When war comes to a peaceful nation

By Doug Patton
web posted October 15, 2001

"The war has done us this good...of assuring the world that
although attached to peace from a sense of its blessings, we will
meet war when it is made necessary."

-- Thomas Jefferson
											 
Jefferson was speaking of the War of 1812 – the last war, until
September 11, 2001, in which a foreign power actually attacked
Americans on American soil, within the Continental United
States – but the sentiment is as fresh as it was nearly two
hundred years ago.

Having penned the American Declaration of Independence from
the tyranny of King George of Great Britain, our third president
understood that war is sometimes the only way to achieve peace.

Last week, here in Omaha, a group called "Nebraskans for
Peace" held a rally protesting our government's actions in
Afghanistan. It was just one of many such rallies that have been
sponsored by "peace" groups around the country since we all
watched in horror as thousands of innocent Americans were
murdered on Sept. 11.

God bless America. They have that right. What they don't
understand is the price that was paid to give them that right.

My father and millions of other men marched off to World War
II to fight for all the rights enumerated in the Constitution of the
United States. Our family was blessed. My dad came home from
that war. Hundreds of thousands of his fellow citizen soldiers did
not.

David Horowitz was a sixties leftist who had a 180-degree turn-
around in his thinking when he saw the damage he and his
comrades had done to this country. Horowitz, now an author
and speaker, heads up the Center for the Study of Popular
Culture and publishes Front Page Magazine on the web. In one
of his most recent columns, entitled "Battle for America's Youth,"
he talks about how the protests of the sixties actually prolonged
the Vietnam War and probably delivered South Vietnam into the
iron grip of Communism. It was a complaint that was dismissed
as overly simplistic at the time, but which has a great deal of
validity a quarter century later.

Horowitz writes:

"If I have one regret from my radical years, it is that this country
was too tolerant towards the treason of its enemies within. If
patriotic Americans had been more vigilant in the defense of their
country, if they had called things by their right names, if they had
confronted us with the seriousness of our attacks, they might
have caught the attention of those of us who were well-meaning
but utterly misguided. And they might have stopped us in our
tracks."

In a recent column in USA Today that speaks for the utopian
movement of misguided peaceniks on college campuses around
the world, Richard Deats, PhD., interim co-executive director of
the Fellowship of Reconciliation in Nyack, NY, criticized the
current round of air strikes. He wrote:

"What if an equivalent amount of imagination and resources were
used for the building of a coalition for peace? The atrocious
attacks of Sept. 11 were not an act of war but a crime. Fighting
a war is different from solving a crime and bringing the criminals
to justice. The U.S. should bring together law enforcement
agencies of many nations to amass evidence of this terrorist
network and bring the evidence before the United Nations, with
the call for an international tribunal. This would support U.N.
Secretary-General Kofi Annan's pledge that the U.N., with
treaties against terrorism already in place, should spearhead a
global effort to rid the world of terrorism. Eight Nobel Peace
laureates have called for an international conference on terrorism
that could further enhance a suitable response of the community
of nations."

Deats goes on to say this:

"An all-out military assault on the terrorists and their supporters
is only pulling us further into a world of terrorist strikes,
counterstrikes and deepening misery. Martin Luther King
warned that our choice is either non-violence or non-existence.
Dare we try the way of non-violence?"

What unmitigated, unadulterated, utopian claptrap! Don't these
people read history? Have they never heard of Neville
Chamberlain's attempt to embrace "nonviolence?" Then and
now, it was called appeasement. It didn't stop Hitler and it won't
stop Osama bin Laden.

Peace is an elusive thing that must be forced on some people. To
those of you who think that the scourge of terrorism will be
ended through chants and songs and international tribunals,
America says this to you: go right on enjoying your freedom to
demand peace at any price. Just remember that thousands of
your countrymen are about to pay the price history has always
demanded.

Doug Patton is a freelance columnist who has served as a
speechwriter and policy advisor for federal, state and local
candidates and elected officials. His work appears in various
newspapers and on numerous web sites, including
GOPUSA.com, AmericasVoices.org, EnterStageRight.com,
EtherZone.com, TikiTrash.commentary, SIANEWS.com and
ConservativeThought.com. © 2001 by Doug Patton

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