Peace and Revolution

...Lewy overlooks the evidence for tension within the revolutionary process in Nicaragua, such as the presence of three priests in key cabinet positions, the government's confession of error with regard to its policy toward the Miskito Indians, the reopening of La Prensa, and the repeal of the state of emergency...

...Above all, I think that what is most asked of us is not criticism of others, but to find new creativity and persistence in acting out nonviolence ourselves...

...In my opinion, Lewy's point of view caricatures both the reality of countries like El Salvador and Nicaragua, and the history of American pacifism...

...Later, when the new government of Vietnam, in my view, did exactly that by imprisoning persons indefinitely without due process, I joined Jim Forest, Tom Cornell, Daniel Berrigan, and Joan Baez in publicly protesting...

...They have considered that being one with God was a majority...

...Certain Protestant denominations, for example the Hutterites, share this outlook...

...Nevertheless, I believe the argument of Peace and Revolution is profoundly mistaken...

...All those whom Lewy attacks have remained pacifists...

...Similary, as Lewy notes, in the May 1975 WIN symposium on the end of the war in Vietnam, I said the peace movement should "apply the same tests of lawful and humane behavior to all governments, and...

...What disturbs Lewy is that, while remaining pacifists, we have chosen to place ourselves as best we can at the side of third-world and other oppressed people, and, in Archbishop Romero's phrase, to "accompany" them in their struggle...

...I was shocked and did not join the Tribunal...

...Indeed, it seems to me that the difference between Professor Lewy and (is whom he criticizes is not about pacifism at all...

...In the first place, while Lewy's narrative draws on primary research in the archives of the peace movement, his scholarship is embedded in a larger framework of assumptions...

...expect that a revolutionary government in Vietnam, like all governments, will imprison people unjustly, will betray the rhetoric that brought it to power, and will need to be resisted...

...Moreover, Lewy says, pacifists in their bitterness and frustration have engaged in civil disobedience that sought to obstruct decisions by a majority of their fellow citizens, thus circumventing and denying the legitimacy and binding character, of the democratic process...

...Finally, Professor Lewy's conception of pacifism is a minority tradition in the American peace community...

...Not one has taken up arms in the manner of the Reverends Camilo Torres in Colombia or Gasper Garcia Laviana in Nicaragua...

...that civil disobedience on behalf of the oppressed also has deep roots...

...With few exceptions, according to Lewy, pacifists resolved this tension by uncritically supporting third-world revolution...

...He contends that to oppose United States military aid to the current government of El Salvador is sfthply to support Marxist-Leninfet revolution...

...Finally, in Lewy's telling of the story, pacifists have adopted the "nonexclusion" policy of other protest organizations of the period so that they have become "an integral part of the New Left," or worse, "assumed the posture of Communist fellow travelers...

...and that for some, there is common motivation in resisting the military commands of the state and resisting the institutionalized violence of economic and class repression...

...I said that I thought the Tribunal should be open to evidence of crimes by any combatant in Vietnam...

...Lewy cannot logically criticize thoste who remain personal pacifists but wdrk in tension with, yet in the context of, a larger movement that uses violence...

...Everyone who lived through these struggles will share certain of Professor Lewy's concerns...

...Stanghton Lynd This book surveys the intellectual development of the American peace movement since 1965...

...do not operate in the most backward countries," that the Duarte government in El Salvador is self-evidently preferable to the "repressive Communist regime" in Nicaragua, arfd so on...

...He would have pacifists give to God what is God's (by refusing to bear arms) and to Caesar what is Caesar's (by declining to obstruct the decisions of the national government...

...Thus he praises what he believes to be the orientation of American pacifism before the 1960s, when (so Lewy thinks) "[wlhile personally unwilling to bear arms, American pacifists respected the democratic process and did not attempt to prevent their fellow citizens from fulfilling their patriotic duties...

...Others, like the Quakers, for the most part do not...

...They aided fugitive slaves although the Fugitive Slave Act was properly passed by Congress...

...I am especially drawn to his insistence that the same ethical standards should be applied to all sides in a social conflict...

...His difference with the third-world bias of long-time pacifists David Dellingeror David McReynolils is a question of political judgment...

...He finds that all four organizations have abandoned a pacifist witness...

...They advocated unconditional United States withdrawal from Vietnam although aware that this was "a sure recipe for an NFL victory...

...Similarly they have tried to stop military intervention in El Salvador and Nicaragua...

...More particularly, Lewy concludes that during and after the Vietnam war American pacifists experienced a conflict of loyalties between the ideal of nonviolence and an aspiration to liberate the exploited' and oppressed...

...My interlocutor responded, "Anything is justified that drives the American aggressor into the sea...

...These assumptions can charitably be termed un-proven...

...While wishing to be good citizens and prizing American democracy, many pacifists have also believed that there were things more important than this nation's survival, as Thoreau did when he wrote, "[t]his people must cease to hold slaves, and to make war on Mexico, though it cost them their existence as people.'' I ask Professor Lewy and those influenced by his book to recognize that the pacifism he praises is only one variant of pacifism...

...Such simplistic judgments are urged more and more stridently in the closing chapters of the book...

...Yet Archbishop Romero passionately opposed such aid on the ground mat it hindered self-determination, pleading with President Carter that to send arms and military advisers "will undoubtedly sharpen the injustice and the repression inflicted on the organized people...

...Professor Lewy reviews the changing policy positions of the American Friends Service Committee, the Fellowship of Reconciliation, the War Resisters League, and the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom...

...In the spring of 1966, a young man representing Bertrand Russell's War Crimes Tribunal asked me to become a part of that body...

...He believes that we should work within the framework of a larger movement that uses violence, but the movement he wants us to be part of is the governmental process of the United States...

...They include Professor Lewy's beliefs that "contact with the West has been the prime agent of material progress in the third world,'' that" [multinational corporations...

...He praises El Salvador because there are fewer death squad killings but does not mention that Nicaragua has abolished the death penalty...

...For example, I said, if evidence were forthcoming that the NFL tortured unarmed prisoners, surely that should be characterized as a "crime...