Sloppy abstractions and the wrong war

The demonstration for peace on Sunday, October 3rd at Elmwood and Bidwell seemed like reeling back to the "sixties" until Congressman LaFalce spoke. Up to that point it was indeed a meeting against war, and for peace. There was a good turnout on a bright day, and time enough so you could make it to the afternoon Symphony. We heard sentimentally sweet country music set to sardonic words, good feelings, and some old friends.

But there was no pot.

And sentimentality drained away when the Honorable John LaFalce spoke.LaFalce was cogent and articulate. He hammered hard on three points, and not one of them excluded the possibility or the need for a war:

Only Congress can declare war.
The justification for war must be made manifest.
America is a model for other countries.

The justification for war must be according to principles, which only Congress can discuss and make manifest. Congress has no right to delegate that discussion, to do away with it essentially, by turning its obligation over to a President. As a model, America's power is also a moral one, If we have a pre-emptive strike, we lose our moral power. Every other country in the world could and might make a pre-emptive strike.

As I take the consequences of his speech, these passionately held abstractions represent a complete reversal of "Make love, not war." Back in the days of Vietnam protest, people believed that intuition and feelings could guide us, and help us get out from under sloppy abstractions that lead us into war. Sloppy abstractions might still get us into war,but the wrong war.

His speech assumed that abstractions rightly understood could get us into the right war at the right time, the well justified war. The people who rely on good feelings might easily be politicians, the Texan style patriots. LaFalce's speech implied that the war against Iraq was politically motivated, and the wrong war.

Two weeks later, after Bali, bombing the French at Yemen, and—most remarkable of all, US soldiers killed in Kuwait—should we not aim our shots more carefully?

All of which implies that the speech was a strange one for a peace demonstration.

Why was he so loudly applauded? Because we are ready for a "right" war, I suggest.

But very few since War II has been truly pacifists. It's not that easy. I spent my school years in a Quaker school, and a religiously based pacifism is a hard won position, and one that demands an uneasy respect. When I was going through the personal crisis of my generation about going to war, the mother of one of my friends said to me "You think that the torturing in Germany will be cured by war. But if we go to war, you will find that torturing will become part of the whole world."

So I used to say, when the Vietnam protest began: "Would you have been a pacifist in WAR II?"

Understandably enough younger people were exasperated. "But we have THIS war."

I was not able to keep faith with pacifism, so I can't blame younger people for a not holding a "pure" in pacifism. Since 9/11, everybody wants war.

If the problem is to aim carefully, do we know what our moral problems truly are?