The Peace That Makes War

I’ve made it clear from the beginning that these articles on war are not intended as protests of war, not as items of some anti-war movement. Wars will never be ended by means of protest or movements, and almost all the so-called peace-movement and war protests espouse the very kinds principles and politics that are the source of all wars.

Until force has been eliminated in all of men’s dealings with one another—not by the imposition of law but by reason and the elimination of the desire to have the unearned and the need to control others from the hearts of men, war is inevitable—either that or world-wide oppression. So long as men believe they have a “right” to what they have not earned, so long as most people believe it is society that must be made right before individuals can live happily and successfully, so long as men anywhere believe it is ever right to use force to make others live the way they think they ought to live, there will be wars. Until men become individualists, desiring nothing in life but what they achieve and acquire by their own efforts, seeking nothing from others except what others are willing to share, trade and enjoy with them, there will always be wars.

“The overwhelming majority of mankind——the people who die on the battlefields or starve and perish among the ruins—do not want war. They never wanted it. Yet wars have kept erupting throughout the centuries, like a long trail of blood underscoring mankind’s history.

“Men are afraid that war might come because they know, consciously or subconsciously, that they have never rejected the doctrine which causes wars, which has caused the wars of the past and can do it again——the doctrine that it is right or practical or necessary for men to achieve their goals by means of physical force (by initiating the use of force against other men) and that some sort of “good” can justify it. It is the doctrine that force is a proper or unavoidable part of human existence and human societies.

“Observe one of the ugliest characteristics of today’s world: the mixture of frantic war preparations with hysterical peace propaganda, and the fact that both come from the same source——from the same political philosophy. The bankrupt, yet still dominant, political philosophy of our age is statism.” [Emphasis mine.] [Ayn Rand, The Objectivist, June 1966, “The Roots of War”]

Let me reiterate the most significant sentence in Rand’s indictment of so-called civilization: “Observe one of the ugliest characteristics of today’s world: the mixture of frantic war preparations with hysterical peace propaganda, and the fact that _both come from the same source_——from the same political philosophy.”

I know of no one else who has identified that obscene irony, that the promotion of war and the so-called “peace movement” come from the same corrupt principle of statism and collectivism. As despicable as war and everything about it is, almost all those supposedly in opposition to war are promoting the very principles that make war inevitable.

War is Peace

The irony pointed out by Ayn Rand has been reflected in at least two books: Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace, by Harry Elmer Barnes, and The Peace War, by Vernor Vinge. The first is a study of how FDR maneuvered America, against the wishes of most of its citizens, into war against Germany and Japan. The second is a science fiction novel and the irony of the title is intended.

I thought of these two books, because they represent both sides of what is wrong with arguments supposedly promoting “peace” today. On one side is the pro-war pro-military-industrial-complex Neo-cons (obscenely named “new conservatives”) promoting war as the means to peace while on the other side you have endless leftist collectivist statist anti-war peace-movements.

Justin Raimondo’s Antiwar.com site may be the only true anti-war page on the Internet with a correct understanding of the causes of war. I think ultimately the idea of a movement ending war is futile, but at least the nature of war and the nature of the principles that are the cause of wars, particular the political facts behind modern ones, is well presented.

All the rest [which you may not care to visit] are like these:

CODEPINK: Women for Peace a leftist-feminist, pro-palistinian collectivist and green war-protest organization. Have a look at their Links page, so see the kind of organizations and movements they support, some of which I’ve listed belove.

Welcome To Office Of The Americas which presents this little explanation for terrorism:

The fifth grade classroom

Let’s go to a fifth grade classroom and talk to the students.
Good morning class.
Good morning teacher.
There are many countries on this globe. Suppose one country attacked another and killed over a million innocent people and then they attacked a neighboring country and killed another endless number of innocent people. What do you think might happen?
Yes, Gianna, and Gianna says:
“I think some of the people in the two countries might be very angry.”
Yes, Tommy,
“I think some of them would be angry enough to attack our country back.”
Thank you children.

So it seems evident to the class that if we kill millions of people including many children like you, in another land, some of those people will retaliate. so now you understand why our people have been endangered by our attacks on some of > the poorest people in the world in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The terrorism experts

And now we move from the fifth grade classroom and speak to some terrorism experts from various universities. These experts all have their doctorates in terror. Very impressive. And now we ask the experts what they think might happen if we kill millions of people in other countries just as we asked the fifth grade children.

What do you experts think?
Expert A: I think they are attacking us because of their fanatical religion.
Expert B: I think they are attacking us because they hate our way of life.
Expert C: I think they are attacking us because they are Arabs.
Expert D: I think they are attacking us because they want our Gulf Coast oil.
Thank you very much for giving us your valuable time. I am certain that you will all receive tenure in your university career.

Though obviously propaganda, and slanted (no mention of the nature of Islamic terrorism) there is sadly a lot of truth in this. There is a lot more truth in that newsletter, like:

“The military industrial complex has taken over our nation and is now dictating senseless babble as our official story. Our president is deeply infected with the virus. The simple truth is that our illegal, immoral and barbaric military policy has seriously endangered the people of the United States.”

…and

“Because fear is the motor force of all corrupt politics.
They are saving us from the terrorists as they create terrorists.
They are saving us from violence as they give us the biggest arms business in the world.”

And this is how they intend to bring peace:

We can build a peace system.
Where each political decision will be made to answer the question:
Will this be good for the children?
For the present we must look to the leadership of the ALBA nations of the Americas. They are the vanguard for progressive change. Cuba, a poor country in the Caribbean, is number one in the care of children.
The U.S. is 28th.
The leadership of this new alba movement has set aside rigid ideology and is striving to make decisions from expressed needs of the population. This is a movement toward substantive, participatory and economic democracy.

In case you don’t know what “economic democracy” is, it is a euphemism for socialism. ALBA is the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas, “an international cooperation organization based on the idea of social, political, and economic integration between the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean. It is associated with socialist and social democratic governments and is an attempt at regional economic integration based on a vision of social welfare, with member states: Antigua and Barbuda, Bolivia, Cuba, Dominica, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Venezuela.”

Global Exchange is another socialist organization for “peace.” It speaks for itself.

“We envision a people centered globalization that values the rights of workers and the health of the planet; that prioritizes international collaboration as central to ensuring peace; and that aims to create a local, green economy designed to embrace the diversity of our communities.”

United for Peace and Justice

“is a coalition of more than 1400 local and national groups throughout the United States who have joined together to protest the immoral and disastrous Iraq War and oppose our government’s policy of permanent warfare and empire-building.”

Those 1400 local and national groups are like these in New York, all leftist, socialist, and communist:

Young Communist League (YCL) - Uptown Chapter, Bronx, NY Democratic Socialists of America, Brooklyn, NY Feminist Review, Brooklyn, NY Green Party of New York State, Brooklyn, NY

Then there is Peace Convergence, an Australian version of the leftist peace movement, “a loosely aligned array of environmental, peace and social justice groups and individuals,” which are mostly leftist environmentalists:

Shoalwater Bay community, Australian Anti-Bases Campaign Coalition, Medical Association for the Prevention of War, Pine Gap 6, Victorian Peace Network, Save the WarChildren, St Patricks Four, Pitstop Ploughshares, Not Your Soldier, Women?s International League for Peace and Freedom, Just Peace Qld, Cairns Peace by Peace, Resist Talisman Sabre ?09, Depleted Uranium Silent Killer, MCS Global, Brisbane Friends of the Earth, Fremantle Anti-Nuclear Collective, Trident Ploughshares, Plowshares, Friends of the Earth, Greens Senator Scott Ludlam, Greenpeace Australia

And here is Anti-War and Militerism News from Indybay of Indymedia, which their about page explains: “We support local, regional and global struggles against exploitation and oppression. We function as a non-commercial, non-corporate, anti-capitalist collective.” [Emphasis mine.] Oh, and those oppressed; they’re the queers, illegal immigrants, animals, and the environment, of course.

The Peace Movements Never About Peace

In his brief history of The American Peace Movements, Dr. David Adams, “now retired from UNESCO where he was the Director of the Unit for the International Year for the Culture of Peace,” and a typical UN leftist, nevertheless, does a good job tracing the peace movements throughout American History. Surprisingly, it quite frankly illustrates those movements have always been dominated by socialists and communists. Here are three examples:

The People’s Council 1917-1919 “… its leadership, for the most part, was explicitly socialist. It drew support from many trade unions and from the left wing of the Socialist Party.”

The American League Against War and Fascism and the Emergency Peace Campaign 1933-1939 “… was based primarily in the working class and its leadership was largely socialist and communist. By 1937, its Communist Party members boasted that 30 percent of the entire organized labor movement was represented in the League.”

The Progressive Citizens of America 1946-1948, which was both a political party and a peace movement, “… with major input from Communist Party organizers, … by 1945 … were taking positions in favor of peaceful relations with the Soviet Union. In 1945 they exchanged delegations with the Soviet trade unions and joined with them in the World Federation of Trade Unions.”

The organized peace movements have always been dominated by collectivists and statists of varying stripes, and they are still dominated by today’s versions of leftists from one-world multiculturalists to environmentalists. Unfortunately, they often draw into their fold those who are sincerely opposed to the horrors of war, who innocently and naively end up supporting organizations that are promoting the very ideas that are the cause of wars.

Anti-Individualism Put Over as Anti-War

There is a phrase you’ll look for in vain in all of the literature and propaganda of the peace movements—that phrase is individual liberty.

Every so-called anti-war peace movement today promotes some form of collectivism, and they are all universally opposed to individualism. In most cases the anti-individualism is only implied, but sometimes it is explicit.

It is explicit in much literature published by the United Nations, for example. One of the chapters of the book, Psychology for Peace Activists, written by the same David Adams who wrote the history of The American Peace Movements I referred to above is entitled, “Affiliation vs. Anarchism and Individualism.” It says, for example, about the dangers of individualism, “The negative tendencies of individualism such as those taught in the universities, can lead to anarchism in practice.” While I cannot imagine where in this world today there is any university that teaches individualism, what these collectivists despise about individualism is the fear it cannot be controlled, that it will not willingly submit itself to the authority of the state.

This anti-individualism is easier to understand when the vision of these peace idealists is made explicit. Their idea of peace is a world under the control of a universal state that plans everything for everyone, where everyone lives in willing compliance with the laws dictated by the world government. Such a scheme cannot abide anyone who might choose to think for themselves, to live their life in a way that doesn’t conform to that planned by the state, or aspires to anything more than the state grants them.

If the leftist statist collectivists have their way, there will be no more war. There will be peace, but it will be the peace of total slavery, under which the horrors of war, by comparison to the horrors of that oppression, would seem like a blessing. There are no wars in heaven, but it would not be heaven the statists would turn the world into, but a permanent hell. There are no wars in hell either. That’s the peace these anti-war leftist idealist wish to foist on the world.

—(10/08/10)