Excellent commentary, Dr. S. I just want to add that Ghandi was lucky he was dealing with England, and not the Soviets, Chinese, or Nazi Germans, who would have exterminated him and his band without a second thought. Pacifists are playing a high stakes game, wearing rose colored glasses. A run of good luck is intoxicating. But it always runs out.

Shouldn't pacifist cities like Berkeley and San Francisco disband their police forces? If preparation for conflict, and expectation of crimes, is a cause or provocation of the "cycle of violence", then they should be happy to demonstrate their sterling ideals, and live them.
M.Capulus | Email | Homepage | 03.11.06 - 1:02 pm | #

Gandhi had the luck or good fortune to being oposed to the English. It has been shown over and over again that moral persuasion will only be effective when your opponent also has a code of behavure that is simular to yours.
Eric | Email | Homepage | 03.11.06 - 2:03 pm | #

Ghandi's method worked against Britian because the British government had a sense of morality. When dealing with barbarians who have no morality, it merely wastes lives. Sadly, the civilized man must meet the barbarians on their terms, which often means violence or at the very least a show of strength.
Shoprat | Email | Homepage | 03.11.06 - 5:08 pm | #

It's worth noting that Mr. Fox and his comrades never took such interest in Iraq before America liberated it from Saddam. Nor did they express anywhere near as much concern about Soviet armaments and intentions as they did about the American military. In a word, these pacifists are morons. And should be treated as such.
pst314 | Email | Homepage | 03.11.06 - 7:53 pm | #

One person like Wafa Sultan does more to further the cause of peace, justice, and human dignity than do legions of these so-called "peace" activists.

This is so true. The Wafa Sultans can reach out and make people think. They clarify the moral issues with their keen insight and articulate words. The Tom Fox's simultaneously encourage the murderers to believe themselves morally superior; and to think their enemies are passive and weak. Fox and his organization only encourage more death and destruction. Pathetic.
Jan | Email | Homepage | 03.11.06 - 9:26 pm | #

So you begin to see the real agenda of the peace activists. They aren't really interested in the "dehumanizing" done by the terrorists, they just want to make points against the evil Americans--obvioulsy the source of all the dehumanizing there is.
anonymous | Email | Homepage | 03.11.06 - 9:28 pm | #

I would like to see a war crimes tribunal set up someday to try all of these leftist groups that have so much blood on their hands. How they can delude themselves into thinking that they are somehow saving lives is beyond me.
Jacob | Email | Homepage | 03.11.06 - 9:30 pm | #

In my professional opinion, the people who could write such a perverted statement desperately need to have their heads examined

First, they desperately need to have their heads extricated from their posteriors.
rickl | Email | Homepage | 03.11.06 - 9:32 pm | #

I read through Tom Fox's statements, and the statements by other CPT members. There is a lot about mankind in the abstract, and large generalizations about "dehumanizing," and what Iraqis are like, what the US soldiers are like, and what human beings are like.

I find human beings to be pretty varied, and attempts to lump them into large abstract categories has another name, less positive than "humanitarian:" bigot. We are not designed to love all mankind, and can barely manage loving those we actually encounter. When we delude ourselves with the belief that we care for humankind, we do so at the expense of individuals. Mr. Fox has some courage, and some altruism, but loving mankind instead of loving people is ultimately about making a show of yourself, for yourself.

Contrast: St. Francis, who didn't give a fig for mankind, but treated each person he encountered as the gift God had given him for that moment.
Assistant Village Idiot | Email | Homepage | 03.11.06 - 11:29 pm | #

Regarding AVI's comment about "mankind in the abstract," I'm reminded of this passage from C S Lewis' novel "That Hideous Strength":

"..his education had had the curious effect of making things that he read and wrote more real to him than the things he saw. Statistics about agricultural laboureres were the substance: any real ditcher, ploughman, or farmer's boy, was the shadow...he had a great reluctance, in his work, to ever use such words as "man" or "woman." He preferred to write about "vocational groups," "elements," "classes," and "populations": for, in his own way, he believed as firmly as any mystic in the superior reality of the things that are not seen."
David Foster | Email | Homepage | 03.11.06 - 11:38 pm | #

Excellent post, Doc!
Ben USN (Ret) | Email | Homepage | 03.12.06 - 3:11 am | #

David Foster, thank you. I am a Lewis fanatic, and was actually thinking of sections from The Abolition of Man, and
The Great Divorce. Yours is better.
Assistant Village Idiot | Email | Homepage | 03.12.06 - 3:26 am | #

I'm confused. As far as I knew CPT in Iraq were working on the falsely convicted and the jailed without trial. That is their mission statement for Iraq and all of the people talking about what CPT are doing there talk only of that legal mission.

I agree, for the most part, on your ideas on peace & war. I agree that the left are far too in love with radical Islam. But it seems to me that CPT were just doing a basic charitable job which needed doing.
jw | Email | Homepage | 03.12.06 - 4:53 am | #

"They themselves are the "root cause"--the enablers and apologists extraordinaire--who permit and encourage evil to flourish in today's world." With this last sentence, you have captured the fundamental immorality of pacifism in the most perfect way. Bravo!
Danny Lemieux | Email | Homepage | 03.12.06 - 7:39 am | #

Thanks Dr. S. -- I see Tom Fox as no Christian martyr. He was killed by his Friends, the Islamofascists while he was fighting against the interests of Israel and America. What a strange twist.

See my post about Fox.

ExP
ExPreacherMan | Email | Homepage | 03.12.06 - 9:01 am | #

JW - the statement quoted by the doc suggests a different mission, don't you think? And as someone else pointed out earlier in this thread, where were they when Saddam was in power? I guess there were no people illegally jailed or convicted without trial back then so they didn't need CTP's loving efforts?
Star | Email | Homepage | 03.12.06 - 9:34 am | #

Doc:

We get a 'fax called the "Telex Times" out here, which is a condensed compilation,(3 8.5"x 11" sheets), of the New York Times.

"All The SHIT That's Print To FIT", I calls it.

Not entirely fair...I'm pretty sure the sports scores are accurate, but there it is.

This rag used a paragraph of it's Tom Fox murder story to inform us seagoing literates that the Palestinians were "all tore up inside"
that their buddies in Baghdad had gakked Mr. Fox.
It seems that Tom Fox was in the habit of visiting Plaestine, and protesting the Israeli Wall...even laying,(lying?), down in front of Israeli bulldozers.
(I reckon a good dhimmi like that is harder to come by since Rachel Corrie did her "speed bump" impression.).

As usual with the Times, the tragically humorous irony utterly escaped 'em.

Stoopid-ass pig fuckers are killin' all their buddies and allies.

Way to go, aces!

Regards;
Bilgeman | Email | Homepage | 03.13.06 - 5:53 am | #