All we are asking. . .

Thomas Sowell proves once again why he is called the smartest man in America:

One of the many failings of our educational system is that it sends out into the world people who cannot tell rhetoric from eality. They have learned no systematic way to analyze ideas, derive their implications and test those implications against hard facts.

"Peace" movements are among those who take advantage of this widespread inability to see beyond rhetoric to realities. Few people even seem interested in the actual track record of so-called "peace" movements --that is, whether such movements actually produce peace or war. Take the Middle East. People are calling for a cease-fire in the interests of peace. But there have been more cease-fires in the Middle East than anywhere else. If cease-fires actually promoted peace, the Middle East would be the most peaceful region on the face of the earth instead of the most violent.

Was World War II ended by cease-fires or by annihilating much of Germany and Japan? Make no mistake about it, innocent civilians died in the process. Indeed, American prisoners of war died when we bombed Germany.

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There was a time when it would have been suicidal to threaten, much less attack, a nation with much stronger military power because one of the dangers to the attacker would be the prospect of being annihilated.

"World opinion," the U.N. and "peace movements" have eliminated that deterrent. An aggressor today knows that if his aggression fails, he will still be protected from the full retaliatory power and fury of those he attacked because there will be
hand-wringers demanding a cease fire, negotiations and concessions.

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The most catastrophic result of "peace" movements was World War II. While Hitler was arming Germany to the teeth, "peace" movements in Britain were advocating that their own country disarm "as an example to others."

British Labor Party Members of Parliament voted consistently against military spending and British college students publicly pledged never to fight for their country. If "peace" movements brought peace, there would never have been World War II.

Not only did that war lead to tens of millions of deaths, it came dangerously close to a crushing victory for the Nazis in Europe and the Japanese empire in Asia. And we now know that the United States was on Hitler’s timetable after that.

For the first two years of that war, the Western democracies lost virtually every battle, all over the world, because pre-war "peace” movements had left them with inadequate military equipment and much of it obsolete. The Nazis and the Japanese knew that. That is why they launched the war.

"Peace" movements don't bring peace but war.

G. Gordon Liddy tells this story about his college roommate. The young man was French and had spent most of the war years hiding from the SS with his family because his father was under a sentence of death. After becoming close enough friends to ask personal questions Liddy asked why France fell so easily to the Nazis. After all, France had a larger army and more tanks (and French tanks had larger guns).

The young Frenchman told Liddy that when little boys in France got into fights with other children their mothers would tell them, “Do not fight. You are the smarter of the two; prove it by just walking away”. On the other hand German mothers told their sons, “You are an Aryan and a member of the Hitler Youth. When you grow up you can become a member of the Waffen-SS. You can defeat any foe.”

The Frenchman told Liddy, “We both believed our mothers”.

History proves over and over again that the weak and timid are nothing but prey for the ruthless and strong. As long as mortal man rules the Earth the old saying “If you desire peace prepare for war” will be true.