What Would Gandhi Do?

As I was driving in to work early this morning, Paul Harvey News and Comment comes on about 5 minutes to 6.  I'm supposed to be to work by 6 AM so if I hear that program come on, I better speed things up.  As a matter of fact, I was running a few minutes late this AM and I caught the whole show today, pulling up to the door just as the show ended.  usually I hear Mr. Harvey whine about the war, but not today

Substituting for Mr. Harvey was Fred Dalton Thompson.  He had a few words to say concerning Code Pink's quixotic and idiotic squatting on Madame Speaker's front lawn.  Like me, he was against it saying, "I feel bad for Nancy Pelosi, AND her neighbors. Anti-war activists from the group Code Pink have been giving her the same treatment the president gets at his Crawford, Texas, ranch.

The point to his comments was about Gandhi and Code Pink's use of him in their efforts out on Pelosi's lawn.  He had some interesting things to say bout Gandhi that caught my attention:

Besides coolers and mattresses, protesters have brought along a giant paper mache statue of Mahatma Gandhi, who is pretty much the symbol of the anti-war movement. Code Pink was founded on his birthday, and when Saddam Hussein was being given a last chance to open Iraq to U.N. weapons inspectors, posters appeared around America asking “What would Gandhi do?”

And that’s a pretty good question. At what point is it okay to fight dictators like Saddam or the al Qaeda terrorists who want to take his place?

It turns out that the answer, according to Gandhi, is NEVER. During World War II, Gandhi penned an open letter to the British people, urging them to surrender to the Nazis. Later, when the extent of the holocaust was known, he criticized Jews who had tried to escape or fight for their lives as they did in Warsaw and Treblinka. “The Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher’s knife,” he said. “They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs.” “Collective suicide,” he told his biographer, “would have been heroism.”

Gandhi was essentially a not job and statements like that pretty much seal it.  That got me to thinking about WWII and the culture preceding our involvement in it.  Like the question, "What would Gandhi do?" I ask what would have Code Pink done during the lead up to WWII.

At first they would have been against the war.  There was a strong anti-war movement in this country prior to WWII and they were primarily Leftists egged on by the Communists.  Why?  because Stalin had inked a pact with Hitler when the divided up Poland.  Stalin was initially allied with Hitler (they had similar ideologies) and did not want us to enter the war against him.  All of that changed abruptly when Hitler reneged and attacked Poland and kept on going.  All of a sudden, except for the few religious objectors such as the Jehovah's Witnesses, the Quakers and some others, the Leftists dropped their objection to the war.  As a matter of fact, they were advocating we attack months before Pearl harbor.  There were some pro-Germans such as Charles Lindbergh, but the anti-war protesters on the campuses (just like today) were primarily extreme left initiated. 

So, Code Pink would have been against the war before they were for it.  Code Pink would have turned and been for the war after Hitler attacked Russia in July of 1941.  Code Pink's founder, Medea Benjamin is a left-wing extremist with ties to a plethora of Socialist organizations.

Anyway, Great comments but Mr. Thompson.  I'm starting to like him  as a Candidate.

VW

Comments

[canuckistani]

I think Code Pink is irrational in it's tactics but I don't see anything wrong with the founder, Ms. Benjamin, having "ties to a plethora of Socialist organizations." She's free to do that, she's living in a free country. To label her as some sort of dangerous left-wing extremist because she does so is extreme itself. It's not like she some big threat to the state for goodness sakes. An irritant, yes, especially for Ms. Pelosi, a danger, no.

[Violence Worker]

I consider Ms. Benjamin as dangerous as a Right Wing Extremist. By definition, most of the political left in this country considers me an extremist, but that is inflammatory rhetoric and completely untrue. My definition of an extremist is those who advocate the subjugation and the citizenry and the stifling of dissent. I see the left more willing to do that than most of us on the right.

It is not the average Conservative advocating that the voices on the left be squelched by government interdiction via a so-called "fairness doctrine". It is not the Republicans who advocate making the Democrat Party illegal. If there are anyone that advocates similar in my party, they are not my kind of conservative. They are the extremists and honestly, I don't know anyone who truly feels that way.

VW

[canuckistani]

Well that's exactly what's wrong in the whole debate anyway. The polarization of oppposite political philisophies to extremes. How in the world did the U.S. let itself get in such a mess?

[Violence Worker]

I will blame the Clintons. This whole thing called the "politics of self-destruction" thing was essentially invented by them even as they denounced.

VW