"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke. [1,2]"There is, however, a limit at which forbearance ceases to be a virtue.'' - Edmund Burke. [3]
Not long ago, I drew the distinction between noble and "squishy" pacifists. The first group recognizes the existence, even prevalence, of evil in the world. Noble pacifists believe that nonviolent resistance should be used to oppose this evil. However, no delusions obscure their clear-eyed moral vision. They recognize that the call to nonviolence could very well endanger their personal safety and the safety of others. Noble pacifism does not relieve adherents from the challenge of confrontation. By contrast, the squishy pacifists try to claim the moral authority of noble pacifists, without shouldering the same responsibility. The squishy pacifists blur moral distinctions and dismiss potential dangers to avoid having to live up to their ethical responsibilities.
Before the war with Iraq, squishy pacifists spent more energy waving anti-war banners in US cities and criticizing American failings than protesting the gross human rights violations by the Iraqi government and the threat Iraq posed to stability and peace. How many anti-war protestors hoisted placards critical of Saddam Hussein's Islamofacist regime?
In retrospect, we might have thought the US would have been immune from such doubts and muddy reasoning in the World War II era, when the contrast between the forces of good and evil, light and darkness were so very stark and so very clear. Given the aggressive brutality of the Nazi authoritarian regime, how could men of good will not see the need to resist the Nazis, either militarily or nonviolently? Unfortunately, while the Nazis where dragging Jews off to concentration camps where many were killed, many American pacifists and pacifist churches (though not all) in the US were not passively resisting the Nazis. Rather, they where lobbying President Franklin Roosevelt to recognize their conscientious objector status. Recently, Joseph Loconte writing in the Weekly Standard [4] documented that much of the religious pacifism prior to World War II took on the same flavor as criticism of America prior to the Iraq War.
The anti-war activists were happy to charge that President George Bush was not acting out of honorable motives, either to protect the US security or to liberate Iraqis from oppression. They suggested, instead, that Bush's heart was contorted by the venial pursuit of oil or that perhaps the Bush Administration was trying to generate construction business for Vice-President Dick Cheney's former company. Similar charges of ulterior motives were leveled prior to World War II. For example, Loconte cites the John Haynes Holmes, a prominent New York minister, as charging "If America goes into the war, it will not be for idealistic reasons but to serve her own imperialistic interests."
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