[lit-ideas] The Iran Charade, Trying it Again

  • From: "Andy Amago" <aamago@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Thu, 19 Jan 2006 09:53:56 -0500

Strictly speaking, pacifism is a philosophy. People need not subscribe to
the philosophy to not want war. Had the "pacifists" prevailed for Iraq,
look where we would be today. Julie's right, Bushco used fear to manipulate
people into following his twisted agenda, and greatly weakening the country
as a result. Opposing Iraq wasn't knee jerk. It was just common sense,
rational.
 
Apologies if this posts multiple times.



> [Original Message]
> From: Robert Paul <robert.paul@xxxxxxxx>
> To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Date: 1/19/2006 12:32:34 AM
> Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: The Iran Charade
>
> Julie wrote:
>
> > Yes.  But that would seem to [invite] the question of why more people
seem 
> > swayed by the emotions of fear and pseudo-patriotism than by the
emotions that 
> > produce pacifism. It was easy to rouse the country to war.  The general
population
> > seems far less readily swayed to pacifism.
>
> This makes it sound as if pacifism were grounded in a set of emotions 
> opposed to fear (pseudo-patriotism isn't an emotion, surely) and that 
> it's because fear, etc., is more easily aroused in most (?) people than 
> are the emotions conducive to pacifism that the country was 'roused' to 
> war, rather than not.
>
> A subtext of this and other posts seems to be that those who 
> support/supported the war were driven by their emotions, and not by any 
> sort of rational judgment. This is way too easy. First, one might note 
> that not going to war and advocating pacifism are entirely different 
> things. Real pacifists, like the Quakers and the Mennonites, don't pick 
> and choose; they are opposed to war, period. (See 
> http://www.bluffton.edu/~mastg/GCpeace.htm or just google 'mennonites 
> pacifism'). Advocating not invading Iraq might be a consequence of one's 
> being a true pacifist; but saying that this is the 'wrong war, at the 
> wrong time, in the wrong place,' is to advocate prudence, not pacifism, 
> unless one is a pacifist making a bad joke.
>
> As for the emotions of the mob: being afraid of x, and trying to get rid 
> of x (spiders in the basement, it was, last night on AMC) strikes me as 
> entirely rational. In order for Bushco to get people to support the 
> invasion, it had first to make Saddamco suitably fearsome, i.e., to 
> instill a belief in people who then become fearful as a result of it.
>
> The mob is no more no less emotionally driven than you or I. If David 
> Hume didn't say that, he should have.
>
> Robert Paul
> Reed College
>
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