"To the old militarist taunt hurled against the pacifist: ‘Would you use force to prevent the rape of your sister?’ the proper retort is: ‘Would you rape your sister if ordered to do so by your commanding officer?’"
"We’ve had enough of these politicians’ wars. What we need right now is love."
War Is Not Peace
That heading could be elaborated on ad infinitum. It’s pitiful I feel it must be elaborated on. It seems many, especially on the modern “Right,” of which the higher-ups of the modern “Left” are found, don’t seem to understand.
Rather than going on an extensive rant as to the reasons I’m compelled to make that statement, I’ll just reiterate some talking points that I won’t write on today:
- War does not bring economic prosperity
- War does not stabilize regions
- War does not assist in leveling the societal hierarchies
- War does not advance the efforts for peace
“A good end cannot sanctify evil means” —William Penn
Name me a good war; and I’ll name you innocents who became victims. Violence breeds violence as peace breeds peace. You can look at it from a macro perspective trying to find a Pareto Optimum—but you’ll never find one. But regardless of how blatantly obvious these facts seem, we are all continuously victims of wars by the hierarchical society we “live” in.
When kids’ coloring books have images detailing murder in front of family at the hands of soldiers, you should know we live in a screwed up world. Xenophobia reigns supreme in this Islamophobic children’s book ($6.99).
Indoctrination? It certainly appears to be.
This is a pretty dang good speech. I seriously recommend you all to read it.
I tried hard to be proud of my service; but all I could feel was shame. And racism could no longer mask the reality of the occupation. These were people; these were human beings.
I’ve since been plagued by guilt anytime I see an elderly man, like the one who couldn’t walk, who he rolled onto his stretcher and told the Iraqi police to take him away. I feel guilt anytime I see a mother with her children, like the one who cried hysterically and screamed that we are worse than Sadam as we forced her from her home. I feel guilt anytime I see a young girl, like the one I grabbed by the arm and dragged into the street.
We were told we were fighting terrorists; the real terrorist was me—and the real terrorism is this occupation.
Racism within the military has long been an important tool to justify the destruction and occupation of another country. It’s long been used to justify the killing, subjugation and torture of another people. Racism is a vital weapon employed by this government. It is [a] more important weapon than a rifle, a tank, a bomber or a battle ship. It’s more destructive than an artillery shell, or a bunker buster or a tomahawk missile. All those weapons are created and owned by this government. They are harmless without people willing to use them.
Those who send us to war do not have to pull a trigger or allow the mortar round. They do not have to fight the war; they merely have to sell the war. They need a public who’s willing to send their soldiers into harm’s way. They need soldiers who are willing to kill and be killed without question. They can spend millions on a single bomb; but that bomb only becomes a weapon when the ranks in the military are willing to follow orders to use it. They can send every last soldier anywhere on earth; but there would only be war if the soldiers are willing to fight.
And the ruling class, the billionaires who profit from human suffering, care only about expanding their wealth, controlling the world economy. Understand that their power lies only in their ability to convince us that war, oppression and exploitation is in our interest. They understand that their wealth is dependent on their ability to convince the working class to die to control the market of another country. And convincing us to kill and die is based on their ability to make us think that we are somehow superior.
Soldiers, sailors, marines, airmen have nothing to gain from this occupation. The vast majority of the people living in the U.S. have nothing to gain from this occupation. In fact, not only do we have nothing to gain, but we suffer more because of it. We lose limbs, endure trauma, and give our lives. Our families have to watch flag-draped coffins lowered into the earth.
Millions in this country without healthcare, jobs, or access to education, must watch this government squander over 450 million dollars a day on this occupation. Poor and working people in this country are sent to kill poor and working people in another countries, to make the rich richer. And without racism, soldiers would realize that they have more in common with the Iraqi people than they do with the billionaires who send us to war.
I threw families onto the street in Iraq only to come home and find families thrown onto the street in this country. And it’s tragic and unnecessary for a closure crisis. I mean: to wake up and realize that our real enemies are not in some distant land. … They’re not people whose names we don’t know and cultures we don’t understand. The enemy is people we know very well and people we can identify. The enemy is a system that wages war when it’s profitable. The enemy is the CEOs who weigh us off from our jobs when it’s profitable. It’s the insurance companies who deny us healthcare when it’s profitable. It’s the banks who take away our homes when it’s profitable.
Our enemy is not 5,000 miles away; they are right here at home. And if we organize and fight with our sisters and brothers, we can stop this war, we can stop this government, and we can create a better world.
—Mike Prysner
I don’t agree with it in its entirety; wait … yes, I pretty much do. If you have any questions concerning the reasons why, feel free to ask.
Individualism, and its economic corollary, laissez-faire liberalism, has not always taken on a conservative hue, has not always functioned, as it often does today, as an apologist for the status quo. On the contrary, the revolution of modern times was originally, and continued for a long time to be, laissez-faire individualist. Its purpose was to free the individual person from the restrictions and the shackles, the encrusted caste privileges and exploitative wars, of the feudal and mercantilist orders, of the Tory ancien régime.
Tom Paine, Thomas Jefferson, the militants in the American Revolution, the Jacksonian movement, Emerson and Thoreau, William Lloyd Garrison and the radical abolitionists — all were basically laissez-faire individualists who carried on the age-old battle for liberty and against all forms of State privilege. And so were the French revolutionaries — not only the Girondins, but even the much-abused Jacobins, who were obliged to defend the Revolution against the massed crowned heads of Europe. All were roughly in the same camp. The individualist heritage, indeed, goes back to the first modern radicals of the 17th century — to the Levellers in England, and to Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson in the American colonies.
For imperial powers, every war is supposed to be the geopolitical equivalent of a homecoming game: The opponents are carefully selected to guarantee that the “good guys” not only win, but run up the score and pad their individual statistics.
The biggest difference, of course, is that such “homecoming games” are always fought on the other country’s home turf. But the point, as Captain Blackadder acknowledged just before going “over the top” to be pitilessly cut apart by German machine guns, is that imperial warfare is a lot of fun until the Empire’s soldiers are thrown into combat against people who know how to fight back.
Barely a century passed between America’s War of Independence and the emergence of an imperial ruling caste in Washington. Even before the 1890 Massacre at Wounded Knee (for which twenty soldiers were awarded Medals of Honor for gallantry of the type displayed by Captain Blackadder’s African regiment) heralded the fulfillment of Manifest Destiny, powerful and ambitious figures were seeking to build an overseas American Empire.
One of the first lands to fall beneath this esurient gaze was the Kingdom of Hawaii, which was already under the rule of a corporatist sugar plantation clique. In 1887, that clique, with the full support of Washington, blessed the Islands with a constitution that thoughtfully removed from the native Hawaiians the burden of self-government.
—William Grigg
Iraqi boy, Ayad Brissam Karim, shows a picture of himself taken before his “accident.” US helicopters attacked the vegetable field where he played, leaving him blind and with burns to his face. Photo by Mauricio Lima
(Source: arsvitaest, via soupsoup)
"Obama is now engaged in two illegal wars - in Libya and in Yemen. There was no Congressional debate or vote on these wars - and one is being waged by the CIA with unmanned drones. I think we have learned a little about what happens when you give the CIA carte blanche to run a war with no accountability except to a president who has a vested interest in covering up errors."
— Andrew Sullivan (via azspot)
(via jonathan-cunningham)
Glenn Greenwald dug through wikileaks to discover that Ghadafi has been demanding ever tougher terms from U.S. oil companies, threatening their investments and annoying U.S. officials, and that this happened prior to U.S. intervention. That’s why Obama went into Libya but ignores all other oppression in the region. And so he concludes: “The very idea that the U.S. Government woke up one day and suddenly decided that it can no longer abide a leader who mistreats his own people — and that’s why we went to Libya — is so ludicrous that it’s actually painful to hear that people believe that.”
It is for reasons such as this that Marxists tend to regard the government and its foreign policy not as something separate and distinct from the private sector but merely an extension of it: corporatism with a fist. This is reckless theory (big business seeks favors and government seeks money and power, and thus does the codependency between them develop) but it is not entirely crazy. In some ways, the Marxists make more sense that the civics textbooks.
"There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people."
— Howard Zinn
(Source: anarchyagogo, via libertarians)
