A rchive Date
[ 14-10-2001 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Canada ]
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[http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/jackson.html
Pacifists just dupes for an ignoble cause
Pacifists contend they have a higher morality than those of us who will go to war.
By PAUL JACKSON - Calgary Sun
October 14, 2001
They will not injure or kill their fellow man.
But the pacifist claim is a ruse. For pacifism, read cowardice.
Let's get to the bottom line here: What father or mother on seeing their child being assaulted by some fiend would not dash out and defend their offspring against the attacker?
Not to do so would be an appalling act, and every sane onlooker would rush to the defence of the victim even as the aloof parent stood aside. The same goes for an attack against a community or a country.
We've heard the pacifists - since the 1960s they have often taken on the trendy monicker of peaceniks - cry often. If we put down our arms, our enemies will do the same.
We must show them the way. Demonstrate nobility.
Yet, just reading Islamic terrorist leader Osama bin Laden's words, we know he and his followers have no intention whatsoever of putting down their arms. No more than did Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler or Soviet leader Josef Stalin. Bin Laden openly vows to destroy our civilization, as Hitler and Stalin openly vowed to conquer the world.
But for the courageous men and women who stood up against Hitler, this monster would have conquered the world, too. Indeed, together with the Japanese warlord Hideki Tojo, he came very close to doing so.
Throughout the 1930s, even as Germany and Japan were arming themselves to the teeth, pacifists in Europe and America were persuading their governments to disarm.
To avoid going to war, we appeased Hitler by giving him a chunk of Czechoslovakia, and turned a blind eye to Japan's brutal invasion of much of China. While Jews in Germany were being hounded, and hundreds of thousands Chinese men turned into slave labour while their wives and daughters were raped, we looked the other way.
All in the "noble" cause of pacifism. Now we shudder at how callous we were.
When we see a movie such as Schindler's List, we cry at the atrocities committed against innocent men, women and children - but at the time, because of the pacifist sentiment in our world, we allowed those atrocities.
On the eve of the outbreak of the Second World War, J. S. Woodsworth, leader of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), forerunner of the New Democratic Party, abstained in a vote to have Canada join with Britain in fighting Nazi Germany.
He did this for his "noble" pacifist reasons.
For those, Woodsworth was prepared to let innocent Poles, Czechs, French, Norwegians, Dutch, Danish, Ukrainians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians and others be brutalized.
What, In God's name, was noble about that?
Shouldn't we have all picked up arms to defend these victims?
After the Second World War, when Stalin and his heirs set out to take over the world, there were many who tried to get the western democracies to disarm.
When East Germans revolted against Soviet slavery in 1953, the Hungarians in 1956 and the Czechs in 1968 we stood aside.
We lacked the courage to go in and help them.
We just looked at the pictures of the dreadful massacres and turned away.
Was this noble?
Now, we know that basically the entire disarmament movement throughout the 1950s to the 1980s - the "Ban-the-Bomb" movement - was orchestrated by Moscow.
The pacifists - the peaceniks - were simply dupes.
Today, we have the same naive, foolish people - the likes in Canada of Liberal Lloyd Axworthy and New Democrat Alexa McDonough - telling us not to get involved.
We should stand aside, and things will cool down. Don't antagonize the Islamic forces.
Somehow, as in the 1930s, when Hitler was on the world stage, or when Stalin and Nikita Krushchev were on the rampage, it's the Americans and their allies who are to blame.
The truth is, if we don't stand up once again against evil then it is we who will be to blame. And future generations - enslaved as they will be - will curse us for our cowardice.
So the next time you see a "peace rally," walk on by.
The next time you see a pacifist pamphlet, tear it up unread. The next time you see a defeatist giving their hollow homily on TV switch to another channel.
Be heroes and heroines, not cowards.
Jackson, associate editor of the Sun, can be reached at conradjackson@home.com
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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