Wishful thinking

"Pale Ebenezer though it wrong to fight, but

Roaring Bill (who killed him) thought it right."
Hilaire Belloc

"To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace."
George Washington

There is, of course, an ancient, sincere, and distinguished tradition of Christian pacifism, which argues that violence may never be directed against another person, regardless of the threat that person may pose to other innocent human beings. That has not been the position ever held by most Christians, at least since they had any responsibility for public peace and order. In any event, the "Peace Racket," of which Bruce Bawer writes, isn't Christian in motivation, and its success would weaken the West while justifying every action of our enemies:

We need to make two points about this movement at the outset. First, it’s opposed to every value that the West stands for—liberty, free markets, individualism—and it despises America, the supreme symbol and defender of those values. Second, we’re talking not about a bunch of naive Quakers but about a movement of savvy, ambitious professionals that is already comfortably ensconced at the United Nations, in the European Union, and in many nongovernmental organizations. ....

The Peace Racket’s boundaries aren’t easy to define. It embraces scores of “peace institutes” and “peace centers” in the U.S. and Europe, plus several hundred university peace studies programs. ... Many primary and secondary schools also teach peace studies in some form. ....

Their founding father is a 77-year-old Norwegian professor, Johan Galtung, who established the International Peace Research Institute in 1959 and the Journal of Peace Research five years later. Invariably portrayed in the media as a charismatic and (these days) grandfatherly champion of decency, Galtung is in fact a lifelong enemy of freedom. In 1973, he thundered that “our time’s grotesque reality” was—no, not the Gulag or the Cultural Revolution, but rather the West’s “structural fascism.” He’s called America a “killer country,” accused it of “neo-fascist state terrorism,” and gleefully prophesied that it will soon follow Britain “into the graveyard of empires.” [read the entire article]

Every student of international relations, and especially "peace studies," should be compelled to watch Winston Churchill: The Wilderness Years, 1929 - 1939

The Peace Racket by Bruce Bawer, City Journal Summer 2007