Peace vs. Passivity

I have seen bumper stickers like this one for a while. When they first came out I felt confused, then mad, then exasperated, and now I'm both angry and exasperated. Hopefully my various responses will be explained as I profess my views about these bumper stickers.

First, if you can't tell, I'm not a fan. It's not that I don't agree with the basic message, because I do. Wanting peace and working to achieve peace are both patriotic. Wanting peace is a noble desire that should be the desire of a patriot, and working to achieve peace translates that desire into action, which can be seen as a civic duty. If this were the only message the bumper sticker conveys, I'd support it 100%

If you look at the other bumper stickers on the car, however, you get a clearer picture of what the message is behind "Peace is Patriotic." Examining the messages of the other stickers, I often find one similar to this:

This message, that "War is NOT the answer" fails to state an answer. That's where the original bumper sticker comes in: PEACE is the answer. Normally it would be nice to know what the question/problem is that the various answers are addressing, and I will get to that presently, but first let us examine these two solutions.

We are currently faced with two solutions to a problem. Unfortunately only one of them is actually a solution. To solve a problem requires action. War can be used as both a noun and a verb. Because it can be a verb, that means that War can be an action, and right now the USA wars against terror. When one looks up peace in the dictionary, one notes that it is simply a noun. (I looked it up in the New Oxford American Dictionary, 2nd ed.) As a noun, there is no action, and therefore not a solution but a goal. What is really being offered as a solution, even if not consciously, is passivity. To be passive means to "accept or allow what happens or what others do, without active response or resistance" (New Oxford American Dictionary, 2nd ed.). In this case, as with all problems in life, not doing anything is as much an action that can be applied to solve your problems as any other more active solution. In other words, ignoring the problem, or just accepting the problem as not problematical, is the solution being offered.

Peace is the goal, not the solution. The problem then is disharmony, or lack of peace. You must act to attain your goal. Can you achieve peace through passivity? Yes, possibly. Sometimes this is the best way to achieve peace. My personality is non-confrontational by nature, so if I can just as easily dig another well as I could fight you for the one I originally dug, I will dig another well. Instead of fighting over a pen that I had just been using, I’ll just grab another pen. But if you attack me personally, I will not acquiesce to your demands. If you call me stupid and tell me I should not believe in God, I won’t just passively accept that you are right and stop believing. If, to try and get your way, you persist to the point of trying to inflict bodily harm, I will have no problem defending myself.

In America’s current situation, America has three choices: 1) Passively accept what the terrorists did and leave them alone. 2) Acquiesce to the demands/lifestyle of the terrorists and change our whole culture. 3) Respond to the threat and defend ourselves from future terrorist attacks.

1) Being passive and just allowing events to happen to you will not create peace. If you really want peace, you must actively work to achieve it. In other words, you must be proactive. When something occurs that you must react to, you must react in a proactive way. The tragedy of 9-11 was able to occur because we failed to react in a proactive way to other tragedies. To list just some of the attacks we failed to respond to:
1993 World Trade Center Bombings
1995 Bombings in Saudi Arabia
1996 Komar Tower Bombing
1998 Bombing of two US Embasies
(To be fair, we did send 2 $1,500,000 missles "around the world to hit two camels in the butt" (as one President has said).)
2000 The USS Coal naval ship was bombed, and we did nothing!
(This is the only instance I know of where are troops were attacked and we didn't take on those who attacked us.)
Looking at our track record, no wonder the terrorists decided to keep attacking.

2) If we change our lives and adopt the culture of the terrorists, we will be at peace with them, but with no one else. As part of our new culture, we would now mobilize ourselves against the rest of the world in order to spread our newly adopted culture throughout the entire world. This brings harmony between us and the terrorists, but war between us and the rest of the world.

3) We must react to our current situation in a proactive manner to prevent, as much as possible, future attacks and to establish, as long as possible, peace. War is not something we should enter in to arbitrarily, but when war has been declared upon us and our way of life, we can not ignore it and hope that it goes away. When war is declared upon us we can meet those who set themselves up as are enemies in one of two ways: ready for a fight or ready to surrender.

Back to the bumper stickers. Since the terrorists have declared war against, being passive will only result in more attacks made against us and more tragedies like 9-11. This can hardly be considered a peaceful. War is upon us whether we like it or not. Even if we choose to surrender, it would still mean war, just with someone else (point 2 above). Therefore "Peace is Patriotic" and "War is NOT the answer" are two incongruous messages to be displaying on your bumper. "Peace is Patriotic" is a pro-war statement, whether you know it or not.