Anti-War

I didn’t know until recently that Smedley Butler had ever been to my town. Then I heard that he’d spoken at the University of Virginia here in Charlottesville in 1937. The University of Virginia had the speech tucked away in its stacks and was kind enough to dig it out. It’s pasted below.

If you haven’t heard of Smedley Butler and don’t know why he’s a major hero to Veterans for Peace and peace advocates in general (as well as having been a Major General), I can try to summarize his incredible life in a few sentences. The man ought to be a hero to opponents of fascist marches, which, by the way, have also come to Charlottesville.

“. . . and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.”

These lost words — Isaiah 2:4 — are nearly 3,000 years old. Did they ever have political traction? To believe them today, and act on them, is to wind up facing 25 years in prison. This is how far we haven’t come over the course of what is called “civilization.”

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, September 10, 2019

Limerick, Ireland, now has billboards up at Clare Street, John Street, John Street in Waterford, and Dublin Road in Singland. The billboards are part of the promotion of an upcoming global antiwar conference and rally. They’re also part of a global campaign by World BEYOND War to spread peace and antiwar messages everywhere. Here are images:

Of course, we use other means of promotion, such as bulletin boards, too:

Remarks in Poulsbo, Washington, August 4, 2019

This week, 74 years ago, the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were each hit with a single nuclear bomb that had the power of a third to a half of what NPR calls a low-yield or “usable” weapon. By NPR I mean both the Nuclear Posture Review and National Public Radio, both the U.S. government and what many people dangerously think of as a free press. These so-called usable nukes are for firing from the submarines based nearby here. They are two to three times the size of what destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the U.S. military’s plans involve using multiple nukes at once. But they really are tiny compared to other nuclear weapons that the United States and other nations have ready just in case some unfortunate scenario makes completely annihilating ours and other species the wisest course of action. Some U.S. nukes are 1,000 times what was used to vaporize Japanese populations. Each submarine can launch 5,000 times what was dropped on Hiroshima.

Congratulations to us! Talk about the art of the deal! Whether we know it or not, in the wake of those presidential Fourth of July festivities on the Washington Mall (“the biggest ever fireworks”), we’re all Saudis now. And here’s the good news: it only cost the Pentagon $1.2 million extra -- which, in the twenty-first century, is military chump change -- for those spectacular fly-overs, the uniformed personnel gathered in the rain, and the otherwise largely useless tanks hovering here and there in Washington.

I want Tulsi Gabbard in the Democratic Presidential debates because she speaks out against wars. She raises the topic unasked. She wants various wars ended or not launched. She wants impeachment made automatic for presidents who launch wars. What’s not to love?

I also want Mike Gravel included for the same reason. If anything, he’s even better than Gabbard. But Gravel openly says he doesn’t want to be elected; he just wants to improve the debates. I wish Gabbard would say the same thing. Here’s why.

February 15, 2003, saw the biggest public demonstration in world history. It was against the obvious lies being used to launch a war against Iraq. Whistleblower Katharine Gun risked her freedom to expose the war in March 2003. The United Nations refused to support the war, and its Secretary General joined many world governments in denouncing the war as a fraud and a crime.

The latest U.S. House of Representatives version of the National Defense Authorization Act, which is beyond global in scope and not the least bit defensive, offended Donald Trump’s desire for limitless power and spending in dozens of ways detailed by the people he employs to write things longer than tweets — and that was before it was amended. And the amendments are shockingly good.

By “the Obama wars” I don’t mean some overgrown infants on television screaming racist insults or pretending that opposing racism requires cheering for Obama.

I mean: the widespread indiscriminate murder of human beings with missiles — many of them from robot airplanes — let loose to threaten any non-white country on earth by Obama and expanded by Trump. I mean the catastrophic destruction of Libya — still continued by Trump. I mean the war on Afghanistan, the vast bulk of which was overseen by Obama, though Bush and Trump have had minor roles. I mean the assault on Yemen, begun by Obama and escalated by Trump. I mean the war on Iraq and Syria escalated first by Obama and then by Trump (following the de-escalation locked in place by Bush though Obama fought it tooth-and-nail).

On June 5, 16 heads of Jewish organizations joined 25 Democratic senators in a private meeting, which, according to the Times of Israel, is an annual event. All of the Jewish organizations but one were openly declared advocates for Israel and are supportive of its policies. Key groups present included the Council of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, the Anti-Defamation League, and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. A number of the groups have lobbied Congress and the White House in support of the use of force against Iran, a position that is basically identical to the demands being made by the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Ending bigotry has gone mainstream among the enlightened people of the developed world.

Did you spot the acceptable bigotry in that sentence?

We’re against racism, sexism, and more kinds of bigotry than I could ever list.

But the 96 percent of humanity that’s not within the United States is hardly worthy of concern.

Millions of lives in Yemen lack the value of one Washington Post reporter dismembered with a bone saw. A third of the United States would gladly murder a million innocent North Koreans, the pollsters tell us. Not a million handicapped Americans, not a million atheist Americans, not a million gay Americans. We’re above all that. A million North Koreans. Or a half million Iraqi children, judging by the respect still afforded to Madeleine Albright to this day.