THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume VIII, Issue # 72, May 9, 2006
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
PUTTING POLITICS BEFORE PACIFISM
By Michael Rubin & Suzanne Gershowitz
PEACE, NONVIOLENCE, & THE CONTEMPORARY QUAKER DOUBLE STANDARD: QUAKERISM & POLITICS --
CONFUSION OF QUAKER RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY WITH LEFTIST POLITICAL IDEOLOGY -- USE OF MODERN POLITICIZED
QUAKERISM TO UNDERMINE SUPPORT FOR UNITED STATES FOREIGN & NATIONAL SECURITY POLICIES DESIGNED TO
DEFEND AMERICA'S VITAL NATIONAL INTERESTS & DEFEAT & DESTROY ITS DEADLY ENEMIES THROUGHOUT THE WORLD
FULL STORY:
Abington Friends School in Jenkintown has a no-nonsense dress code: To conform to Quaker philosophy, students may
not wear T-shirts that promote violence. In practice, though, not all violence is unacceptable. Teachers ignore T-shirts
honoring Ché Guevara, the violent Latin American revolutionary, but sometimes discipline students who wear shirts with
Israeli army symbols.
Together, we spent 25 years in Quaker schools. We were taught from an early age to look for spiritual guidance within
ourselves and accept that God existed in everyone. We learned to better the world through peaceful means and the value of
diversity, not only in ethnicity and religion, but also in thought. Teachers argued the merits of Pacifism, yet, in the late
1980s, Abington Friends hosted speakers defending the Cuban and Nicaraguan revolutions.
Abington Friends is not alone. While Quakers embrace nonviolence, increasingly their institutions confuse Pacifism with
Leftism.
Take the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC): Founded in 1917, the group tries to uphold the teachings of George
Fox, one of Quakerism's founders, who, almost 350 years ago, urged his followers to "live all in the peaceable life, doing
good to all men, and seeking the good and welfare of all men."
Initially the AFSC held true to such principles. During World War II, the group helped refugees and provided medical care
and, in 1947, won the Nobel Peace Prize. But, with the Vietnam War, the AFSC sought not only to alleviate suffering, but
also, in the words of Henry Bowden, a professor of religion at Rutgers University, "to find politics in it."
Politicization trumped Pacifism. During the 1970s, the AFSC defended Cambodia's Khmer Rouge, even as word emerged that
the group had killed one million citizens. In his Peace and Revolution: The Moral Crisis of American Pacifism, Guenter
Lewy described how John McAuliff, head of the AFSC's Indo-China division, called reports of massacres a U.S. attempt to
discredit "the example of an alternative model of development." During the 1980s, as civil wars erupted across Latin America,
the AFSC supported the groups that opposed U.S. policy, and ignored groups allied to Washington. The Sandinistas were
honorable; the Contras not. That the Sandinistas were as violent as the Contras, did not trouble the AFSC.
AFSC hypocrisy has been as evident in Iraq. Prior to the 2003 war, it amplified Saddam Hussein's rhetoric arguing, for example,
that U.S.-supported sanctions killed 500,000 children. While they attributed such numbers to UNICEF, they did not mention
that the Iraqi government coauthored the report and supplied the figures. Not surprisingly, after Saddam's fall, this claim
proved false - though nearly that number ended up in mass graves, victims of Saddam's helicopters and poison gas.
As Barham Salih, then a leading Iraqi Kurdish opponent of Saddam and current Iraqi Minister of Planning, told a January, 2003,
meeting of the Socialist International in Rome, "To those who say 'No War,' I say, of course, 'Yes,' but we can only have 'No
War,' if there is 'No Dictatorship' and 'No Genocide.' "
It is a lesson the AFSC has yet to learn. Until the crisis in Darfur, the group remained largely silent on Sudan, where more than
two million perished after that country's government imposed Islamic law on the Christian and animist south. Even as genocide
continues, the AFSC prefers to protest Israel's separation fence, which has, nonviolently, saved lives, rather than taken them.
It is with regard to Israel and the Palestinians that the AFSC hemorrhages credibility. When the AFSC published its "principles
for a just and lasting peace between Palestinians and Israelis," it did not once mention the eradication of terrorism. If the AFSC
still valued Quaker principles, no political cause would legitimate violence.
Such inconsistencies are the rule rather than the exception. While the AFSC urges the U.S. Congress to stop allocating money
to Iraq, it has called for the continuation of assistance to the Hamas-led Palestinian government in the West Bank and Gaza,
even as that the Hamas charter calls for the murder of Jews.
Peace is a noble goal, too important to be compromised by politics. If the AFSC is going to adhere to Quaker values, no cause
should legitimate violence. There should be no exceptions for liberation movements or insurgents. Conflating Pacifism with
Leftism cheapens the Quaker legacy. So long as war and terrorism continue, that is a luxury we can ill-afford.
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
Disloyalty, Subversion, Sedition, & Treason
Liberals, Statists, Socialists, & Other Leftists
Religion, Secularism, & America
War & Peace in the Real World
Page Two
Page One
Islamism & Jihadism -- The Threat of Radical Islam
Page Three
Page Two
Page One
Middle East -- Arabs, Arab States,
& Their Middle Eastern Neighbors
The Israeli-Arab Conflict
Islamist Terrorist Attacks on the U.S.A.
Osama bin Laden & the Islamist Declaration of War
Against the U.S.A. & Western Civilization
Islamist International Terrorism &
U.S. Intelligence Agencies
Counterterrorism & U.S. National Security
U.S. National Security Strategy
Michael Rubin, a graduate of Abington Friends, is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. Suzanne Gershowitz,
a graduate of Sidwell Friends School in Washington, is a research assistant at the American Enterprise Institute.
The foregoing article by Michael Rubin and Suzanne Gershowitz was originally published in the Philadelphia Inquirer,
May 9, 2006, and can be found on the Internet website maintained by the
Middle East Forum.
Republished with Permission of the Middle East Forum
Reprinted from the Middle East Forum News
mefnews@meforum.org (MEF NEWS)
May 9, 2006
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