Pacifist Speech
The great Doc Searls says that "some of the best blogs (most well-reasoned, funny, wise, artfully written) are what we call warblogs." He hotlinks to this particular warblog as an example. Unless there's some mistake, I'd say that's a pretty nice compliment. So thanks for the kind words, Doc.
I don't agree that "pro-war" is merely an abstraction that means the same thing as "pro-death." (Unless you are some kind of psycho who gets excited about war for its own sake-- I imagine there are very few of those, though they probably exist.) The way I see it, supporting this particular war-- the one against al Qaeda and Islamofascism-- is in fact quite the opposite of being "pro-death," if you want to use those terms. I'm not sure that the terms make much sense, though. I'm opposed to death myself. I'd sign up for the "anti-death" movement if I thought it would do any good. Unfortunately, death is here to stay. So, also unfortunately, is war. You can't change that with a prefix. (Or by passing a law against it, as Jonah Goldberg noted a few days ago.) Some wars are necessary, just and right, while others are not; some may be avoided, while others may be inevitable. (Sometimes, avoiding the avoidable ones in the wrong way actually makes them inevitable.) Even unavoidable and just wars can be conducted in an unjust way. Most often, the rights and wrongs are extremely difficult to sort out. But passivity in the face of evil, pusillanimity when under attack-- these hardly ever work out well for the passive-pusillanimous party.
If your conscience isn't troubled by the destruction and death that result from wars that are prosecuted in your interests, then there's something wrong with you. Yet being "against war" as a matter of general principle doesn't solve the problem, but rather side-steps it. It's like switching the channel because you don't like what's happening on the screen. That said, I respect the conviction, if not necessarily the logic, of the true pacifist, though I doubt there are very many of those. By "true" pacifist, I mean a person who would prefer being bitten to shooting a rattlesnake. That's certainly an option. Works out well for the snake. There used to be a common bumper sticker that said "what if they held a war and no one showed up?" When I was 14, that seemed like iron-clad, inarguable logic to me. Let's just not show up for the next war, and set a good example. My view now is that someone always shows up. And sometimes you have to kill them before they kill you.
Is Doc Searls right that "pacifists" have to keep silent about the war on terror because they're afraid to "risk exposing their families to the often unpleasant consequences of pacifist speech?" I haven't noticed this silence, but then, I live in the San Francisco Bay Area. But what are these "unpleasant consequences" faced by the families of peaceniks? Just curious, that's all.
In a related item, "Emmanuel Goldstein" over at Airstrip One has not kept silent, and has been having a little back-and-forth with Natalie Solent about the question: "what motivates the warbloggers?" As "Goldstein" sees it, support for the war on terror-- and particularly the idea of removing Saddam Hussein from power-- is nothing more than a barely-disguised "dream of genocide on the Euphrates." As usual, La Solent's words are worth quoting:
Warbloggers do, by definition, want the war on terror to be waged. They do not merely warn against it, they advocate it as better and safer than alternative strategies. My analogy with my time in CND does not hold when considering the "basic war". In making that analogy, I referred to a common additional belief held by many but not all warbloggers. (I myself sometimes do and sometimes do not convince myself that it is a probable outcome.) Namely that if terrorism is seen to succeed then there will be more of it, and in return more and more indiscriminate reprisals, until you might end up with mutually catastrophic, intentionally genocidal war between Islam and the West/Israel. Were this to happen the West would "win", for lack of a better word, but that would be small comfort indeed. The point I was making was that I haven't come across any warblogger who wants this nightmare to come true. They want to fight before the monster grows too big.
will you have my babies?
Posted by: Robert luis stevenson at December 3, 2003 07:45 PM