Guinness With Hippies

Yesterday evening I happened across a few bloggers at the local Irish pub, Molly Malones in Pleasant Ridge. Jason "the Dean", Andrew Warner, Jacqueline Henretta, and Justin Jeffre (the characters behind the Cincinnati Beacon) were all quaffing beverages after attending the big protest in Blue Ash involving pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian/Lebanese factions. From their discription of the event, and from the press coverage, it sounds it was like complete mayhem.

Later, hopefully, there will be video of the event at the Beacon website. (I don't want to give it away, but as you might expect - if you follow local indie media - 'The Dean' was simultaneously an observer and particpant in the events as they were going down.) It was nice to stop and have a beer with those guys, since I regularly give them a hard time with sarcastic comments and snide remarks about how Andrew needs a better grasp of history.

Their take on yesterday's protest left me thinking about the whole concept of "waging peace". I took a course, years ago, in which Ghandi and Sun Tzu were given equal heft, and the professor asked the question - if we went after peace as vigorously and with as much preparation and passion as warfare - wouldn't we be much more likely to be successful in eliminating conflict?

This notion of muscular pacifism is appealing on the surface, but it never seems to show up until it's too late. How does the pacifist convince Hezbollah to stop importing missles? What do you say to the Chechnyan rebel who has seen his family slaughtered by the Russian Army? Once war ignites the pacifists claim the answer is simply to stop fighting -- but some deeper injustice remains clenched at the root of the conflict. Where were they all along? And the answer is always self-blame. It boils down to: If Amerca and Israel just looked at how they've been acting they would understand why people like Hezbollah have suffered historical injustice, and they therefore (somehow) have the right to kidnap soldiers. In other words peace is the answer because everybody is at fault. According to this philiosophy there's no such thing as a sucker punch, or a militant group that really wants a fight.

The media is quite obvious in their spin today about how Condoleeza Rice is "finally" getting around to shuttle diplomacy. But I tend to agree that too much enthusiasm for premature diplomatic solutions will only preserve the deep-seated tensions in the poltical landscape - and when they are unleashed again later there will actually be more bloodshed.

Update: Post amended, having been taken to task by JH of 'The Odessa Files'.