The anti-war movement

These days I have to drive down to Santa Fe five days a week, and almost every day on one of the main intersections I pass a small, rather pathetic-looking group holding anti-war signs. Now I’m in agreement that war is inevitably wasteful and destructive, and to be avoided whenever possible, and it is certainly legitimate to question whether a particular war (like the one in Iraq or in Vietnam) was really necessary or wise. On the other hand, I never have understood those who oppose war no matter what.

Indeed, these anti-war protestors are safe in their public demonstrations precisely because so many Americans have fought to preserve the right of peaceable public assembly. There are many countries around the world even today where their protest would be broken up in minutes by the local secret police or some religious vigilante group, and they themselves carted off never to be seen again. It has always seemed to me that those who were not prepared to defend their rights had no real rights.

I saw a car the other day with two bumper stickers. On one side was a sticker that said “No War”, and on the other side a sticker that said “Free Tibet”. Noble sentiments, without a doubt, but just how did the owner of that car think anyone was ever going to free Tibet from China’s grip without war? Reason sweetly with the Communist Chinese government? I don’t think so……

In my graduate school days I was briefly involved in a campus anti-war group led by some of the faculty. But I dropped out after a few meetings when I realized that this anti-war group was dogged by bitter infighting among the leaders – they wanted peace in the world but were incapable of peace even among themselves!

One certainly hopes that human civilization finds its way toward non-violent resolutions of its internal differences, but it is a cause that deserves better supporters than the idealists who seem to be its main supporters today. Any realistic attempt to reduce war is going to have to confront the reality that there are always unscrupulous, ambitious, charismatic, power-hungry thugs about – people like Hitler and Saddam and Alexander the Great and Attila the Hun and a whole string of European and Asian monarchs through the ages, and not a few Popes and Imams and other religious leaders – and any useful and realistic anti-war policy has to have a credible way of dealing with them and their ability to brainwash whole nations into following them.

Until then, I think the 2000 year old advice from the Roman writer Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus still applies: "Let him who desires peace prepare for war". Nothing assures peace better, from the neighborhood bully or the bellicose leader of a powerful nation, than the knowledge that you are at least as strong and determined as they are.