anti-war take two
27 Sep 2005Donald Sensing, on the anti-war movement:
With last weekend’s protest extravaganza in the nation’s capital, it is appropriate to revisit the topic. Almost three years ago I said that the “peace movement” isn’t really about peace and that the protest industry falls into two main camps. First is the “Down With America” camp populated with the sort of people George Orwell described in his essay, “Notes on Nationalism,” of May 1945. Their
“… real though unacknowledged motive appears to be hatred of western democracy and admiration for totalitarianism. Pacifist propaganda usually boils down to saying that one side is as bad as the other, but if one looks closely at the writing of the younger intellectual pacifists, one finds that they do not by any means express impartial disapproval but are directed almost entirely against Britain and the United States.”
First: nice ellipses, Don. I am currently reading Hitchens’ book on Orwell, so I noticed something missing from this quote right away. Orwell’s original quote began “There is a minority of intellectual pacificists, whose real though unacknowledged …”, which was conveniently excised from Donald’s excerpt.
Second, Orwell was talking about pacifism, not anti-war sentiment in general. So, I hardly think that Orwell’s description of a minority of two-faced pacifists is sufficient justification to claim that the peace movement doesn’t have good intentions.
Sensing ends with:
It is one thing, and necessary, to hold our elected officials accountable for what they do on our behalf. It is quite another thing to call for victory by the enemies of the United States, who would have sought our destruction whether Iraq had been invaded or not.
Who is calling for victory by the enemies of the United States? Donald, you’re tilting at windmills, man.