Destroying the “peace-loving” challenge to warfare

Anti-war people love to point out that most Iraqis are peace-loving, or that most Muslims are peace-loving. I’m sure they’re right. Walter Williams, however, points to the fallacy in this line of argument when you are a country under attack from the non-peace loving elements in a given community:

Horrible acts can be committed in countries where most of the people are peace-loving and simply want to be left alone to attend to their affairs. I imagine that described most of the people in the former Soviet Union. However, that did not stop the killing of an estimated 62 million people between 1917 and 1987.

The same can be said of the Chinese people, but it didn’t stop the killing of 35 million of their countrymen during MaoTse-tung’s reign.

Whether most people of a country are peace-loving or not is not nearly as important as who is calling the shots.

His other examples of aggressors calling the shots in otherwise peace loving countries are Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan (and just think of the Rape of Nanking if you’re otherwise okay with the Japanese attacks on the US and the entire Malaysian peninsula).  It’s a good article and deserves to be read, here.