THE ONLY REAL CHOICE IS PEACE OR WAR | 2001-11-17
I think the way my readers do. The mission of Whitaker Online is do the intellectual spadework of digging out, in depth, the basic mistakes that America is making.
To us, our approach is simple sanity, but in our "1984" style world, simple sanity takes a lot of explaining. This is hard and frustrating work.
Our present situation is a good example. You understand where I am coming from, but what I say is very confusing to most people today.
Here I am demanding absolute militancy. Yet no one has expressed more doubts about how we got into this situation or more fear about where it could go than I have.
So I am clearly not with those who consider our total pro-Israeli foreign policy a holy cause. So I don't want an all-out war in the Middle East for Israel. I am called anaziwhowantstokillsixmillionjews because I refuse to hate all of Israel's enemies blindly
No one has expressed more doubts and fears about this war than I have. So when it comes to the hawks versus the doves, shouldn't I be somewhere between a hawk and a dove? On the contrary, I just wrote an article demanding that Bush be not just a hawk but a lion!
Most of my readers have no problem with this.
Sergeant York, a Christian from Tennessee, had a long struggle with his conscience over whether he should fight in World War I or be a conscientious objector. But when he did decide to fight he became the most decorated American soldier in that war. You and I understand that, but it is very confusing for the people who got us into Vietnam.
To the people who got us into Vietnam, war is a two-dimensional line from dove to hawk. You can be for war, you can be for peace, or you can be somewhere in between. So in Vietnam, America fought a respectable war, a moderate war, a war based on compromise.
This is not the way the world looks in the eyes of sanity. To us war is not a compromise situation and soldier's lives are not chess pieces.
There is hawk and there is dove and then there are TWO positions between hawk and dove. A person who wants to fight half a war is between a hawk and a dove. He is also insane.
But you can have a hard time deciding between peace and war because you understand that being for war means going all the way. It is hard choice not because it is such a clear choice.
The other position is one that sane people understand the way that Sergeant York did. To a sane person the only choice is between no action or a real war.
When you don't face that real choice, you get Vietnams.