The View From Here: Peace

Peace is one of those things that everyone wants.  Well, not everyone, of course, but regular people do.  And the constant refrain that I'm always hearing is that peace is more than just the absence of war.  But the absence of war is a large part of peace, especially from the political point of view.

I have to admit, I hold a certain admiration for people who absolutely reject violence for any reason.  You've kind of got to admire anyone willing to put everything on the line to take a stand.  Their argument is that the world would be a better place if everybody renounced violence and war and simply refused to do it.  That's a wonderful sentiment.

The trouble is, absolutely everybody has got to sign on.  All it would take would be for one guy to decide he liked that idea and he could go around robbing and killing everybody else, and never have to worry about any violent repercussions.  The non-violent of the world would have the choice of wringing their hands and hoping he decided to stop, or just accepting that they were no longer safe.

That's why I can't vote for Ron Paul.  I don't think his foreign policy ideas are born out of a devotion to non-violence.  They seem to be coming from his core libertarianism, in which everybody has the right to do whatever they want, as long as they don't bother anyone else.  I get the impression he believes that, for instance, if we don't stop Iran from attaining nuclear weapons, they won't bother us.  One hell of a gamble, if you ask me.

There happen to be people in this world who, for whatever reason, are bent on harming others.  It wasn't my idea, I'm just reporting what seems obvious to me.  They might be sick, mentally unstable, fearful, hateful, whatever, they're going to do it if we don't strap them down and heavily medicate them.  The people that flew a couple of airliners into the World Trade Center could have stayed home and hoped that Ron Paul won the next election, but they didn't.  They were as devoted to what they thought was right as the people squatting on the quad at Dartmouth College, swearing that they'll never swat another mosquito and wishing George W. Bush had died at birth.

The point is, sometimes a small war is better than a big one.  In fact, I would think it usually is.  If a person, or a group of people, is bent on harming you, you owe it to yourself to stand up to them.  Not out of hatred.  Just because somebody's got to make them stop.  And if you have the wherewithall to make them stop, then you should do it.  If it takes killing them, then I guess you've got to kill them.  It will keep them from killing you and other people as well.

It seemed to me that this was the motivation for the US going into Afghanistan and Iraq.  There were people there that had made it clear they wished us harm, and were going to work to fulfill their wishes.  We had to make them stop.  Is there reason to believe that oil companies or Haliburton or other rich and powerful people had a stake in it?  Probably, but it still needed to be done.  I've heard George W. Bush compared to Hitler and Stalin, but never to Neville Chamberlain.

I believe that peace, political peace between nations, comes from strength.  The United States is in a unique position in the history of the world.  We are a country that, despite all the potential for corruption, is still at its core run by its populace.  As such, we look at the other peoples of the world as people.  We basically wish them well, as long as they don't screw with us.  For such a country to actually have the strength to enforce its will is a good thing for everybody else.  Historically, our enemies wind up our friends, with all the benefits.  If they're smart enough to take advantage of that, then being attacked by us could well be the best thing to ever happen to Afghanistan and Iraq.

The sad but simple fact is, peace is something that has to be built out of broken pieces.