It seems that one trait of conservative thinking is to ignore sentiments
unless the first few words of their expression identifies them as similarly
conservative. It is a pity WSJ wasn't quoting Scott Simon when he was
exhorting college students to work for peace. I perceive a lot of
close-minded thinking disguised these days as being "beyond politics." Bill
O'Reilly's slogan "fair and balanced, as always" makes me gag. That the
Right has turned our national tragedy into an opportunity to gain political
ground, then deflects criticism as being inappropriately political, is the
height of hypocrisy, but is more and more becoming a touchstone for
conservatism in this country.

Yes, Simon normally espouses liberal views. But when people lose their
values, it doesn't therefore mean those values were bankrupt. David Horowitz
was a member of the Weather underground during the anti-Vietnam war
protests. Now he writes that the blood of American soldiers is on the hands
of peace activists, and articles like "The sick mind of Noam Chomsky."
People change. That's probably good. But the mere fact that someone can move
from peach activism to war mongering, though, doesn't necessarily imply
evolutionary thinking. (And reactionary zealots call talk-shows everyday,
lying that they used to be a "Clinton Democrat", or a "liberal", until this
or that terrible thing occurred recently that finally opened their eyes.)

I could not disagree more with Simon and anyone else who believes we are
doing the right thing to bomb Afghanistan, then demonizes any criticism as
showing support for terror. Sure, it makes me feel good that we might be
hurting those who committed the barbarism on September 11. I would support
this war 100% if I thought it would bring about greater justice in the
world, and greater security for America. Of course, yes, then it WOULD be
justified. To paint all those who suggest this war is a mistake as wanting
"to live in the kind of world that the terrorists who hit the World Trade
Center and Pentagon would make" and to equate what's happening now to the
1930s is infantile straw-manism.

Why did we invade Kuwait? Was it to preserve democracy? I don't think so.
Why are our troops still in Saudi Arabia? Is it to preserve justice and
freedom? I don't think so. What was the Great Game in Afghanistan? Why is it
being replayed? Is it to support the fair distribution of wealth? It doesn't
look like it to me.

There is too much going on here involving oil and economics, and too little
involving justice and democracy. And who can sincerely believe the best way
to prevent the further innocent loss of life is to bomb Afghanistan?
Wouldn't it be a lot better to cut off our $2 billion in aid to Israel until
they found a way to live peacefully in Palestine? I've studied the history.
I don't find Israel significantly more appealing than the Palestinians. What
right have we got to be so one-sided in our support in that conflict? Israel
chided us last week with appeasing the terrorists while we waited to launch
our counter-attack. I do not support bombing Afghanistan and continuing to
send money to Israel instead of INSISTING that conflict be resolved NOW.

We need to find the people responsible for the attacks, and either
hospitalize them in isolated padded cells or string them up by their private
parts. I'm no pacifist in that department. But we need even more to show
millions of poorly educated Muslims, Arabs, and others that we are a force
for good in the world. We need to reach out to our brothers and sisters all
over the third world and show them that America really believes in justice
and freedom and democracy. A billion souls live on a dollar a day. Another
billion live on two dollars a day. We, you and I, were fortunate to have
been born here and not there. But if the tables had been turned and we HAD
been born there, how would we want America, wealthy and wasteful beyond
comprehension, to act? Perhaps to lend a hand? There is a lot of evidence
that the World Bank and the IMF are not making things better for debtor
nations. Can we forgive ourselves for not helping? This question was
relevant on Sept. 10. It's relevant now. Yes, we were unjustly attacked by
madmen. They must be found and stopped. Do you really think bombing
Afghanistan is a very high priority if our goal is to make the world a safer
and better place for all people? I think that, like it or not, we are at a
stage where to make our own lives safer, more productive, and more
comfortable, we have to find a way to make the lives of all people safer,
more productive, and more comfortable.

We are not doing that. This war is not promoting that. What are we really
gaining by this war that we couldn't gain by holding back the bombs? And
what are we losing by dropping the bombs that we may have a terrible time
regaining?

Rory



----- Original Message -----
From: "Dasovich, Jeff" <Jeff.Dasovich@enron.com>
To: <eldon@direcpc.com>; "Cameron Sellers (E-mail)" <cameron@perfect.com>;
"Nancy Sellers (E-mail)" <nancy.sellers@robertmondavi.com>; "Prentice
Sellers (E-mail 2)" <Psellers@pacbell.net>; "Rory Sellers (E-mail)"
<Rory@carmelnet.com>; "Scott Laughlin (E-mail)" <scottwl@hotmail.com>;
"William K. Sellers (E-mail)" <william.sellers@wright.edu>
Sent: Monday, October 15, 2001 1:21 PM
Subject: More thoughts


> On another "food for thought" note.  Eldon and Nancy:  Here's the WSJ
> editorial by Scott Simon--long-time NPR dude, credentialed lib, and
> Quaker--on "just wars."  Sort of thought-provoking.
>
> Best,
> Jeff
>
> October 11, 2001
> Commentary
> Even Pacifists Must
> Support This War
>
> By Scott Simon, the host of National Public Radio's "Weekend Edition
> With Scott Simon."
>
> Pacifists often commit the same mistake as generals: They prepare for
> the last war, not the next one. Many of the peace activists I have seen
> trying to rouse opposition to today's war against terrorism remind me of
> a Halloween parade. They put on old, familiar-looking protest masks --
> against American imperialism, oppression and violence -- that bear no
> resemblance to the real demons haunting us now.
>
> Pacifism has never been exactly popular. But when I became a Quaker as
> an adolescent in the late 1960s, pacifism seemed to offer a compelling
> alternative to the perpetuity of brute force. Mahatma Gandhi had
> overthrown an empire and Martin Luther King had overturned a racial
> tyranny with nonviolent marches, fasts, and boycotts that were nervy,
> ennobling and effective. Pacifism seemed to offer a chance for survival
> to a generation that had been stunted by the fear of nuclear extinction.
>
> I worked as a war reporter, but I never saw a conflict between this and
> being a Quaker. If my reporting was sometimes drawn more to human
> details than to the box-score kind of war coverage, those details struck
> me as critical to explaining war. I never covered a conflict -- whether
> in Central America, the Caribbean, Africa or the Middle East -- that
> seriously shook my religious convictions. In fact, most conflicts seemed
> to prove how war was rotten, wasteful and useless. El Salvador's civil
> war killed 70,000 people over nine years. It was hard to see how the
> political compromise that ended the conflict could not have been reached
> after just six months.
> But in the 1990s, I covered the Balkans. In Sarajevo, Srebrenica, and
> Kosovo, I confronted the logical flaw (or perhaps I should say the fatal
> flaw) of nonviolent resistance: All the best people can be killed by all
> the worst ones. I had never believed that pacifism had all the answers;
> neither does militarism. About half of all draft age Quakers enlisted in
> World War II, believing that whatever wisdom pacifism had to give the
> world, it could not defeat the murderous schemes of Adolf Hitler and his
> cohorts.
>
> It seems to me that in confronting the forces that attacked the World
> Trade Center and the Pentagon, American pacifists have no sane
> alternative now but to support war. I don't consider this reprisal or
> revenge, but self-defense: protecting the world from further attacks by
> destroying those who would launch them.
>
> Some peace activists, their judgment still hobbled by shock, seem to
> believe that the attacks against New York and Washington were natural
> disasters: terrible, unpredictable whirlwinds that struck once and will
> not reoccur.
>
> This is wrong. We know now that there has been an ongoing violent
> campaign aimed at bringing down diverse nations, with none being more
> gloriously speckled than the U.S. People who try to hold certain
> American policies or culture responsible are trying to decorate the
> crimes of psychotics with synthetic political significance.
>
> In 1933 the Oxford Student Union conducted a famous debate over whether
> it was moral for Britons to fight for king and country. The exquisite
> intellects of that leading university reviewed the many ways in which
> British colonialism exploited and oppressed the world. They cited the
> ways in which vengeful demands made of Germany in the wake of World War
> I had helped to kindle nationalism and fascism. They saw no moral
> difference between Western colonialism and world fascism. The Oxford
> Union ended that debate with this famous proclamation: "Resolved, that
> we will in no circumstances fight for king and country."
>
> Von Ribbentrop sent back the good news to Germany's new chancellor,
> Hitler: The West will not fight for its own survival. Its finest minds
> will justify a silent surrender.
>
> In short, the best-educated young people of their time could not tell
> the difference between the deficiencies of their own nation, in which
> liberty and democracy were cornerstones, and a dictatorship founded on
> racism, tyranny and fear.
>
> And what price would those who urge reconciliation today pay for peace?
> Should Americans impose a unitary religious state, throw women out of
> school and work, and rob other religious groups of their rights, so that
> we have the kind of society the attackers accept? Do pacifists really
> want to live in the kind of world that the terrorists who hit the World
> Trade Center and Pentagon would make?
>
> Pacifists do not need any lectures about risking their lives to stop
> wickedness. Quakers resisted slavery by smuggling out slaves when even
> Abraham Lincoln tried to appease the Confederacy. Pacifists sneaked
> refugee Jews out of Germany when England and the U.S. were still trying
> to placate Hitler. Many conscientious objectors have served bravely in
> gritty and unglamorous tasks that aided the U.S. in time of war.
>
> But those of us who have been pacifists must admit that it has been our
> blessing to live in a nation in which other citizens have been willing
> to risk their lives to defend our dissent. The war against terrorism
> does not shove American power into places where it has no place. It
> calls on America's military strength in a global crisis in which
> peaceful solutions are not apparent.
> Only American (and British) power can stop more killing in the world's
> skyscrapers, pizza parlors, embassies, bus stations, ships, and
> airplanes. Pacifists, like most Americans, would like to change their
> country in a thousand ways. And the blasts of Sept. 11 should remind
> American pacifists that they live in that one place on the planet where
> change -- in fact, peaceful change -- seems most possible. It is better
> to sacrifice our ideals than to expect others to die for them.
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: eldon [mailto:eldon@direcpc.com]
> Sent: Monday, October 15, 2001 1:45 PM
> To: Cameron Sellers (E-mail); Dotty Hopkins (E-mail); Nancy Sellers
> (E-mail); Nancy Sellers (E-mail); Prentice Sellers (E-mail 2); Rory
> Sellers (E-mail); Scott Laughlin (E-mail); Dasovich, Jeff; William K.
> Sellers (E-mail); cptjack@napanet.net
> Subject: Having trouble 'getting back to normal'
>
>
>
> - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
> --Ethics Matters columnist Carlton Vogt on the ethical
> implications of President Bush's decision that civilian
> airliners that are perceived to be a threat to the general
> population should be shot down.
>
> http://www.infoworld.com/articles/op/xml/01/10/08/011008opethics.xml?101
> 5mnl
> v
> - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
>
> What do you think about this?  It seems to me that, while I don't at
> this
> point vote either way, there is another factor in the equation that I
> don't
> see mentioned.  What if you also  hypothesize that those identified
> people
> are going to die anyway?  We have pretty good evidence that some of the
> people on the plane that went down in Pennsylvania were thinking this
> way.
>
>
>
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