Some of my earliest memories of global events include the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the first Gulf War, Operation Desert Storm in 1990. I remember how terrified I was to watch the images of missiles against the dark Middle Eastern sky, my seven-year-old brain unable to comprehend what this war meant.
Just 11 years later, I would come to understand, after I watched the 9/11 terror attacks unfold live on television, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that followed, and I say that as someone who changed her mind on the 2003 Iraq war.
Whenever possible, conflicts should be settled with diplomacy and negotiation, with an eye towards peace. But such actions only work when both parties are acting in good faith.
And a cursory glance through the history books shows that diplomacy doesn't always work. Neville Chamberlain tried this with the Nazis in 1938, when the Munich Agreement sacrificed Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland for "peace for our time."
How'd that work out? Hitler marched on Europe anyway.
That's why calls to peace and diplomacy, like those from Pope Leo, ring so hollow today.
I understand that a pope wants peace, but the Catholic Church has adopted a naive and heartless pacifism which allows ppl to remain oppressed with no recourse and no defenders.
— Jackie Chea ⚖️ (@Fair_and_Biased) March 2, 2026
It demands “dialogue” with an oppressor who vows never to yield while the people suffer. pic.twitter.com/PpSbj3s4DV
The Iranian regime has made it very clear from 1979: America is the enemy, they want to wipe Israel off the map, and they've oppressed and killed tens of thousands of Iranians.
Throughout the last 47 years, Iran — through their proxies Hezbollah and Hamas — killed Americans, including 241 Marines in Beirut. In 1995, a car bomb in Riyadh killed five Americans. In 1996, 19 members of the U.S. Air Force wre killed in the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia. In 1998, the U.S. Embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania were bombed, killing more than 220 people.
In 2000, 17 sailors were killed when the U.S.S. Cole was bombed.
Iran, like countless regimes before it, is evil. There is no other word to describe it. You do not negotiate with evil. You destroy it.
As I have said multiple times, both online and off, when the push for peace becomes radical pacifism, it is no different than being indiscriminately violent.
Both ideologies show an utter disregard for human life; the violence, because that's what violence does. It kills, it maims, it destroys. But radical pacifism also kills, maims, and destroys because it refuses to fight to protect innocent life from evil. Radical pacifism says, "My ideology is more important than the life of innocents."
What does that leave? It leaves a world run by evil, where peace can never exist.
Sometimes, peace is gained through sheer force.
I remember a bunch of Leftists walking around with signs and slapping bumper stickers on their cars that read, "War is not the answer."
My response then, and now, is "It depends on the question."