Colman McCarthy is a journalist, pacifist, and anarchist. His Wikipedia entry (he deserves one?) can be found here. I don't really know that I agree with the man on anything other than the sky being blue.
Honestly, pacifism, the preference to peace over war, isn't such an objectionable idea to me. Wasn't it Robert E. Lee who said, "It is good that war is so terrible - lest we grow too fond of it."?
But that said, most pacifists I have ever met have a distinct disconnection with reality. They seem to think that if only we would eliminate the military and hold hands and sing, that bad guys would cease being bad, that other nations and peoples would stop trying to use force to get what they want, and we'd be able to find a diplomatic solution to everything. That's simply not realistic. It is in human nature to lie and deceive. To try and force one's will upon others when you have the upper hand. It's an ugly part of humanity, one that most of us spend our lives trying to overcome. But it's there. Despite the fact that almost all of the world's great religious leaders preached peace, it still happens. It's part of the human condition.
I think there are very few people who believe war is good. Perhaps the defense contractors. I don't know. But most rational people acknowledge that it is, at times, necessary, even though it's terrible.
All that is to say, many university campuses, particularly the Ivy League schools, had long ago - mostly during Vietnam - eliminated the ROTC groups on their campuses, largely because of the very strong anti war demonstrations of the Vietnam era. Since then, many of them have kept the bans in place, often times because they have university policies against 'discriminatory undergraduate student groups', which they applied to the ROTC because of Don't Ask Don't Tell. It largely didn't affect them since, as private universities, they weren't receiving a whole lot of Federal funds anyway. Most of their finances were provided through endowments.
Now that DADT is in the process of formal repeal and gays are now allowed to openly serve in the military, the universities who have used DADT as a leg to continue their ROTC ban are beginning to find themselves under pressure to reinstitute their ROTC programs. To which some strong pacifists have objections, as can be seen below.
"To oppose ROTC, as I have since my college days in the 1960s, when my school enticed too many of my classmates into joining, is not to be anti-soldier. I admire those who join armies, whether America's or the Taliban's: for their discipline, for their loyalty to their buddies and to their principles, for their sacrifices to be away from home. In recent years, I've had several Iraq and Afghanistan combat veterans in my college classes. If only the peace movement were as populated by people of such resolve and daring.
ROTC and its warrior ethic taint the intellectual purity of a school, if by purity we mean trying to rise above the foul idea that nations can kill and destroy their way to peace. If a school such as Harvard does sell out to the military, let it at least be honest and add a sign at its Cambridge front portal: Harvard, a Pentagon Annex."
It's honestly ironic to me that someone so pacifistic and falling under what I would typically consider the progressive ethos would do anything but despise these sort of Taliban groups. In his article, McCarthy spoke the virtues of peace studies, minority studies, and women's studies at the universities in question. Doesn't believing in those ideals make the ideals of aforementioned groups absolutely reprehensible?
What does it mean then, when you compare our US military to those groups?
Good to know that our men serve to protect McCarthy's syndicated column. Free Speech for all, even the foolish.
