Aknauta
03-14-2003, 12:53 PM
Wall Street Journal
Getting Serious
Questions for the peaceniks.
BY PETE DU PONT
Friday, March 14, 2003 12:01 a.m. EST
Protests against war in Iraq have been raging all across America and England as well as Continental Europe. Passionate peace protests are nothing new; we saw them in 1933 when the British Oxford Union declared it would "in no circumstances fight for its King and country," against the Vietnam War in the 1970s, and in 1983 against NATO's proposal to install Pershing missiles to defend Western Europe against Soviet Russia.
So the signs, slogans and emotions are familiar. And so are the questions we ought to be asking the peace protesters.
Peace is important, but is peace without freedom acceptable?
The Soviet Union was at peace between the two world wars and from 1945 until its collapse in 1989, and in those times managed to shoot, starve or kill in the gulag more than 20 million of its own people. In Chairman Mao's Cultural Revolution, China killed and starved many millions more. Pol Pot in a Cambodia at peace killed two million Cambodians. Zimbabwe is at peace, but dictator Robert Mugabe is starving his subjects. North Korea is at peace, and enslaving and starving its people. Iraq is, likewise, oppressing its people.
To quote columnist Andrew Sullivan, "War is an awful thing. But it isn't the most awful thing." Enslaved peoples and peace without freedom are worse.
Link (http://www.opinionjournal.c om/columnists/pdupont/?id=110003194)
Getting Serious
Questions for the peaceniks.
BY PETE DU PONT
Friday, March 14, 2003 12:01 a.m. EST
Protests against war in Iraq have been raging all across America and England as well as Continental Europe. Passionate peace protests are nothing new; we saw them in 1933 when the British Oxford Union declared it would "in no circumstances fight for its King and country," against the Vietnam War in the 1970s, and in 1983 against NATO's proposal to install Pershing missiles to defend Western Europe against Soviet Russia.
So the signs, slogans and emotions are familiar. And so are the questions we ought to be asking the peace protesters.
Peace is important, but is peace without freedom acceptable?
The Soviet Union was at peace between the two world wars and from 1945 until its collapse in 1989, and in those times managed to shoot, starve or kill in the gulag more than 20 million of its own people. In Chairman Mao's Cultural Revolution, China killed and starved many millions more. Pol Pot in a Cambodia at peace killed two million Cambodians. Zimbabwe is at peace, but dictator Robert Mugabe is starving his subjects. North Korea is at peace, and enslaving and starving its people. Iraq is, likewise, oppressing its people.
To quote columnist Andrew Sullivan, "War is an awful thing. But it isn't the most awful thing." Enslaved peoples and peace without freedom are worse.
Link (http://www.opinionjournal.c om/columnists/pdupont/?id=110003194)