Can Pacifists Be Patriots?

Abstract

Just eight days after September 11, 2001, our local newspaper, The Goshen News, carried a critical letter by a Goshenite responding to an earlier letter written by my friend Albert J. Meyer, former head of the Mennonite Board of Education. “Al,” the critic wrote, “if you think serving tea and crumpets in your den to Moammar Gadhafi, Yasser Arafat, and Osama bin Laden would bring lasting peace from terrorism, you go for it. I think it’s been proven that diplomacy with these people has not been real effective!” In his closing paragraph, the critic stated that “if some people…want to hold discussions on world peace or sew quilts or what not for the cause,” they should realize that they can do so only because the United States, unlike Iraq and Afghanistan, treasures freedom of speech. “But understand,” he concluded, “that you’re in the great minority of Americans.”¹