Thursday, November 26, 2009

Posted: 25 Nov 2009 08:35 PM PST

Peace, peace. Everyone wants peace. Or so we would like to think. Chamberlain and
a sizable portion of the English electorate were certain that Hitler
wanted peace and all that was needed was for everyone to sit down around a
table, make some compromises (at someone else's expense if possible) and
everyone could go back to buying their biscuits, playing cricket and
generally enjoying life. What did not occur to them was the possibility
that Hitler did not want peace. What did not occur to them was that by
constantly talking about peace, they were only bridging the gap to war
with their own naivete and conspicuous weakness.

A year into Obama's first term dedicated
to multilateralism and soft power, the world is more unstable than ever.
Iran is openly pursuing nuclear weapons and regional domination. North
Korea is firing on South Korean ships. The Chavez Marxist axis in Latin
America has become more ambitious. Russia is amping up the rhetoric
against the Ukraine and George again, and building up its arsenal. And
even Obama's staunchest apologists and defenders cannot think of a single
tangible thing that he has accomplished in all his visits to virtually
every major country on the globe.

But that is because peace is a
paradox. To have peace, you must be prepared for war. You may speak
softly, but you must carry a big stick. And like happiness, the worst
possible way to go about finding peace, is by going out and looking for
it. Because to pursue peace is to deliver a signal of weakness that all
but invites war. Peace is produced not through goodwill, those with whom
goodwill is easy to achieve are not likely targets for war, but through
deterrence. War is deterred the same way that crime is deterred, through
vigilance and strength.

To let go of that strength and relax your
vigilance brings not peace, but instability and eventually war. This
understanding of human affairs is reflexively rejected by those who assume
that "we" are the real problem. That "we" are the reason why there is war.
"We" are the reason why the enemy does not trust us. "We" are what stands
in the way peace, love and understanding with the whole world. And if the
peace initiatives fail, clearly "we" are the ones to blame and must try
harder to break through and reach an understanding. And if "we" are lucky,
we may wake up from this form of madness before the tanks of the people we
worked so hard to achieve peace with roll into Poland.

Because
there is nothing quite so pathetic as the leaders of a free nation
crawling before tyrants and thugs in search of peace, beating their own
breasts and offering more and more concessions in trade for false promises
and falser hope.

Consider Israel's outreach program of shipping
their films to film festivals, which is ironic when you consider that the
average Israeli film is just as Anti-Israeli, as the average American
movie is Anti-American. Israeli consulates are still flogging The Band's
Visit. The Band's Visit is one of those charming movies that every
liberalized country makes sooner or later, and in the words of film critic
Roger Ebert showcases a vision of; "Arabs and Israelis, that shows them
both as only ordinary people with ordinary hopes, lives and
disappointments. It has also shown us two souls with rare
beauty".

The Band's Visit was meant to promote
Jewish-Arab and Israeli-Egyptian co-existence. The movie however was
banned in Egypt, where any actual talk of co-existence with Israel is
virtually a criminal offense. Which made it all the more absurd for the
movie to depict an Egyptian band visiting Israel, when Egyptian writers,
musicians and filmmakers are effectively barred from visiting Israel at
risk of being expelled from their respective guilds. The few who have like
playwright Ali Salem who faced ostracism, expulsion from the Union of
Egyptian Writers and police interrogations for merely visiting Israel,
have paid a high price for promoting "normalization" with
Israel.

That is the "peace" that exists between Israel and Egypt,
30 years after Camp Sinai. That is the only peace that will ever exist
between Israel and Egypt, for the simple reason that it is a peace based
on three wars in which Israel demonstrated that it would not allow itself
to be conquered by Egypt. That is of course the only way to stop a war, to
demonstrate that it will not succeed.

Had England and France backed
down Nazi Germany in the Rhineland, there likely would have been no WW2.
Had the United States put its soldiers where its boycott was in Asia,
there would have been no Pearl Harbor. Had the Allied troops in Russia
intervened more directly against the Bolsheviks, there would have been no
Cold War. And the list goes on and on. There are far more modern cases
where a raised fist would have stopped a devastating war, then when a
handshake or a hug would have done the same thing. And some of the worst
atrocities of the 20th century could have been prevented not by diplomacy,
but by preventing the diplomacy itself which more often than not has
accommodated conquest and genocide.

But naturally the people
who made The Band's Visit and their cultural ilk have learned absolutely
nothing from their actual experience in Egypt, or understood belatedly
that their enemies are not interested in seeing them as fellow human
beings with ordinary hopes, lives and disappointments. To paraphrase
Cassius, they insist that the fault lies not in their enemies, but in
themselves. Or in those intolerant people around them who insist that
their country must be vigilant and strong, instead of a pushover for the
sort of people who burn books when they cannot burn the writers
themselves.

While peace is a wonderful thing, it is
part of a balance. There cannot be peace all the time, because
humans are not peaceful creatures. As long as there is greed, hate
and the will to power-- there will be war. And for as long as there is
war, peace can only be obtained through a strong hand, rather than a
bended knee. Peace requires war, as day requires night and summer requires
winter. It is part of a natural balance that is sustained by the
willingness to maintain that balance. To be willing to have peace when war
is over, and to be willing to fight when peace can no longer
avail.

To quest for peace is as pointless as questing for constant
summer or constant day. To so is to ignore the natural balance of human
affairs, and to bring on war anyway... only a war on increasingly
unfavorable terms. For though men may cry peace, peace-- but there is no
peace. Only preemptive surrender.