I posted
a diary yesterday on the origins of warfare. The thesis was that war is a result of bad political choices, and it is those choices, not the war itself, that are the roots of the immorality. The war that comes is not something you can demand an end to without working towards a different political and economic system. And that means that ending the war means asking for a conversation with the American people, not a set of demands that they immediately give up their suburban home and family lifestyle.
But when we let ANSWER and Free Mumia folks into our movement, we are not asking for a conversation, we are asking to be marginalized. When we call ourselves anti-war instead of realists, we are proving that we are not worthy of governing because we are more interested in ourselves than the people we are attempting to lead.
This is something the Daily Kos community should understand. And yet when I discuss these issues I encounter a set of disturbing hacktivists who simply reject the use of force for any and all reasons. Sorry, but that's not going to cut it. If someone hits you, you hit back. Politics is the art of preventing a situation from ever escalating to that point, but you can't just decide that using force is an option never worth considering if it does get to that point. Carry a stick and try not to use it. That's the point.
For instance, when Milosevic began perpetrating genocide, it was a multilateral force that forced him to withdraw his forces. Was it cost-free? No. But then, stopping genocide was worth the costs, and the political genius of Wesley Clark allowed us to minimize the costs.
Yet the 'antiwar' movement isn't satisfied. Here's the response to my pointing out the trade-offs involved in this situation.
That's a result of the Serbs giving up and going home. If they hadn't, we'd be in a mess as bad as Iraq.
Of course we didn't lose any of our "own" people in the Kosovo war, so it seems quite neat and clean; but a bunch of Serbs died. We bombed bridges with people on them, we bombed civilian train cars, we even bombed the Kosovars we were supposed to be helping. Our hands and hearts did not emerge clean from Kosovo. Do you really think that's all good?
This black and white mentality, war-is-bad-war-is-bad-war-is-bad, is just irresponsible. War is dangerous and costs lives, so does cancer. War is man-made, and in many cases, so is cancer. That doesn't mean you don't prepare for either, it does mean you try to avoid either but prepare for them to happen. Because they do.
Now, if you continue to act like war is something that only ever happens because the bad people do mean things, then you are acting like a baby. Life's not fair. What we should realize is that war is something we should fight like hell to prevent, and that means sacrificing and calling for sacrifice to craft a political system that embeds tolerance and respect into its sinews. This includes tolerance and respect for those who consume too much energy; we need a roadmap for them to move out of their McMansions, and we need to crush corruption within our own ranks before we will be trusted to lead the country.
But ultimately, unless we talk in mature tones that connote respect for others and an awareness that life isn't fair but we should try however imperfect we are to change that, we are not mature enough as a movement to govern this country. Mainstream America, as pragmatic and pro-withdrawal as they might be, simply will not talk to us. And they shouldn't, because we won't be worth listening to.
