Concerns Rise That Peace Is Not on Table

First one tower, then its twin. When a third hijacked plane dived into the Pentagon, Mary Ellen McNish, the leader of one of the nation’s oldest peace groups, slumped forward onto her desk in her Philadelphia office.

“This means war,” she told herself, cradling her head in her hands. “I just knew that was going to be the response.”

Many signs indicate that McNish, general secretary of the 84-year-old American Friends Service Committee, may be right. Talk shows trumpet the righteousness of retaliation. Opinion surveys find heavy support for military action. And even dovish lawmakers are clamoring for blood.

As clouds of war gather, pacifists from coast to coast are desperately preaching peace, hoping to stop any violence before the United States rains death on whomever it deems responsible.

“An eye for an eye makes everyone blind,” warned Felicity Hill, the director of the United Nations office of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, an 86-year-old social justice group. “That’s what Gandhi said.”

But hate mail is already trickling into Hill’s in-box. Calls for vengeance pour from the pages of mainstream publications. Patriotic fury has seemingly overcome restraint.

A Los Angeles Times Poll that surveyed 1,561 adults nationwide Thursday and Friday found that more than eight in 10 said they would favor a military strike against Afghanistan if the ruling Taliban is found to be harboring Osama bin Laden. That sentiment held even if innocent Afghanis would be killed.

Peace advocates say they understand feelings of helplessness, anguish and outrage after the worst terrorist attack in American history. They feel that way too, and agree something must be done.

But not violence. Peace groups strongly condemn terrorism and support punishment within the bloodless bounds of international law.

“We urge that those responsible for these heinous crimes be brought to justice in courts of law or before an international tribunal,” said a statement by the Hague Appeal for Peace, an international group with offices in New York and Geneva that seeks to abolish war.

Just two months ago, peace was looking more palatable. Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich (D-Ohio) and 37 co-sponsors introduced a bill to establish a Cabinet-level department of peace, with a secretary appointed by the president.

On Friday, the Senate unanimously approved a sweeping resolution authorizing President Bush to “use all necessary and appropriate force” to avenge the attacks.

“Everyone has just crumbled,” said Mary Lord, a Washington-based lobbyist for the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker group.

Senators who ordinarily could be counted on to support arms control and peaceful cooperation--such as Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), the new chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee--lined up to unleash the military’s might.

Biden declared this week: “We will seek [terrorists] out, find them, bring them to justice, and, if they resist, we will kill them.”

Both the Senate and House of Representatives voted to authorize the use of force. Although there were a few murmurs of objection from Kucinich and others, the House approved Friday’s resolution, 420 to 1. The sole dissenter was California’s Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Oakland).

Even many religious leaders who often ally themselves with peace groups are not doing so this time. A statement issued last week by prominent liberal members of the clergy called for “sober restraint” and said that retaliation should avoid “even more loss of innocent life” but did not counsel against a military response.

“This is America acting out its rage,” said David Robinson, executive director of Pax Christi USA, a Roman Catholic antiwar group. “We have to hold ourselves back, lest we ourselves become the barbarians who started this in the first place.”

Hoping to bring calm, peace activists nationwide have held prayer meetings and candlelight vigils. They have taken up collections to help victims and reminded their neighbors not to scapegoat Arab Americans. They’ve called President Bush and members of Congress, begging them not to go to war.

Peace activists warn that retaliation will create a bitter cycle of hatred that will be difficult to end.

“Often we counsel other nations that they need to stop and reflect,” Lord said. “We’ve said that to people in Northern Ireland and the Middle East, and now we have to say it to ourselves.”

Bill Warrick, a spokesman for the Gainesville, Fla., chapter of Veterans for Peace, said Americans need to put themselves in the shoes of their attackers.

“What we should do is get into the minds of the people who did it: Why do these Middle Easterners hate us so much?” said Warrick, an Army veteran who turned against violence during his service in the Vietnam War.

In Southern California, home to many of the passengers killed in Tuesday’s hijacked-plane attacks, the local Human Rights Watch office has been deluged with calls from people concerned that retaliation equals more dead civilians, albeit in another country.

“There’s this expectation that there will be a Hollywood-style military strike and we’ll be dropping missiles, and it will feel satisfying,” said Emma Cherniavsky, associate director of the branch office. “I find that a very terrifying image. That would mean losing more lives.”

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Times staff writer Caitlin Liu contributed to this report.