Soccer Dad

Pieces of peace

One of the most famous and highly regarded episodes of Star Trek is City on the Edge of Forever. In the episode Dr. McCoy jumps through a time portal and changes history so that the Enterprise never exists. Saved from the time disruption because they're on the planet with the portal, Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock go through the portal to try and undo the damage wrought by their colleague. They end up in Chicago in the 1930's.

Soon, they discover that they are at a critical moment in history. There are two paths. One which the Allies win and history proceeds in its proper course. The alternative the Nazis win and Earth never develops space travel.

While they try to figure out how to keep history on its proper path, Captain Kirk falls in love with a noble woman named Edith Keeler who takes care of the poor. Soon they realize that Edith Keeler is the key to the future. To their horror, though, they realize that she must die so that her pacifist movement will not keep the United States out of WWII until it is too late to stop the Nazis.

Captain Kirk is tested, having to choose between the woman he loves and the world as he knows it.

I bring this up because of Thomas Sowell's excellent Pacifists versus Peace in which he writes

The most catastrophic result of "peace" movements was World War II. While Hitler was arming Germany to the teeth, "peace" movements in Britain were advocating that their own country disarm "as an example to others."

British Labor Party Members of Parliament voted consistently against military spending and British college students publicly pledged never to fight for their country. If "peace" movements brought peace, there would never have been World War II.

Not only did that war lead to tens of millions of deaths, it came dangerously close to a crushing victory for the Nazis in Europe and the Japanese empire in Asia. And we now know that the United States was on Hitler's timetable after that.

Of course the context of his article is the current clamoring for a ceasefire in the Middle East. About this idea Sowell writes

Take the Middle East. People are calling for a cease-fire in the interests of peace. But there have been more cease-fires in the Middle East than anywhere else. If cease-fires actually promoted peace, the Middle East would be the most peaceful region on the face of the earth instead of the most violent.

While he's correct, unfortunately he doesn't give the whole story with Hezbollah. In 2000, Israel withdrew completely from Lebanon and the withdrawal was certified as complete by the UN. Within months Hezbollah violated the border and kidnapped and killed three Israeli soldiers. The world was silent. The UN even protected the terror organzation Hezbollah rather than the member state, Israel. In the end Israel was encouraged to trade hundreds of members of Hezbollah to get back the bodies of its three soldiers. Without an Isreali presence in southern Lebanon, Hezbollah was able to build up its arsenal in anticipation of the day when it would unleash its missiles on Israeli population centers at the behest of its masters in Tehran.

It's clear that Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon did not bring it the peace it was promised. Rather it set the stage for this war six years later.

And the cheerleaders who advocated an Israeli withdrawal were silent when Hezbollah created a new pretext to attack Israel, claiming that Shebaa farms was Lebanese not Syrian territory. (Even now, ignoramuses are claiming the Israel should be reasonable and cede Shebaa farms to Hezbollah. They have learned nothing!)

The fictionaly Edith Keeler was portrayed as noble if naive. The more I see of pacifists who ignore the violence of terrorists and encourage others to give more whetting the terrorists' appetites, the harder I find it to call them noble. They are pacifists, but very selective in what they call peace. And there is little noble about them.

UPDATE: Dr. Sanity channels Edwin Starr. Watersblogged channels Rodney King.

The Squiggler reminds us of the true aims of Israel's enemies. (WARNING: Graphic Holocaust photographs.) Chas' Compilations isn't impressed with Lebanon.

Technorati tags: Israel, Lebanon, Hezbollah.