A wave of patriotism has swept the country in support of our war on terrorism. All opinion polls have recorded a ninety-percent approval of President Bush's leadership. Given the circumstances that have led to our state of war, I was wondering about the remaining ten percent, until the usual suspects came to the fore on "balanced" television shows. Optimistic as I am, I had thought that the political baby talk and other vagaries of thirty years ago had been buried forever in the dump of rank infantilisms. I knew I was wrong when I saw in front of the White House a chubby guy holding a sign that read "Wage Peace." Recycling has no limits, even for lame slogans.

Peaceniks are a bit of an intriguing bunch. Especially intriguing is their success at being taken much more seriously than they deserve. At best, peaceniks are fainthearted ninnies; at worst, they are arrogant prima donnas with a superiority complex. Under a mask of goodness, their cause makes a muddle of logic, ethics, and facts of life.

Pacifists, peaceniks of the sincere stripe who oppose war on idealistic or religious grounds, offer in support of their position the following arguments:

The question of personal ethics makes little sense, for it implicitly assigns a higher value on the life of a violent aggressor than on that of the victim, be it self, kin, compatriot, of friend. Perhaps its most troubling aspect is the paramount priority accorded by the pacifist to his moral comfort---including the perspective of an admirable death---which must prevail upon duty to others.

Gandhi's example is often cited as the definite proof of the efficacy of nonviolent resistance. This proposition rests on a self-serving interpretation of history. Gandhi's success owes much more to circumstances and a civilized lack of determination on the part of the Brits than to the method. If Gandhi had faced Stalin or Hitler, he would have been despatched to a gulag or a Nacht ùnd Nebel camp before anyone could know the spelling of his name. Similarly, Martin Luther King was successful because the majority of the country opposed segregation.

The recourse to a superior world authority for international mediation and justice was tried twice in the twentieth century, only to bomb miserably. The League of Nations, President Wilson's project, proved to be entirely inept at preventing the Nazi aggression. The UN has not been any better at settling conflicts in the past fifty years, including never-ending Middle-East dissensions. This is not surprising. Such organizations are not immune to political shenanigans, which puts their very impartiality in question. And they do not have the means of enforcement necessary for the exercise of justice. Picture a UN contingent---troops, say, from Ghana and Holland---sent to Afghanistan to arrest Bin Laden! Now, should we trust the UN or some similar body with supreme legislative authority and a permanent, powerful army of well-trained gendarmes able to enforce it? Certainly not, notwithstanding the wishes of totalitarian proponents of one world government.

Only a peculiar view of history validates the claim that wars do not resolve conflicts and cause more wars. There is little doubt that World War II not only stopped mad aggressions in Europe and Asia, but also prevented the consolidation of empires bent on death and destruction. For more than a half-century, Western Europe has been at peace and Japan has turned its energies to peaceful commerce. As to those who make Hitler's rise a consequence of World War I, they are wrong. The conditions imposed on Germany by the treaty of Versailles, not the war itself, contributed to the climate of social unrest exploited by the Nazis. France's and Britain's indecision and fear did the rest, with terrible consequences. Similarly, the Cold War was not a result of World War II. It was the product of an "evil empire" intent on aggression and oppression, which Western European pusillanimity and American hesitancy sought to appease. It took Ronald Reagan's aggressive strategy to bring the evil empire to its knees. Of course, the man was called a warmonger for doing the right thing.

Not all peaceniks are idealistic pacifists. A good number are fainthearted and shirkers who like to invoke rationality to justify their position. When confronted with an act of war, their first order of business is to oppose retaliation, which they say will worsen the situation, and to find hypothetical "root causes" instead. For example, peaceniks advance that the 1917 Balfour Declaration is the "root cause" of continuing Middle-East conflicts over Israel. That is supposed to make us understand why Abdullah explodes a bomb in a pizzeria. Does that do any good towards a peaceful settlement? Of course not. The implication here is that Israel should not retaliate, that Britain, not Abdullah, is responsible for the mayhem, and that the Balfour Declaration and its consequences should be reconsidered. Is that acceptable to Israel? Of course not. So, what is there to do?

In the aftermath of the World Trade Center attack, many root causes are found by those who want to "wage peace." One is that we left the Afghans to their own devices after supporting them in their fight against the USSR. But what should we have done? Build a new nation to our taste, face the opposition of about everyone in the world, and continue the war lost by the Soviets? Another root cause---that one dear to Europeans---says that we are hated for tolerating Third World squalor, illiteracy, and general misery. Again, should we initiate an impossible welfare plan for the Third World, complete with food stamps, schools, medical care, public housing, public works, factories, etc.? I think not. Locals and others---including Europeans---would oppose it as another manifestation of "Yankee imperialism." And there is more. That America is too rich, too free, too powerful, and its culture too attractive supposedly exasperates the rest of the world. So, what should we do with that? Become poor, powerless, abandon our research in science and technology, shut down the Internet, stop making and exporting computers, airplanes, blue jeans, Coca Cola, and Rock n' Roll, of which the world cannot get enough? Should we also change our constitution to restrict our freedoms? Obviously, this would suit an envious continental EU, which socialism has reduced to a state of economic, military, diplomatic, and moral mediocrity. It would also suit the Marxist retreads who masquerade as pacifists here at home, and whose favorite root causes of evil are freedom, capitalism, and their creative energies.

Regardless, the peaceniks' point is that we should not root out terrorists who are only responding to our hypothetical wrongdoings. Instead, it would be our duty to accommodate them. This is tantamount to encouraging more terrorism and abandoning the principles that make our country good and decent. In these circumstances, President Bush has made the only right choice, not only for America, but for the whole world. The task is considerable, but this is the country of considerable projects.