Joel Belz, in World Magazine, writes Just misunderstanding justice, where he discusses the lack of intellect in today's anti-war protestors, who cannot even comprehend the idea of just war. Is he right? I think he has some good points. The protestors love to say what we shouldn't do, but they are very weak in providing any sort of alternative course of action. The anti-war organization, Win Without War, has produced a document on how to get what we want, but their ideas are not really well-thought-out. Let's look at a few of them. Improved monitoring? Who will do this? UN monitors? The same people who were supposed to keep the peace in Srebenica? And how long until they are expelled in the absence of any military threat? This is just the 1990s repeated all over again. It won't work. Besides, the presence of foreigners was one of Osama's grievances that he used to support the 9/11 terrorist attacks. For a group so quick to claim military action will result in increased terrorism, they sure seem to be ignoring another act of the West that has also been used by our enemies to attempt to justify their actions. How about the green list of approved companies to deal in Iraqi oil? Are we expected to believe that other countries, say France, will abide by these lists? This anti-war document is based on a false hope of trusting in the good-will of countries who have no good-will to give.
I haven't attended any of the protests, but people from my previous church have, they are very involved in the protests, and even admit to their association with International ANSWER with no shame. As I've posted before, the Unitarian Universalist Association has pretty strong political agenda, and it pretty closely follows everything you can find in The Nation. I was at a dinner discussion last week with some of them (if they read this blog, they are very graciously not telling me and attacking me for it, but then again, I like arguing with ideas and not name-calling). Quoting some of my discussion about conditions in Communist countries, One of the older UUs said, "Well, the Communists had some pretty good ideas".
I said, "Name one".
"From each according to their ability, to each according to their need".
Too bad I was a little slow. I let his comment slide into first base with the weak reply "it never worked!".
He said, "They were certainly better off under Communism than they were under the Czars".
Too bad I hadn't read this first. Actually, that book was on my reading list several years ago, but I couldn't get past the first chapter (the book is huge, being a very thorough account of the violence perpetrated by Communism). I happened to be reading Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged about the same time, and it is a huge book as well. I'm going to have to check this book out again.
Posted by joelfuhrmann at March 1, 2003 10:14 PM