In my previous article on this topic, I addressed one of the many fallacious arguments employed by non-interventionists against people such as myself who support intervention abroad. Today, I'd like to address another fallacy that has been constantly employed against me.
This particular fallacy goes a little something like this: "Why do you interventionists support endless war?"
Of all the many, many fallacies that have been used against interventionists like myself, this one might just be the most insulting. Do non-interventionists seriously think that I like seeing the destruction and devastation that war brings? Do they think ANY of my fellow interventionists like that?
I have said this before and I will say it again: Nobody in their right mind is pro-war.
War is a terrible thing. I despise it. If I had my way, we would never have to send another soldier overseas into harms way. We would never have to sacrifice another life or fire another bullet. If I could make a world where we would never have to fight another war ever again, I would do it.
But the fact is that the real world doesn't work that way. The world doesn't care about what I want. Whether we like it or not, we live in a world of cruelty and inhumanity. We live in a world where brutal dictators subjugate and murder their citizens, wage campaigns of terror against their neighbors, and perpetrate terrible crimes against humanity.
And in this world, we have two options: We can either ignore such atrocities and sit comfortably in our ivory towers, watching the world burn and people suffer when we have the power to make a difference, or we can do our part as fellow citizens of the world and work together to put an end to such atrocities and punish those responsible for them.
I, as an interventionist, believe that we should work to eliminate authoritarian brutality whenever and wherever it emerges. When a genocidal regime slaughters millions of their own people, I believe we have a moral and ethical obligation as human beings to intervene and stop such atrocities.
When a brutal dictator like Bashar al-Assad uses chemical weapons like chlorine and sarin on innocent women and children, I believe that we have a fundamental responsibility to forcibly remove him from power.
Would removing murderous dictators require military action? In many cases, yes. Does saying that make me a "warmonger" or an advocate for "endless war"? Absolutely not.
Seeking peace is only meaningful if the peace itself is meaningful. This is a very important point to note. Peace is only meaningful when it is mutual. If you attempt to seek peace with a regime that has no interest in it, you accomplish absolutely nothing. All you do is give murderous dictators and authoritarians the green light to commit more atrocities and inflict more misery without fear of repercussion.
We saw the results of fruitless peace negotiations in the 1930s with Neville Chamberlain's policy of appeasement when it came to dealing with Hitler. We saw it in 2014 with the US's response to Vladimir Putin following the invasion of Crimea. And we are seeing it again today with the rhetoric coming from non-interventionists like Tulsi Gabbard on the topic of Syria.
Among non-interventionists, I've noticed that, for all of their talk of peace and nonviolence, they do not seem to have much of a problem with dictators like Assad murdering their people, or authoritarian despots like Putin invading neighboring countries, or totalitarian regimes like Iran funding terrorist groups.
And I believe that this is because non-interventionists define "peace" in very singular terms. They define "peace" as the United States not getting involved in any foreign conflict. They believe that the US interfering in any foreign country, regardless of circumstances, is us waging "endless war". But they are perfectly content with allowing violence and terror to engulf entire regions of the planet as long as it doesn't involve the US.
Non-interventionists are perfectly content to sit in their ivory towers and watch the world burn, and they will appease, ignore, or flat-out deny the atrocities unfolding before their eyes. In the name of "peace", they are perfectly willing to allow misery, violence, terror, genocide, and inhumanity engulf the planet without lifting so much as a finger to stop it.
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