Stardate 20010922.1902 (On Screen): While I have no doubt whatever that these are principled people who truly believe what they claim, the idea that the US should just accept the deaths from last week and not respond militarily is preposterous. What they say is that any further hostilities will cause more people to die, which is true. But it isn't possible to unilaterally declare a peace. Even if we don't respond, our enemies will continue to attack us. Do we have any responsibility to the people who remain alive in the US and our allied nations to try to protect them against future attacks of this kind?
These demonstrators, of course, represent the absolute extremely position described in this article as "wishing really hard, perhaps while holding someone's hand, that hatred and violence will disappear from the world." Yeah, I agree that would be a nice thing. I don't believe that it will happen in this particular universe any time soon, though. It is, perhaps, a hopeful sign that they got a few hundred people to come out. Good that there were not any more, but also good that there were not fewer. Our nation is about to embark on a great war, and these idealists won't prevent us from fighting it. But it is important that there be dissenting voices constantly working to prevent us from becoming even more brutal than those we face.
Still, it's unfortunate that these people miss the essential truth that peace is a side effect, not a goal. The goal is political settlement; if we achieve that we'll get peace, but there's no way to get peace without it. (discuss)
