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July 21, 2006
Pacifists versus Peace
By Thomas Sowell

One of the many failings of our educational system is that it sends out into the

world people who cannot tell rhetoric from reality. They have learned no

systematic way to analyze ideas, derive their implications and test those

implications against hard facts.

"Peace" movements are among those who take advantage of this widespread inability

to see beyond rhetoric to realities. Few people even seem interested in the

actual track record of so-called "peace" movements -- that is, whether such

movements actually produce peace or war.

Take the Middle East. People are calling for a cease-fire in the interests of

peace. But there have been more cease-fires in the Middle East than anywhere

else. If cease-fires actually promoted peace, the Middle East would be the most

peaceful region on the face of the earth instead of the most violent.

Was World War II ended by cease-fires or by annihilating much of Germany and

Japan? Make no mistake about it, innocent civilians died in the process. Indeed,

American prisoners of war died when we bombed Germany.

There is a reason why General Sherman said "war is hell" more than a century ago.

But he helped end the Civil War with his devastating march through Georgia -- not

by cease fires or bowing to "world opinion" and there were no corrupt busybodies

like the United Nations to demand replacing military force with diplomacy.

There was a time when it would have been suicidal to threaten, much less attack,

a nation with much stronger military power because one of the dangers to the

attacker would be the prospect of being annihilated.

"World opinion," the U.N. and "peace movements" have eliminated that deterrent.

An aggressor today knows that if his aggression fails, he will still be protected

from the full retaliatory power and fury of those he attacked because there will

be hand-wringers demanding a cease fire, negotiations and concessions.

That has been a formula for never-ending attacks on Israel in the Middle East.

The disastrous track record of that approach extends to other times and places --

but who looks at track records?

Remember the Falkland Islands war, when Argentina sent troops into the Falklands

to capture this little British colony in the South Atlantic?

Argentina had been claiming to be the rightful owner of those islands for more

than a century. Why didn't it attack these little islands before? At no time did

the British have enough troops there to defend them.

Before there were "peace" movements and the U.N., sending troops into those

islands could easily have meant finding British troops or bombs in Buenos Aires.

Now "world opinion" condemned the British just for sending armed forces into the

South Atlantic to take back their islands.

Shamefully, our own government was one of those that opposed the British use of

force. But fortunately British prime minister Margaret Thatcher ignored "world

opinion" and took back the Falklands.

The most catastrophic result of "peace" movements was World War II. While Hitler

was arming Germany to the teeth, "peace" movements in Britain were advocating

that their own country disarm "as an example to others."

British Labor Party Members of Parliament voted consistently against military

spending and British college students publicly pledged never to fight for their

country. If "peace" movements brought peace, there would never have been World

War II.

Not only did that war lead to tens of millions of deaths, it came dangerously

close to a crushing victory for the Nazis in Europe and the Japanese empire in

Asia. And we now know that the United States was on Hitler's timetable after

that.

For the first two years of that war, the Western democracies lost virtually every

battle, all over the world, because pre-war "peace" movements had left them with

inadequate military equipment and much of it obsolete. The Nazis and the Japanese

knew that. That is why they launched the war.

"Peace" movements don't bring peace but war.

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