Letters to the Editor

America should value life and choose peace, not war

It was excellent that Michael Frazer voiced the view that "the people making the case against a war on Iraq on campuses . . . have, over the course of the past year, disqualified themselves from putting forward." Nevertheless, I have both the need and the qualifications to discuss the comments in his piece Wednesday.

There are individuals, some of them respected and successful, who believe that war is not the best solution to any conflict, that violent retaliation is always unadvisable. This does not mean that these people are misinformed. The claim that our Afghan war was justified is not an unimpeachable disqualification of their principles, but merely a disagreement with them.

The Princeton Peace Network (PPN) consists in part of uncompromising pacifists. What unifies all the PPN's contingents in this Iraq campaign is the urgency of action. Frazer calls the "citizenry" to "correct" the Bush administration's "misguided" move. This is what the PPN has been doing, collecting signatures for a nationwide academic petition, setting up free phone calls to congressmen and informing Princeton about the numerous and varied reasons one could oppose this particular war, i.e. not just because pacifists believe war is bad per se.

"The World Bank and the IMF, although they often pursue ill-advised policies, are not" evil like bin Laden is evil, states Frazer, and I agree. But that doesn't remove the burden of protesting to ensure that they do their job well. Radicalism does have this value "for its own sake:" To promote discussion and consideration of all issues.

I think most of the radical left has a very clear conception of morality, which it asserts at every opportunity. I find viewing pacifism as immoral problematic to say the least. Few people actually "value radicalism for its own sake:" Activism takes a lot of energy and is often unrewarding. For this reason, for every apparently misguided collegiate activist, there are a thousand people on campuses who implicitly support the Western hegemon's every move for convenience and lack of knowledge. We're working together to change that. Because we value our country and human rights. Jon Kennedy '03