BRAD WOLF – The life, actions and words of Philip Berrigan show us ways to resist warmaking and expose the waste and fraud of the Pentagon.
Tag: Vietnam war
What If Soldiers Refused to Fight? It Has Happened Before.
ARNOLD J. OLIVER – An iconic song back in the 1960’s addressed the causes of war, and what leads young people to fight in them. Buffy Saint Marie’s Universal Soldier advised that we could end war if soldiers refused to fight. So what if we gave her idea a test this winter? Let’s suggest to the soldiers among the various warring parties from the Middle East to Europe to Africa and beyond that they refuse to kill each other for a while.
Bayard Rustin knew that winning required a team
GEORGE LAKEY – As the new ‘Rustin’ biopic shows, the great organizer of the 1963 March on Washington was always working to join more people together in the struggle for greater justice and peace.
A Highway to Peace or a Highway to Hell?
WILLIAM J. ASTORE – Together, it’s time to find an exit ramp from the wars and weaponry highway to hell that we’ve been on since 1953 and look for the on-ramp to President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s highway to peace.
Dan Ellsberg – A Profound Voice Against the Doomsday Machine
DANIEL ELLSBERG – Can we simply ignore the reality of the world’s largest nuclear arsenals on hair-trigger alert — amid escalation of a new cold war with heightened nuclear dangers? We ignore this impending disaster and its impassioned opponent, Daniel Ellsberg, at our own peril.Indeed, the U.S. just enacted its biggest military budget in history, with unprecedented investment in weapons of mass destruction and their deployment.
Unity in the community, or, how I learned to get along with my enemies
TOM H. HASTINGS – Hate only feeds more hate, more destruction, more violence, more useless continuation of wreckage. Unless some people simply stop, however unilaterally that might be, the hate will never vanish. It may go under some rock when social norms force it there, but it is like a peat bog fire just waiting under the surface, for years sometimes, before conditions allow it to erupt into a raging wildfire. How? How to drop the hate?
Hold the Generals Accountable This Time
RAY MCGOVERN – There must be accountability for Afghanistan. The more so since generals and admirals, active duty and retired, are going off half-cocked. Some of them, like Admiral Charles Richards, head of US Strategic Command, are saying nuclear war is possible. Earlier this year Richards wrote that the US must shift from a principal assumption that nuclear weapons’ use is nearly impossible to “nuclear employment is a very real possibility.” And retired Adm. James Stavridis, former commander of NATO, is already talking about war with China “perhaps ten years from now.” Accountability and effective civilian control of such general officers can prevent the next March of Folly.
Biden Acknowledges “Over the Horizon” Air Attacks Planned Against Taliban
NICK MOTTERN – On July 2, fleeing questions from reporters about U.S. plans in Afghanistan, President Joe Biden sought refuge behind the July 4th Independence Day holiday, yet obliquely acknowledged that the U.S. will use some level of “over the horizon†air attacks to prevent the Taliban from taking power, attacks that will include drones and manned aircraft, possibly even B-52s.
50 Years Ago, the Pentagon Papers’ Success Hinged on a Personal Conversion to Nonviolence
ROBERT LEVERING – Without the friendships he forged in the antiwar movement, Daniel Ellsberg might not have found the courage and support he needed to help end the Vietnam War.
Don’t Let President Biden ‘Make Us the Dupes of Our Hopes’
NORMAN SOLOMON – The best way to not become disillusioned is to not have illusions in the first place. And the best way to win economic and social justice is to keep organizing and keep pushing. What can happen during the Biden presidency is up for grabs.
Progressives Made Trump’s Defeat Possible. Now It’s Time to Challenge Biden and Other Corporate Democrats.
NORMAN SOLOMON – The evident defeat of Donald Trump would not have been possible without the grassroots activism and hard work of countless progressives. Now, on vital issues — climate, healthcare, income inequality, militarism, the prison-industrial complex, corporate power and so much more — it’s time to engage with the battle that must happen inside the Democratic Party.
After 4 Decades of Plowshares Actions, It’s Nuclear Warfare That Should Be On Trial – Not Activists
FRIDA BERRIGAN – Forty years ago, the Plowshares Eight sparked a movement of nuclear disarmers that continues to take responsibility for weapons of mass destruction.
As We Focus on Racism, Don’t Forget MLK’s Two Other “Giant Triplets”
ANDREW BACEVICH – The nation’s current preoccupation with race, as honorable and necessary as it may be, falls well short of adequately responding to the situation confronting Americans as they enter the third decade of the twenty-first century. Racism is a massive problem, but hardly our only one. Indeed, as Martin Luther King sought to remind us many years ago, there are at least two others of comparable magnitude.
COVID-19 is a True Terrorist but the National Security State is Helpless and Useless
ANDREW BACEVICH – Deferred for far too long, Judgment Day may at long last have arrived for the national security state.
American Exceptionalism Is Killing The Planet
WILLIAM J. ASTORE – Ever since 2007, when I first started writing for TomDispatch, I’ve been arguing against America’s forever wars, whether in Afghanistan, Iraq, or elsewhere. Unfortunately, it’s no surprise that, despite my more than 60 articles, American blood is still being spilled in war after war across the Greater Middle East and Africa, even as foreign peoples pay a far higher price in lives lost and cities ruined. And I keep asking myself: Why, in this century, is the distinctive feature of America’s wars that they never end? Why do our leaders persist in such repetitive folly and the seemingly eternal disasters that go with it?
The Antiwar Movement No One Can See
ALLEGRA HARPOOTLIAN – What if there’s an antiwar movement growing right under our noses and we just haven’t noticed? What if we don’t see it, in part, because it doesn’t look like any antiwar movement we’ve even imagined?
The Democrats Can Only Move Left
HARVEY WASSERMAN – The Democratic Party has nowhere to go but left. The faux mantra from bloviating experts, petulant pundits, and high-priced consultants has been droning on since the coming of Ronald Reagan: the Democrats must forever tack right to attract “swing†conservatives in the “mainstream middle†between the two parties. But in the Age of Trump, such voters are all but extinct. The middle ground has cratered. The swing constituency (if it ever existed) has disappeared into the abyss. What matters now is excitement, commitment, clarity, and REAL CHANGE … none of which can come with a corporate/compromised agenda.
Bernie Sander’s New Internationalist Vision
MEAGAN DAY – Right-wing populism is advancing across the world. Bernie Sanders wants to fight back.
15 Actions That Can Shut Down Trump’s Assault on Immigrant Families
ARUN GUPTA – Thwarting Donald Trump’s war on immigrants and dismantling the vast deportation machine is possible. It won’t be easy, but it has to be done.
How to Build a Progressive Movement in a Polarized Country
GEORGE LAKEY – Many assume that polarization is a barrier to making change. They observe more shouting and less listening, more drama and less reflection, and an escalation at the extremes. They note that mass media journalists have less time to cover the range of activist initiatives, which are therefore drowned out by the shouting. From coast to coast activists asked me: Does this condition leave us stuck? My answer included both good news and bad news. Most people wanted the latter first.
Look Deeper Than the Latest Shooting
ROBERT C. KOEHLER – There’s a bigger problem embedded in the social order than our lack of effective gun laws, and I hope the movement that emerges out of the Parkland massacre makes the leap beyond anger and single-issue politics. The nation’s weak gun laws — the easy availability of AR-15 assault rifles — are, in fact, a symptom of the general cheapening of human life in American society, which is reflected in the nation’s ever-expanding obsession with war and a military budget the size of Godzilla. War always has a way of coming home.
The Real Story Behind Katharine Graham and “The Postâ€
NORMAN SOLOMON – Movie critics are already hailing “The Post,†directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Meryl Streep as Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham. Millions of people will see the film in early winter. But the real-life political story of Graham and her newspaper is not a narrative that’s headed to the multiplexes.
Our Enemy is Our Weapons
WINSLOW MYERS – It is long past time for us to recognize that the greater enemy is not someone in another country shouting threats, but the weapons themselves. On the basis of this shared truth, new relationships among adversaries can flourish that will allow reciprocal reduction and elimination. Nature within her inmost self divides, and science has unleashed this process on earth as the mighty power of fission, setting before us life or death choices. It is not too late to restrain the rise of the machines we ourselves have created, and choose life.
What It Takes to Change Hearts and Minds
COLIN BEAVAN – Some years ago, the communications psychologist John Marshall Roberts said at a talk I attended that there are three ways of converting people to a cause: by threat of force, by intellectual argument, and by inspiration. The most effective of these methods, Roberts said, is aligning communication about your cause with the most deeply-held values and aspirations of your friends, relatives, neighbors, and fellow citizens. To get people’s total, lasting, and unwavering support, in other words, we should try neither to cajole them judgmentally nor convince them forcefully. We should inspire them toward a vision that they—not we—can really care about.
North Korea’s New Weapons: Full Speed Ahead
MEL GURTOV – North Korea is on a military tear. How and when any of the weapons the North claims to have might actually be operational is open to speculation. What does seem clear is that Kim Jong-un is pressing his weapons specialists to produce a reliable deterrent that will force the issue of direct talks with the U.S.
Bacevich: National Security ‘Experts’ Are Bullshitting Us Into Another Quagmire
ANDREW J. BACEVICH – Policy intellectuals — eggheads presuming to instruct the mere mortals who actually run for office — are a blight on the republic. Like some invasive species, they infest present-day Washington, where their presence strangles common sense and has brought to the verge of extinction the simple ability to perceive reality. A benign appearance — well-dressed types testifying before Congress, pontificating in print and on TV, or even filling key positions in the executive branch — belies a malign impact. They are like Asian carp let loose in the Great Lakes.
Unparalleled Failure
TOM ENGELHARDT – The United States has been at war—major boots-on-the-ground conflicts and minor interventions, firefights, airstrikes, drone assassination campaigns, occupations, special ops raids, proxy conflicts and covert actions—nearly nonstop since the Vietnam War began. That’s more than half a century of experience with war, American-style, and yet few in our world bother to draw the obvious conclusions. Given the historical record, those conclusions should be staring us in the face. They are, however, the words that can’t be said in a country committed to a military-first approach to the world, a continual build-up of its forces, an emphasis on pioneering work in the development and deployment of the latest destructive technology, and a repetitious cycling through styles of war from full-scale invasions and occupations to counterinsurgency, proxy wars, and back again.
Delegation to Korea, Vietnam Reveals Need to End All War
DAVID HARTSOUGH – I recently returned from three weeks in Korea and Vietnam, countries which have in the past and are still suffering from the ravages of war.
New Year’s Resolution: Push US to Withdraw Military from Afghanistan
JOHN LAFORGE – After so much blood and destruction in Afghanistan, a lot of people dream of Secretary of State John Kerry reviving his monumental 1971 question, “How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?â€
Landmine Foe’s Book Reveals Winning Strategy
DAVID SWANSON – Jody Williams’ new book is called My Name Is Jody Williams: A Vermont Girl’s Winding Path to the Nobel Peace Prize, and it’s a remarkable story by a remarkable person. It’s also a very well-told autobiography, including in the early childhood chapters in which there are few hints of the activism to come. One could read this book and come away thinking “Anyone really could win the Nobel Peace Prize.”