Fighting for Freedom

Freedom and liberty are "fighting words" to lots of people. The idea of fighting for peace seems like a contradiction in terms, but it is something in which I believe. Our own liberty as a colony of England came at the price of the bloodshed of the Revolutionary war. But peace came when British troops left America. Two world wars killed brave Americans and millions more in Europe and Asia in order to save democracies from the aggressive war-making regimes in Germany and Japan. Peace treaties were eventually signed. People died during the Cold War in a struggle to liberate themselves from the oppression of the Soviet Union. The wall came down, mostly peacefully. Peace came at a very high price for the Soviets. What emerged was a much smaller and chastened Russia, plus a whole group of smaller and (mostly) peaceful countries, with the eventual exception of the Balkans.
I object! Two comments on my EU post yesterday got me to thinking about the idea of freedom, and when it is worth fighting for - or dying for. The first writer objects to Mr. Bush's invasion of Iraq; the second objects to the whole idea of the European Union..
"peaceloving People in Europe" - A reader from a former Soviet Union country in central Europe wrote in halting English with an objection to my apparent endorsement of Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel. This reader is an antiwar protestor, marching in the blogosphere. I quote,

As she was not Chacellor wanted Mrs Merkel help GW Bush to invade Irak. Mrs Merkel is a bad European Politician. She doenst represent the 80 percents of peaceloving People in Europe.

"Anti-democratic, anti-Freedom, anti-American" - A reader from the United Kingdom, wrote a more fulsome critical comment about Merkel, the new president on the European Union. This reader wants nothing now for the EU that resembles the old repressive Soviet Union. To quote,

What is the current news from our friends in the European Union?"
Let me tell you.
Mrs Merkel is calling for the forced imposition of a European Constitution on the peoples of Europe which threatens to remove the independence and freedoms of the nation states of Europe. This.. despite it having been soundly rejected by the people of Europe.
Do not be fooled. Mrs Merkel is no friend of the United States and no friend of the peoples of Europe.
The EU is anti-democratic, anti-Freedom, and very very anti-American.
The over-regulated, over bureacratised, un-elected and provably corrupt EU should be consigned to the dustbin of history along woth the Soviet Union on which it was modelled!

"Bring our Troops Home" is the banner - In protests marchers demanded that the current administration change course in Iraq. They believe that the invasion was wrong and that it is now wrong to continue losing the lives of U.S. soldiers and Marines in an Iraqi civil war. Many believe our widespread presence there makes it worse for the country, keeping the warring parties from having to make peace with each other on their own. The peace rallies in Washington D.C. and Los Angeles are, in a strange way, calls for freedom and liberty for the people of Iraq as well as peace for us. Quoting from a USA Today story,

Convinced this is their moment, tens of thousands marched Saturday in an anti-war demonstration linking military families, ordinary people and an icon of the Vietnam protest movement in a spirited call to get out of Iraq.
Celebrities, a half-dozen lawmakers and protesters from distant states rallied in the capital under a sunny sky, seizing an opportunity to press their cause with a Congress restive on the war and a country that has turned against the conflict.
Marching with them was Jane Fonda, in what she said was her first anti-war demonstration in 34 years.

My banner - If I were physically able, I would join the marchers. As it is, I march across my laptop's keyboard, post after post, in a plea for peace.

Technorati tags: bush middle-east war news news and politics european union peace
My "creative post" today at Southwest Blogger is about Mars.