Evil Pacifists? (Editor's Note).

The casualties mount. B-52s are back in the carpet-bombing business, and the United States is littering Afghanistan with unexploded cluster bombs that await the lethal curiosity of Afghan children. Hospitals, nursing homes, villages, and the Red Cross (twice) fall victim to the U.S. aerial assault. The Taliban say the bombing has killed 1,500 civilians. The Pentagon says that number is exaggerated. But no matter the exact figures, war is taking its customary toll.

CNN believes it's unpatriotic to report these details without reminding viewers of the horrific casualties of September 11. "We must redouble our efforts to make sure we do not seem to be simply reporting from their vantage or perspective," CNN chairman Walter Isaacson said in a memo to his staff. Sure enough, one night when I went to CNN.com, I read a dispatch by Nic Robertson in Kandahar, who was writing about civilian casualties, and there was an editor's note at the end that tried to make those casualties seem justified.

Here at The Progressive, we do not believe it is our job to minimize the deaths of any innocent people, whether they are in the World Trade Center towers or in a home in Kandahar. But these days, that view is considered downright unpatriotic.

Commentators have declared open season on pacifists and other peace activists. Michael Kelly, a columnist for The Washington Post, was the most vituperative. "Pacifists are not serious people," he wrote on September 26. "In a situation where one's nation has been attacked--a situation such as we are now in--pacifism is, inescapably and profoundly, immoral. Indeed, in the case of this specific situation, pacifism is on the side of the murderers, and it's on the side of letting them murder again." (In case you missed his point, he also, in his last line, called the pacifist position "evil." Then he returned a week later to heap more scorn, calling pacifists "Liars. Frauds. Hypocrites.")

Kelly was not alone. Scott Simon of NPR, a Quaker, took to the pages of The Wall Street Journal to disclose the "fatal flaw" of pacifism: "All the best people can be killed by all the worst ones." Some progressives have echoed this critique. So it was with relief and anticipation that I read an e-mail from Howard Zinn saying he wanted to write about pacifism and "just wars." What he delivered is one of the most important essays we've published in a long, long time.

We're also pleased to be publishing a shortened version of a powerful essay by the Indian novelist and activist Arundhati Roy. According to The New York Times, several U.S. magazines rejected the essay. Not us. Her writing is powerful, her perspective valuable. And she makes a crucial point when she assails the crude Bushism that you're either with the U.S. war effort or you're with the terrorists. (Whenever you come across an either/or, it's a good idea to balk.)

As soon as the Bush Administration began its assault on civil liberties, we thought of Nat Hentoff. A champion of the Bill of Rights, Hentoff writes for the Village Voice and many other outlets. If you've been with us for a while, you may remember his quarterly column called "Who's on First?" We're honored to have him back in our pages.

Managing Editor Anne-Marie Cusac takes the story another step. She shows how Attorney General John Ashcroft is singling out leftwing prisoners like Philip Berrigan for harsh treatment, along the way denying their Sixth Amendment right to counsel.

It's a chilling story in a chilling time.