Commentary: Stop The Madness Redux

Often, when I spout-off some rhetoric from the good old peace-love-and-groovy days, I’m accused of living in the past and reminded that this is the 21st century, with the implied suggestion that I should catch-up with the times. Actually, I’m very much entrenched in the present, thank you, and if I often quote the past it’s because I learned some values there that are timeless. These are values, I might add, that are very much lacking in our current world and if we don’t find them again soon, I fear that we are doomed to fall into a deep and dark morass from which we might never return.

Although detractors will claim that the sole rallying cry of the sixties was “sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll,” those of us who were there know that was primarily a blind cry, tailor made for a mass media that wouldn’t take us seriously, sort of a joke to mask the seriousness of what we were learning, what we were going through and what we were trying to accomplish. To quote Mama Cass, there was “a new world coming” and we wanted to make sure that it was not only different, but better than what had come before.

Mostly we were trying to figure-out a way to have a world in which everyone got along. We wanted racial and cultural differences not to matter any longer. Issues of gender and sexual preferences needed to become meaningless. Materialism, the status quo in post war America, should be replaced by a culture in which community and people’s needs would come first.

Most of all, however, we wanted to stop war. The rallying cry “stop the war” really meant “stop all war.” Vietnam, the war we wanted to stop back then, was a symbol for warfare in general, and it was through our opposition to that particular war that we learned that war was always senseless, fruitless, bloody and brutal. From that war we also learned another lesson: there is never, ever a real winner to a war. To quote Crosby, Stills & Nash: “I can see by your coat, my friend, your from the other side, there’s just one thing I got to know, can you tell me please, who won?”

Obviously, we sixties peaceniks failed in our attempt to bring utopia to the world. Racism, sexism and materialism are still very much a part of our daily lives. So is war. Thirty-seven years after Barry McGuire’s “Eve of Destruction” it’s still true that “even the Jordan River has bodies floatin’.” Today, as we enter the Age of Aquarius, when we should be on the verge of finding “harmony and understanding,” we find ourselves facing a war in Israel that threatens to erupt planet-wide if we’re not careful.

As usual, in this war nobody is right and everyone is wrong. Very wrong. Most people have no trouble agreeing to the plain fact that the Palestinian militants have no business bringing bloodshed and terror to innocent Israeli civilians. By the same token, however, the Israelis have no cause to punish all of the Palestinians living on the West Bank for the actions, no matter how deplorable, of a minuscule few. Nothing is gained. No one is served. The present situation in Israel only serves to illustrate the utter futility of war, wherein terrorists attacks on civilians has led to military retaliation against civilians which has led to more terrorist attacks which has led to an escalation of military retaliation... You get the picture.

The time has come for us lovers of peace to voice our opinions and to remind both the administration in Israel and the Palestinian militants that they both need positive public opinion from the world community if they are to achieve any of their publicly spouted goals. To quote the Students for a Democratic Society at the Democratic Convention in 1968, they need reminding that “the whole world is watching.” This is not a time for choosing between the Israelis or the Palestinians, but to support the cause of peace.

In other words, the time has come for all of the old peaceniks from the sixties to come out of retirement, to organize and to voice the opinion that the present situation in the Middle East is intolerable. It’s time to protest the present climate of senseless death and destruction, through demonstrations and letter writing campaigns. The time has come to explain to the Israelis that they are acting like bullying thugs and to the Palestinian militants that their actions resemble the Mafia’s protection rackets. The time has come for both sides to see that public opinion will never be on their side until they start acting like responsible adults.

And the time has come to quit listening to the propaganda from either side. To again quote Barry McGuire: “You can’t twist the truth, it knows no regulation.”

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