Michael Berg, The Greens, and Pacifism: Twisted???

Like Cindy Sheehan, Michael Berg has the wingnuts in a tizzy. Michael is the father of Nick Berg, the independent American contractor brutally murdered in Iraq. Michael Berg is now a Green Party candidate for Congress in Delaware. In an interview with CNN's Soledad O'Brien, Berg refused to rejoice in the death of al-Zarqawi, argued that his death will ignite more violence in Iraq, and said that Saddam Hussein was no worse than George Bush.

Right wing talk radio host Dennis Prager used the interview and other statements made by Berg as an opportunity to trash not only him, but also Cindy Sheehan, pacifism, and the Green Party. He writes that "the attention paid to Michael Berg has been very helpful in enabling many more people to understand the thinking and values of the Green Party -- and those on the left sympathetic to the Greens -- and of pacifism. Thinking and values that are, in a word, twisted."

According to Prager, "pacifists are often personally sweet and endearing people who advocate 'peace,' and therefore their doctrine is usually spared the moral contempt it merits. Among its many moral and intellectual weaknesses, pacifism ensures that cruelty will prevail on earth."

Ah ha! So it is Michael Berg and others of his ilk who are responsible for the prevalence of cruelty on earth. At least he is in good company. Here is a partial list of others who, at least according to Dennis Prager I assume, have been responsible for global cruelty:

• Albert Schweitzer
• Susan B. Anthony
• John Lennon
• Henry David Thoreau
• Jane Addams
• Leo Tolstoy
• Mahatma Gandhi
• Dororthy Day
• Martin Luther King, Jr.
• Buddha
• Jesus
  

I think when people like Prager criticize pacifism, they are thinking of it as "passive," the idea that one should do literally nothing in the face of evil. Ward Churchill on the left shares that view, referring to pacifism as a "pathology." Pacifism is in fact a philosophy of action; it merely rejects war and violence as solutions to conflict. So deeply ingrained is the ideology of violence in the world that, as John Lennon would have said, we cannot even "imagine" a world without it.

Michael Berg will not vote for any more invasions; he will not stay silent while lives are expended to satisfy the world order fantasies of whomever happens to be sitting in the White House or the Pentagon. Perhaps if we start electing "twisted" people like Michael Berg to congress, we might begin to develop a nation and world worth leaving behind to the next generation.