The Crime of Rejecting Peace
- © Michele Toomey, PhD • March 17, 2003

War is our legacy. We became a country by waging war against Native Americans and "defeating" them. This victory gave us the "right" to steal our country from them. Taking what we want by force is not new to us. It is our heritage.

We are the only country to have dropped nuclear bombs. We are justified because we were trying to save American lives. War is our weapon of mass destruction. And we feel we have this right because we have this might.

It is a crime to kill to achieve peace. You can't get there from here. Israel is a case in point. Suicide bombers that kill innocent Israelis trigger revengeful counter attacks killing innocent Palestinians. Has this approach achieved peace? Hardly. It only achieves more violence and killings. Why would we imitate this approach? Because it is consistent with our country's value system. War is truly our weapon of mass destruction. We are not a country that values the power of peace. We value the power of war. Now we have the added justification for war because of 9/11. Crush the terrorists and in the process crush whoever gets in our way.

France dares to disagree with attacking Iraq and we ridicule them and belittle everything about them. We hold ourselves up as superior to France because we are about to wage a war that they reject. Stand for peace and you are inferior and scorned. It would seem America scorns peace and honors war. We seem to think we are strong when we are fighting for what we stand for, and weak when we stand up for what we believe and offer alternatives to war.

Why is it a crime to reject peace? Because human life is precious. Every effort to avoid war should cry out to us as a necessary approach to preserve human life. Human greed and hostile aggressive abuse of power are dangerous to human life. Using hostile aggression against these abusers to stop the violence should be our very last resort, otherwise we are joining the abusers in promoting violence to prevent violence.

Peace is not dramatic in its expression. War is. Peace seems to personify female traits and war expresses male traits. We use a dove as a peace symbol. We have no one war symbol.You don't win in peace. There are no victors and no spoils. We are proud of victory and we treasure the significance of spoils. Peace doesn't stand a chance in that climate. And that is the climate of today. George Bush personifies the glory of intimidation and force to achieve peace and safety. Those who follow him are praised as patriotic and brave and God fearing. Those who disagree are deemed unpatriotic wimpy liberals.

Democrats are afraid of being seen as weak and unpatriotic after 9/11. They silently follow Bush's lead. We have no leaders for peace. Only Vermont's former Governor Dean dares say he is against the war. It is not popular and he will never get the nomination. He must know that, but at least he stands proudly for peace. As a native Vermonter, I am proud of him, but I know he has no chance to prevail. We are a war directed nation. We are not leaders of peace. We don't even value it as a means to an end. It is only seen as an outcome of war. What a tragedy. And in this instance, what a crime.