City Journal (tip to Instapundit) writes about this "peace racket":
We need to make two points about this movement at the outset. First, it’s opposed to every value that the West stands for—liberty, free markets, individualism—and it despises America, the supreme symbol and defender of those values. Second, we’re talking not about a bunch of naive Quakers but about a movement of savvy, ambitious professionals that is already comfortably ensconced at the United Nations, in the European Union, and in many nongovernmental organizations.
We've heard them in the media. They are eager for America to lose in Iraq to teach us some humbleness. No story that shows our troops in a bad light is disbelieved.
In practice, advocates of this "peace" confuse the absolute victory of despots as "peace." Yes, when a thug dictator has killed and abused his people into passive submission with only occasional focused killing needed to keep the population sullen but quiet, the peace movement considers this "peace." And if the oppressed fight back--as the Shias and Kurds of Iraq have done against their former Sunni Arab oppressors--this is a lack of "peace."
If our "peace protesters" were urging the Iranians, jihadis, and Syrians to just give up in order to restore peace, I'd give the "peace protesters" a little more respect. But they won't. They are only in favor of the United States retreating and surrendering. It's almost as if there's a pattern there!
Still, these brain-challenged children of the 1960s do at least recognize one bit of reality in their advocacy of our defeat to humble us and deter us from fighting for another generation. The peaceniks understand that defeat can change the behavior of the defeated.
Which is why I want to win in Iraq. Wouldn't it be better if the likes of Iran, Syria, and al Qaeda were defeated and learned some humbleness that ends their support of terrorism and fanatical Islamism?
A lot of people could use a lesson in this war.
UPDATE: As Victor Hanson writes, a lot of people could use lessons in war, generally. As for the peace protesters:
“War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things,” observed the British philosopher John Stuart Mill. “The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse.”
Corpses are quite peaceful. To resist means you still live--and have hope for a better future.
