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| ON THE OTHER HAND |
| Does Pacifism End or Prolong Wars? By Antonio C. Abaya October 17, 2001 As this is being written, the bombing of Afghanistan has entered its twelfth day. Expectations that it would end or at least taper off after a week � there being few infrastructure targets of military value in the country � were dashed as the aerial bombardment increased in ferocity instead. What seems to be happening is that special warfare teams � American, British and possibly French, with friendly locals � are being inserted, unannounced, into Afghanistan, from two staging areas: Jacobabad air base in Pakistan to the south and Khanabad air base in Uzbekistan to the north. And their mission is apparently not to engage the Taliban in guerilla warfare, as had been anticipated, but to search and locate Taliban targets that are not readily visible from a height of 10,000 meters: ammunition dumps, troop concentrations, and mobile guns (such as tanks and artillery) which the Talibs have moved to the mountains in anticipation of a ground invasion into the valleys. (The Talibs are known to have 360 Soviet-made tanks and hundreds of artillery pieces). The coordinates of the targets are then radioed to central command for GPS-guided ordnance to take out. This would explain the increased ferocity of the bombing. The Americans are gambling that by destroying their equipment and munitions, which the Taliban cannot replace since they have no supply line from anywhere, the Talibs� ability to wage war would be degraded, making them easier pickings for the numerically inferior opposition forces ranged against them. Once they lose key cities such as Herat in the west or Mazar-e-Sharif in the north, the Taliban are expected to crumble both as a fighting force and as a government. A new, broad-based secular government would then be installed in Kabul. But the Americans have to make this happen fast, in two or three weeks, before fundamentalist demonstrations in Pakistan topple the government of President Pervez Musharraf, and before public outrage at home over civilian casualties erode their moral position. And before winter sets in. ***** At least the Taliban are not accountable to public opinion anywhere no matter how starkly medieval and horribly brutish their governance is, especially towards their own women. And neither are the Al-Qaeda jihad warriors held to account for their expressed and deliberate policy of targeting unarmed and innocent civilians, including children, if this will advance the cause of a pure Islamic paradise on Earth.. But let one American bomb stray off its target and obliterate a cluster of mud huts and the unlucky inhabitants inside, and all the anti-Americans in the world crawl out of the woodwork to beat America with a stick, a broom and the bathroom plunger. Never mind the fundamentalist mobs from Jacobabad to Jakarta; they are the spear carriers in this unfolding drama. And never mind the pseudo-intellectuals, the so-called militant activists, the perpetually sneering newspaper columnists - losers in previous ideological wars - who can never forgive the Americans for having demolished their silly fantasies about Global Revolution and the establishment of The Perfect Society; for them, America can do no right and America�s enemies can do no wrong, even as they and their families prepare to emigrate from this dead-end country to, where else? the America that they love to hate. Of more arcane interest are the curious pacifists, ideological descendants of the flower children of the 1960s, who oppose any military response to the murder of six thousand innocent men, women and children; who demand of the US government: Give Peace a Chance, but do not demand the same of the Al-Qaeda cumbancheros whose spokesman has ominously warned that �the Americans must know that the storms will not calm down, especially the storm of airplanes, until they see defeat.;.� who sanctimoniously preach �active non-violence� to the Americans pounding Afghanistan, but do not do the same to the Abu Sayyaf in Sulu threatening jihad, or even to the NPA in the Bondoc Peninsula espousing bloody socialist revolution. A posting in the Internet last October 3 from one Carter Laren exposes the internal contradiction � a phrase favored by allegedly scientific socialists � of pacifists and their pacifism. Excerpts from the Laren statement: �The essential idea of pacifism is the total and complete abstinence from violence, and two corollary rules of action arise from this: 1) Abstain from the initiation (unprovoked use) of force against another individual, and 2) Abstain from the use of force in self-defense (provoked use). �The first corollary is healthy and easy to accept, but to accept the second corollary takes an acute sense of self-loathing. In fact, pacifism is an inherently self-destructive concept. �Imagine, for a moment, that being a pacifist is the ideal. Now imagine someone attacking a pacifist with the intent to rape and kill her. At this point, the pacifist must make a choice: should she defend herself against the attacker, or should she lie back passively to set a good example? �If she defends herself, she has denied pacifism by violating the second corollary. If she does nothing to defend herself, she promotes the destruction of pacifism by �willfully� allowing her attacker (obviously a non-pacifist) to annihilate the ideal (a pacifist). Pacifism, by definition, promotes the destruction of pacifists�... �When pacifists hold up their �Global peace and unity� signs, remember that their version of �peace� means standing in a circle and singing �kum ba yah�, while terrorists murder your loved ones�.. �Pacifists think that by pretending that violence does not exist, eventually it won�t. This is not just silly; it is a vicious, deadly lie. Aggression cannot be defeated by rewarding it. Organizers of �Don�t turn tradgedy (sic) into a war� rallies across (the US) would have Americans believe that the proper response to the murder of thousands of innocent lives is a candlelight vigil and impromptu poetry readings. This is mass suicide. It is an invitation to the Hitlers, the Stalins, the Attilas, and the Bin Ladens of the world to slaughter the American people and to gut their corpses�. �Another pacifist deception is the love-hate alternative. Pacifists often assume that a person must either �love� everyone or �hate� everyone. In a fit of confused self-righteousness, they then proceed to denounce �hate� and appoint themselves as champions of �love�. �Love is stronger than hate� reads a university-sponsored banner condemning US retaliation. What pacifists do not chose to (or cannot) understand is that one cannot truly love everything and everyone. �Love is based on a value-structure: one loves someone in relation to how one�s own values are reflected in that person. A man who tried to love everyone indiscriminately would place himself in the following predicament: he must feel emotions towards Joseph Stalin that are similar to the emotions he feels for his spouse. If he ever reaches such a deranged state, it is certain that whatever emotion he is feeling, it is most definitely not love. �It is acceptable and proper to hate Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, and the terrorists who leveled the World Trade Center; those people were evil. They do not deserve the same emotion due to a spouse or a friend. Stay away from persons who claim to �love� everyone; they necessarily stand for nothing and value nothing. Such people are incapable of loving anyone at all. �In light of current events, one of the most loathsome deceptions that the pacifists have adopted is the labeling of the World Trade Center attacks as a �tragedy.� Choosing to describe the events of 11 September as a �tragedy� instead of an �act of war� or an �attack� puts them on the same level as a freak earthquake or sudden hurricane. This is shameful. The destruction of the World Trade Center was not some haphazard, uncontrollable act of nature; it was a deliberate massacre orchestrated and carried out by evil men with evil intentions. Referring to it as a �tragedy� is not simply sloppy word choice; it is despicable��.� Than which the case against pacifism cannot be stated more eloquently. ***** This article appeared in the November 5, 2001 issue of the Philippine Weekly Graphic magazine. |