Is Absence of War the same as Peace

This a key and fundamental question that must be answered in our political debate in this country. Many on the left make a living out of charging GW Bush with rushing to war, misleading us into war etc.. Now this week, many (but not all) of the same people are charging Israel with disproportionate response to the terrorism of Hezbollah.

The war in Iraq are very different, but in the context of what I asked, they are the same. Before we invaded Iraq we did not have an active armed combat with them. Were we at peace with them? Daily their anti aircraft weapons fired on our planes as they patrolled the no-fly zone (set up as a consequence of their intrusion into Kuwait). Our role was defined in the treaty they signed to end the first Iraq war.

In the nineties Saddam Hussein ordered a hit on a former President of the US. On a regular basis Hussein paid bounty to survivors of suicide bombers that attacked Israel. Israel is a key ally of the US. None of these things sound like characteristic of two nations at peace.

Now for Israel, until recently there were not declared or even active military endeavors against Hezbollah. There were of course intelligence operations. There were intelligence operations, because members of Hezbollah regularly engaged in terrorist acts against the innocent civilians of Israel. Again this does not sound like peace.

During the period of the cold war, at no time were we at war with the Soviet Union. We fought against their equipment, their satellites, their ideology, but never them as a nation. We helped the Afghans fight against them. They helped Viet Nam fight against us. Once again not peace.

What all of these examples bring together is an idea. The idea is that peace is not a state of being in geopolitical matters. Peace is a state that people of nations choose to proactive with each other. It is and has always been true that free societies do not go to war with each other. They may disagree, they may debate in the UN, they may even attempt to destroy each other economically at times. They simply do not go to war. The reason is simple, when people have the freedom to determine their own destiny, even in the limited scope that some modern nations allow it, they simply will not allow their leaders to go to war without good reason. Terrorist, and dictator nations, do not have to be accountable to anyone, so act according to what is good for their own interests. The bumper sticker that says "Freedom is not free" is very applicable to me. Are we still willing to do the hard things that freedom requires? I hope so.