gpapa
"If you want peace, prepare for peace." This purports to be wise counsel, a motto for the millennium. In reality, it's wishful thinking that doesn't follow logically from the history of war.

Nor does it show even a minimal understanding of human nature.

2 posted on 09/02/2007 9:13:15 PM PDT by Mr. Mojo ("Hidin' in a corner ...of New York City, lookin' down a .44 in West Virginy")
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To: gpapa

If all the countries of the world were modeled after the United States, then I might go along with the peace movement. Until then, which may be never, there will be war. It is inevitable. The world has plenty of nutjob tyrants and socialists. The socialists have to conquer because their inherent lack of productivity and dictatorial necessity demands it. I don’t want to live without rights or have to bow to Allah. I’d rather die and that’s where the necessity of war comes in. Sometimes death is preferable to living on your knees without freedom, without choice. Everybody dies anyway but don’t tell the libs, you might make them cry.


3 posted on 09/02/2007 9:17:37 PM PDT by TheThinker (You want to eliminate poverty, injustice, hunger worlwide? Then work to destroy tyrants.)
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To: gpapa
[.. The meaning of peace is the absence of opposition to socialism.- Karl Marx ..]

Leftists have a unilateral idea of peace..
They are willing to "peace" you to death..
VOTE democrat or for certain republicans at your own RISK..

4 posted on 09/02/2007 9:18:26 PM PDT by hosepipe (CAUTION: This propaganda is laced with hyperbole....)
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To: gpapa
"If you want peace," it said, "prepare for peace."

Spoken like a true dhimmi.
5 posted on 09/02/2007 9:20:35 PM PDT by shibumi (".....panta en pasin....." - Origen)
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To: gpapa
"If you want peace, prepare for war

There's another Roman epigram in the same vein: Shorten your swords and you lengthen your frontiers.

6 posted on 09/02/2007 9:54:46 PM PDT by PUGACHEV
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To: PUGACHEV

America has provided a security umbrella that made the second half of the 20th century much less lethal than the first half when hundreds of millions died as a result of cockamamie theories of social engineers. People do a lot better to study history than to dream dreams that will never be.


7 posted on 09/02/2007 10:34:01 PM PDT by ClaireSolt (Have you have gotten mixed up in a mish-masher?)
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To: gpapa

These pukes think that desiring peace is such a noble cause that they’re exempt from all realities about war and peace. In their minds, all they have to do to justify their views is say, “I’m for peace.” No kidding Sherlock, so are people who want to defeat terrorists. But not everyone wants peace. Those are the folks are military is fighting.


8 posted on 09/02/2007 10:39:57 PM PDT by Doctor Raoul (The Chairman of the Iraq Veterans Against the War is a Marxist Sandinista Insurgent. Peace Out.)
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To: gpapa
Thanks for the post.

The founding father of the global peace movement is a 77-year-old Norwegian professor, Johan Galtung, who established the International Peace Research Institute in 1959. Invariably portrayed in the media as a charismatic and (these days) grandfatherly champion of decency, Galtung is in fact nothing of the sort. He's called the U.S. a "killer country," accused it of "neo-fascist state terrorism," and gleefully prophesied that it will soon follow Britain "into the graveyard of empires." In the 1970s, he wrote admiringly of Mao Tse-tung's China, and his consistently leftist, anti-Western tune has not changed. Recently he called for the creation of a Truth and Reconciliation Committee in Iraq -- to address not the crimes or atrocities perpetrated by Saddam Hussein and his murderous Baathists, but those he attributes to the United States!

What happened to League of Nations and the UN, then? Weren't they meant to be global Departments of Peace?

9 posted on 09/02/2007 11:02:48 PM PDT by CutePuppy (If you don't ask the right questions you may not get the right answers)
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To: TheThinker
I think part of the reason the libs are so against things like war and the death penalty is because they’re Godless. If you believe that this life is absolutely all there is then no death by war or punishment seems justified.
10 posted on 09/02/2007 11:54:03 PM PDT by Jaysun (It's outlandishly inappropriate to suggest that I'm wrong.)
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To: Jaysun

“I think part of the reason the libs are so against things like war and the death penalty is because they’re Godless. If you believe that this life is absolutely all there is then no death by war or punishment seems justified.”

They hate any kind of authority and any kind of absolute. They’re morally immature and mentally lazy. Emotionally, they never grew up.


11 posted on 09/03/2007 12:03:22 AM PDT by TheThinker (You want to eliminate poverty, injustice, hunger worlwide? Then work to destroy tyrants.)
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To: TheThinker

Pray for peace; prepare for war.


12 posted on 09/03/2007 1:21:31 AM PDT by hsalaw
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To: hsalaw

Members of “Peace Movements” are invariably not the praying type.


13 posted on 09/03/2007 6:25:04 AM PDT by Tallguy (Climate is what you plan for, weather is what you get.)
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To: gpapa

Plato is reputed to have said “Only the dead have seen the end of war”. Two-and-a-half millenia of human history seem not to dispute him.


14 posted on 09/03/2007 7:59:10 AM PDT by DuncanWaring (The Lord uses the good ones; the bad ones use the Lord.)
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To: CutePuppy
What happened to League of Nations and the UN, then? Weren't they meant to be global Departments of Peace?

I was thinking more along the lines of "Ministry of Silly Walks".
15 posted on 09/03/2007 8:06:00 AM PDT by JayNorth
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To: gpapa

I was watching the 4th of July parade with my son in Catonsville and lo there was a gaggle of old ladies (probably left over hippies from the 60s) carrying signs that said “Peace is Patriotic”. I thought well, small town allowing little old ladies to march in their parade.

Now when I go to the 32nd Street farmers market in downtown Baltimore on Saturday mornings, there are the little old ladies with their table handing out their literature and signs “Peace is Patriotic”. Mostly they have cornered college students since that is a student area.

It seems everywhere you look these days there are antis in every nook and corner.

OB


16 posted on 09/03/2007 8:42:24 AM PDT by OBone (Support our boys in uniform - TAKE NO PRISONERS)
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To: gpapa

And through his policy also he shall cause craft to prosper in his hand; and he shall magnify himself in his heart, and by peace shall destroy many: he shall also stand up against the Prince of princes; but he shall be broken without hand. Daniel 8:25


17 posted on 09/03/2007 5:05:29 PM PDT by urluquai (and he shall magnify himself in his heart, and by peace shall destroy many)
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