Refusing to Get Political

A blogger I like who goes under the name Punkmonkey, had a great post yesterday, Refusing to Get Political about the differences between being anti-war and pro-peace:

i will stand on my faith and i will be willing to die for it, i am just very unwilling to kill for it. as we approach the 3rd anniversary of 9/11 i see more and more people claiming to be for peace, but in reality they simply are doing it for politics, and that is a place i can not go. living very close to the capitol of california i was asked if i wanted to partake in the rally on the capitol steps in support of peace. when i started to ask deeper questions i got answers i was not happy with - it seems that the "rally for peace" was more "anti-war" then "pro-peace"...

With the third anniversary of the 9/11 attacks maybe it's also a good time to link to our own post The Roots of Nonviolence from this spring:

We also need to broaden our definition of “nonviolence.” While we work with “anti-war” coalitions, we are not the same as them. We are not just against particular wars, but all wars and not just the ones fought with bullets between nation states. We are against the everyday wars of people oppressing other people through economics, sexism, racism, ageism and a thousand other mechanisms.

As we enter the last stages of the U.S. Presidential race we'll be confronted ever more with a politicized notion of anti-war activism, even though both candidates have actively supported the war against iraq. As believers in deep nonviolence we will have to remember that our pacifist work will need to encompass much more than electoral politics.