# Posted 10:07 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

NOT IN MY NAME: OxBlog's Australian correspondent isn't happy with the total absence of rational thought that tends to characterize anti-war protesters. (See this video clip for some evidence.) What makes Patrick's frustration interesting is that he himself is against this war. Or, in his own words:

Slogans and cliches abound in the anti-war movement. One does not have to be Donald Rumsfeld to puncture the mindless litany of one-liners that protesters and activists intone.

"Public opinion says no" is one line. So? Opinion polls say lots of things at any given time. If all public policy were determined in Britain by counting heads rather than by persuasion and electing governments, the death penalty would be reintroduced and asylum seekers would be expelled. Would governments with mandates be expected to roll over at the behest of one million people descending on London to demand the return of hanging?

"War kills" was another. So does leaving brutal dictators in power. Whatever your opinion on this war, both military action or inaction entails the loss of lives. That is the tragedy of these kinds of crises, that we are all morally tainted, there will be blood on the hands of decision-makers whatever they decide. There are no pure or innocent choices - inaction too entails the tolerance of slaughter.

"No blood for oil", that old chestnut, does not so much argue as presume. It presumes an obscene motive that is unproven and simplistic. Kosovo lacks large reserves of oil. As does Afghanistan. If the Bush administration were so beholden to the dictates of oil companies, it could have lifted sanctions on oil years ago. The oil motive is not obvious, so we should stop pretending it is. Protests themselves often attract speakers whose intellect is on neutral and whose emotion is on overdrive. Jesse Jackson shouting Peace and Love and Justice is not persuasion, it is a series of mantras.

There are better arguments against the war. Inaction cannot bring peace and justice back to the people of Iraq. The only response is that this is not just about the people of Iraq, but the sovereign states and people of the world. It is about the threshold for war. The Archbishop of Canterbury, for example, warns of the dangers and instability of pre-emptive strikes as a precedent for world order. Striking a nation largely at the behest of great powers without the clear sanction of the United Nations could well liberate the people of Iraq, but also threatens to set a pattern less benign great powers of the future could emulate. You may not agree- its arguable. But it's an argument that does not presume an unproven motive, that does not pretend to moral purity, does not rely on cheap slogans, and does not insult the intelligence.

But if not for the pretensions of moral purity, cheap sloganeering and manifest insults, some of us hawks might actually have been persuaded by the protesters!!! Oh well... (0) opinions -- Add your opinion