Perhaps it's a fetish of mine, but with the exception of a "Honk for Peace" sign, I try never to associate myself with being for "peace." I'm an "antiwar" activist, not a "peace" activist. If I have anything to do with organizing an event, it's an "antiwar rally," not a "peace rally."
Why this fetish? Because virtually everyone responsible for killing people, from George Bush to Donald Rumsfeld to the Generals in the Army, claims they're killing in order to "bring peace" or "ensure peace." And today brings an excellent example of that -- an op-ed, originally from the
Los Angeles Times but appearing in the
San Jose Mercury News, singing the praises of targeted assassinations. It's author? Daniel Byman, the director of the Center for Peace [sic or should that be "sick"?] and Security Studies at Georgetown University.
Oh, Mr. Bynam has his regrets, though, that's why he's such a "peace"-loving guy. He allows as how "arrests are always preferable to killing," and even concedes that "mistakes are inevitable." Mr. Bynam's idea of a "mistake"?
On July 22, 2002, when an Israeli F-16 dropped a 2,000-pound bomb on his apartment building, the operation went awry. The strike killed [Salah Shehada, a senior Hamas operative], but it also killed 14 civilians, including his daughter and eight other children. International reaction to the attack was overwhelmingly negative.
It isn't actually clear whether Bynam thinks the "mistake" was the killing of 14 civilians including nine children, or the fact that it produced an "overwhelmingly negative" international reaction (if by "international reaction" we mean "reaction by the civilized world excluding the United States," where the
U.S. government reaction consisted of a statement by White House spokesperson Ari Fleischer that "This heavy handed action does not contribute to peace," and
nary a word from the President).
The idea that dropping a 2,000-pound bomb on an apartment building in the middle of the night was likely to kill only a single "targeted" person and no one else, and hence not go "awry" by Mr. Bynam's standards, is absurd. Preposterous. In actual fact, five houses were also destroyed, and more than 100 people injured, in addition to the 15 dead. This was an "atrocity" by any reasonable definition, a war crime. But Mr. Bynam, who heads a "Center for Peace," says it was a "mistake."
Fetish? No, it's no fetish.
Update: And, as if to prove my point, here's George Bush today, on Hamas:
"A political party, in order to be viable, is one that professes peace, in my judgment, in order that it will keep the peace."
Reprinted from
Left I on the News