Consider this a friendly reminder to President Obama on his way to Hiroshima.

No matter how many years one writes books, does interviews, publishes columns, and speaks at events, it remains virtually impossible to make it out the door of an event in the United States at which you've advocated abolishing war without somebody hitting you with the what-about-the-good-war question.

Of course this belief that there was a good war 75 years ago is what moves the U.S. public to tolerate dumping a trillion dollars a year into preparing in case there's a good war next year, even in the face of so many dozens of wars during the past 70 years on which there's general consensus that they were not good. Without rich, well-established myths about World War II, current propaganda about Russia or Syria or Iraq would sound as crazy to most people as it sounds to me.

And of course the funding generated by the Good War legend leads to more bad wars, rather than preventing them.

The New York Times recently claimed, and peace advocates repeated, that President Barack Obama will be the first U.S. president to have been at war for two complete four-year terms. It's also become common to refer to the current U.S. war on Afghanistan as the longest U.S. war ever. These ideas fit well with the universal activist demand that we return to the time of peace or the age of justice or the wisdom of the Founding Fathers or the era before superdelegates.

This is all based on a fundamental misunderstanding of history, and of its uses and abuses for life. You cannot "take back our country!" because you never had it. There is no age of peace or justice to be returned to. The United States has been at war since before it was a United States, and formed itself as such in part in order to expand its western wars.

BANGKOK, Thailand -- Coup-installed junta leader Prayuth Chan-ocha
said he does "not violate any human rights" because he is not using
violence to enforce his edicts including a new crackdown against
anti-regime jokes, political comments on Facebook, and subversive
graphic T-shirts.
   After twice meeting President Obama during trips to California and
Washington DC this year, Prime Minister Prayuth shrugs off U.S. and
international criticism of his regime but promises to enforce his
absolute power without brutality.
   "Exercising my power must not violate any human rights. By
'violate,' I mean using violence," the coup leader said on May 3.
   "We never touched them at all, because we have always been careful."
   Mr. Prayuth was describing his junta's treatment during the past
two years against dozens of political dissidents who suffered arrests,
week-long "attitude adjustment" detentions in military camps, and
longer imprisonment for civilians convicted in Bangkok's Military
Court.