Against Pacifism

Word Count: 560

In 1941, with Hitler’s war machine furiously hacking Western civilization to bits, George Orwell famously observed that "objectively, the pacifist is pro-Nazi."

Today, as Islamic fascists like Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda and the Taliban struggle to bring the world under another yoke of vicious, anti-Semitic totalitarianism, our own anti-war activists inform anyone who will listen that "an eye for an eye makes the world go blind."

Since these folks would apparently rather see Islamic fascism run free than have America vigorously engage her enemies, let’s consider just what sort of world the modern pacifist is objectively in favor of.

Afghanistan, under the Taliban, is literally a hell on earth. Women and girls are deprived of every imaginable civil, social, political, and economic liberty. Their humanity itself is under brutal attack, every minute of every day.

According to Human Rights Watch, Taliban officials "beat women on the streets for dress code violations and for venturing outside the home without the company of a close male relative." Amnesty International reports that "women who wear nail varnish could have their fingers chopped off."

Forbidden to speak with or visit any male who is not a close relative (including doctors and dentists), women and girls regularly go without basic medical attention. In addition, the Taliban have banned music, films, television, playing cards, and other forms of entertainment. Musical instruments and books have been seized and burned. Civil liberties like freedom of speech and religion are repressed by force. For example, the punishment for converting to Christianity or Judaism, professing these religions, or distributing their literature, is death.

Amnesty International describes how two men convicted of sodomy "were placed under a wall of dried mud which was bulldozed upon them." In Kabul, an unmarried man convicted of premarital sex received 100 lashes with a leather strap. Had he been married, "the punishment would have been death by stoning," the report states.

With each passing day, similar accounts of misogyny and oppression come pouring in. Kim Candy, President of the National Organization for Women, observes that "when such extremism is allowed to flourish anywhere in the world, none of us is safe."

Confront the moral relativists who infest our college campuses and progressive institutions with these unspeakable events, however, and they respond with juvenile slogans like "one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter." In New York City, popular graffiti artist and left-wing dissident De La Vega has a statement hanging in his gallery that reads "Osama, whether right or wrong, is a fighter for freedom."

Following the logic of this idiocy, we should elevate Hitler’s holocaust and South Africa’s apartheid into noble ideals simply because some illiterate thugs were willing to shed blood on their behalf. Thankfully, we do nothing of the sort.

Just what sort of freedom do people like De La Vega think bin Laden and the Taliban are fighting for? Freedom to throw acid in the faces of unveiled women? Freedom to torture and murder gays, Jews, and atheists? Anyone suggesting a similarity between the values of Martin Luther King and Mullah Omar ought to put down the placard, quit the protest, and hide their head in shame. The Islamic fascists have brought nightmare to life in their own lands, while their ideology calls for its export. To profess pacifism in the face of such horror is to appease evil itself.

Damon W. Root is a writer for the Objectivist Center and graduated from Columbia College in 1999. The Objectivist Center is a national not-for-profit think tank promoting the values of reason, individualism, freedom and achievement in American culture.

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