Aside from being redundant to the point of absurdity, Colin Dixon’s Oct. 22 guest column was one of the most poorly argued pieces of drivel that I’ve ever read. Dixon’s arguments, if they can even be called that, consist entirely of empty rhetoric and overused slogans. Most damning of all, he draws a parallel between the moral positions of the United States and the al-Qaida.
Dixon, like every other anti-war protester, quoted Mahatma Gandhi when he wrote: “An eye for an eye only makes the whole world go blind.” He says that it would have been an “amazing step toward lasting peace” if the United States had only embraced this simple ideology. What he and the rest of his ilk fail to understand is that Gandhi faced a very different opponent than Osama bin Laden. He was struggling to free India from British colonial rule and he gambled successfully that the British would not be willing to engage in the wholesale slaughter of unarmed civilians.
Alas, that tactic will not work against our current foes who pick targets solely because it will guarantee the wholesale slaughter of unarmed civilians.
Pacifism is a nice ideal, but it falls rather flat in the face of nihilism and fanaticism. Nonviolent resistance to fanatics like those of al-Qaida is the equivalent of suicide, and the only peace it will bring us is the peace of the grave.
Apparently, Dixon also believes that those who support the war effort are little more than children, barely able to cognate and only capable of “poor assumptions … that are necessary to correct in defense of peace and reason.”
This kind of rhetoric wouldn’t have been so hypocritically laughable had it not come from the same man who wrote: “And yes, the ‘terrorists’ probably have held bake sales and helped old ladies cross the street, just as our soldiers and CIA agents have.”
We at Northwestern are truly lucky to have such a paragon of rational thought in our midst.
Finally, there’s a matter of libel and defamation of character that I would like to take up with Dixon. He writes: “If we attack another country’s people (Afghans), Americans can expect to be attacked.” He goes on to claim that “We citizens of the United States are responsible for a government that brings terror to people all over the world.”
I don’t particularly like being called a supporter of terrorism in print, especially when the libeler has no facts to support his case.
In 1929 the great nations of the world, save China and the Soviet Union, ratified a treaty called the Kellog-Briand Pact. Its goal was to “condemn recourse to war for the solution of international controversies, and renounce it, as an instrument of national policy in their relations with one another.”
In 1939 the great nations of the world entered into the bloodiest conflict in human history. No treaty would stand in the way of Hitler or Hirohito. The only way to bring about peace was to fight for it.
That situation is the same today as it was then. I desire peace, but I can recognize when it is impossible to attain. Dixon would have us cut our own throats and hand over our life and liberty to the fanatics who wish to take them from us.
Speech senior Joshua Elder is the managing editor of the Northwestern Chronicle. He can be reached at [email protected].
