Gandi's Way Isn't the American Way or Collective suicide is no foreign policy

National Review ^ | 15 March 2007 | Fred Thompson

[RKV]

I feel bad for Nancy Pelosi, AND her neighbors. Anti-war activists from the group Code Pink have been giving her the same treatment the president gets at his Crawford, Texas, ranch. Camping on her San Francisco lawn, they’re demanding she cut off funds to the troops in Iraq.

Besides coolers and mattresses, protesters have brought along a giant paper mache statue of Mahatma Gandhi, who is pretty much the symbol of the anti-war movement. Code Pink was founded on his birthday, and when Saddam Hussein was being given a last chance to open Iraq to U.N. weapons inspectors, posters appeared around America asking “What would Gandhi do?”

And that’s a pretty good question. At what point is it okay to fight dictators like Saddam or the al Qaeda terrorists who want to take his place?

It turns out that the answer, according to Gandhi, is NEVER. During World War II, Gandhi penned an open letter to the British people, urging them to surrender to the Nazis. Later, when the extent of the holocaust was known, he criticized Jews who had tried to escape or fight for their lives as they did in Warsaw and Treblinka. “The Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher’s knife,” he said. “They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs.” “Collective suicide,” he told his biographer, “would have been heroism.”

The so-called peace movement certainly has the right to make Gandhi’s way their way, but their efforts to make collective suicide American foreign policy just won’t cut it in this country. When American’s think of heroism, we think of the young American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, risking their lives to prevent another Adolph Hitler or Saddam Hussein.

Gandhi probably wouldn't approve, but I can live with that.

[RKV]

The more I know about Fred, the more I like him.

For those of you who think Ghandi might have had some moral sense, think again. Many folks don't know this bit about him, and should.

[GreyFriar]

ping

[<1/1,000,000th%]

Gandhi was a racist. Look how he treated the dalits.

[thackney]

"Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the Act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest."

Mohandas Gandhi, Chapter XXVII, "The Recruiting Campaign," in his autobiography, My Experiments with Truth:

[the Real fifi]

I heart Fred Thompson. (Sorry newsdem I had to do it.)

[AdamSelene235]

We're talking about the guy who supported the Boer War and suggested that Indians help the British in their efforts to put the Boer's women and children in concentration camps?

The guy who slept naked with young girls as way of testing his virtue?

[printhead]

Well, at least from pictures I've seen he didn't leave much of a carbon footprint.

[deputac]

Just got back from a trip to India. I think it's a tie of who is most hated there, Gandhi and Nehru (who sold his country out to the Muslims for his own place in history).

Anyway, you're right about Mr. Thompson. I hope to see more of him soon.

[Libertarianize the GOP]

Nonviolence only works when confronting societies that value human rights. At the time Britain thought it important to treat each individual in a fair and just manner. Gandhi used what the British people valued against them. When confronting a society that does not value the individual and his rights Gandhi's method is a death wish that serves no purpose other than the destruction of those stupid enough to attempt it.

[RKV]

Yep. Look what it took to get the Russians out of Afghanistan.

[GreenLanternCorps]

Read "The Last Article" by Harry Turtledove. It is a Science Fiction story about the Nazi's taking over India.

Ghandi and Nehru try the nonviolent approach on the Nazi's. It does not work out very well...

[zot]

Thanks for the ping. I hadn't heard that about Gandi. Collective suicide by the Jews would have saved Hitler the logistics of murdering them, and that is all it would have accomplished.

In any case, non-violent resistance doesn't do any good against violent people. It just gets non-violent people killed and ensures that violent people attain and maintain power.

[Zeroisanumber]

Gandhi was a great man, but his strategy of non-violence depended on the authority that he was protesting against actually caring about how they looked to the rest of the world. The Nazis didn't give a toss what the rest of the world thought, so the Mahatma's strategy would have been a failure in their case.

Gandhi's dedication to his cause, his principals, and his nation was remarkable, but I think that his stunning successes in India gave him a case of tunnel vision.

[GreyFriar]

Yes, his tactics were perfect against a decent, moral, democratic, Christian nation like Great Britain with a history of political discussion and belief in rights of the individual, but not a dictatorship where any opposition to the government is forbidden.

I recall an alternate history of WWII, when the Germans get to India, Ghandi leads a mass protest. The Germans merely open up with machine guns on the demonstrators to end the demonstration. Ghandi was among the dead.