Cost of peace

To the editor:

“Armed violence invariably breeds atrocities against innocent people…” (Nuclear Policy, 9/4/02) The author then follows with examples including the Holocaust. How ironic, then, that it can also be said, “Armed violence stops atrocities against innocent people.” For it was armed violence against Nazi Germany that stopped the Holocaust, pulled the Nazi jackboot off the neck of Europe and stopped Japanese butchery of the Chinese.

While Mr. Hanson is correct that war is horrible, the fact is that sometimes there are no means other than war to settle differences. War happens when those other means have been exhausted or have simply been ignored by an aggressive belligerent.

One can always have peace rather than war, of course, but that requires one to always accept “peace” as practiced by others. And such a peace, as practiced by Nazi Germany, the Japanese Empire, Serbia, Iraq, et al., is really no peace at all if you’re unlucky enough to live within their borders and be considered undesirable by the regime in power. Or unlucky enough to live beyond their borders and be attacked by them. In this case, achieving “peace” means accepting subjugation.

But we wouldn’t know that by the diatribes “against war” that commonly appear in the letters to the J-W editor. If the demand for “peace” is also a demand for the end of armed violence as a legitimate tool of our national policy, that demand must be rejected. Such a peace is a dangerous chimera much beloved by idealist adherents, sure to lead first to national ineffectiveness, then to defeat and, finally, subjugation. The next time someone says they want peace, ask them to be specific, so you can judge the true nature and cost of that peace.

Robert Babcock,

Lawrence