Pacifism: The doctrine that a woman who carries her keys in attack position is on the same moral level as a rapist.
Thursday, Sept. 20, a protest took place on Library Mall decrying the upcoming military actions almost certain to take place following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. This was in coordination with similar demonstrations at more than 100 college campuses nationwide. They said they wanted to find a peaceful solution to the conflict and avoid knee-jerk interventionism by the U.S. military. The protesters fail to recognize an obvious, fundamental reality: More than 6,000 people were killed in a sneak attack on our country, designed specifically to murder civilians. There is no negotiation or reasoning with those who did this; armed response is the only option.
The New York City skyline can be seen from my hometown in northern New Jersey. My dad works near the World Trade Center. He is OK, and no one I know lost anyone or suffered a relative getting hurt, but there were close calls. Had a friend's father not missed his train and taken one 15 minutes later, he would be dead. I cannot begin to imagine the suffering of those who weren't so fortunate, nor the nerve of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan for harboring the conspirators, nor of those who say that our country should use kid gloves against the monsters responsible.
'We are in a crisis because as a society we don't know what the hell our country is doing to the rest of the world,' said UW-Madison senior Tshaka Barrows of the Multicultural Student Coalition. The New Republic reported similar quotes from college activists such as a woman at MIT who said, 'Now we know what the people of Belgrade and Baghdad felt like.' The implications of these statements, that past use of military planes to attack military installations in foreign countries warrant terrorists flying planes into civilian buildings, can only shock the mind.
More shocking is the sudden reversal of many activists, who once urged for action against the Taliban for their endless list of human-rights violations in the name of extremist theocracy, but now urge restraint after the regime has actually aided an attack on the United States. One day, activists say not intervening against the Taliban is tacit approval of a fascist, misogynistic, theocratic order; the next day, they say to intervene is another disgraceful part of America's racist, imperialist history. By opposing action against the murderers of thousands of civilians, they are effectively defending the terrorists and calling for America to simply lay down and take it, in what must be the worst case of battered-wife syndrome ever seen: This whole country deserves it.
In their zeal to relive the 1960s protests, some college activists have forgotten what to fight for, except that it must be against America. They state invectively that our government associates Islam with terrorism, despite statements by President Bush, hardly someone I normally admire, against any kind of discrimination'a sentiment echoed by British Prime Minister Tony Blair and others in the international community. Only the activists are making the connection. They argue that Americans shouldn't be forced to fight, forgetting that we no longer have a draft. The disgusting chants at the protest of 'stop your damn racist war' are in opposition to the facts; this war is neither racist nor the product of the U.S. government. War is being waged on us, not by us.
I was one of the lucky people from the New York City area. Nobody I know was hurt. I defy any of these college activists, sheltered from this by a thousand miles, to crawl out of the protection of the ivory tower and tell those not as fortunate as I that this situation calls for any other response than hunting the perpetrators to the edges of the earth and bringing them to a swift and sure justice. There might be sudden pacifists in Madison, but not in Manhattan.
