Nothing

War, What Is It Good For? Absolutely Nothing. Literally.:

It may be hard to believe now, but in 1970 the protest song “War,” sung by Edwin Starr, hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. That was at the height of the Vietnam antiwar movement and the song, written by Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong, became something of a sensation. Even so many years later, who could forget its famed chorus? “War, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing.” Not me. And yet heartfelt as the song was then — “War, it ain’t nothing but a heartbreaker. War, it’s got one friend, that’s the undertaker…” — it has little resonance in America today.

But here’s the strange thing: in a way its authors and singer could hardly have imagined, in a way we still can’t quite absorb, that chorus has proven eerily prophetic — in fact, accurate beyond measure in the most literal possible sense. War, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing. You could think of American war in the twenty-first century as an ongoing experiment in proving just that point.

Looking back on almost 15 years in which the United States has been engaged in something like permanent war in the Greater Middle East and parts of Africa, one thing couldn’t be clearer: the planet’s sole superpower with a military funded and armed like none other and a “defense” budget larger than the next seven countries combined (three times as large as the number two spender, China) has managed to accomplish — again, quite literally — absolutely nothing, or perhaps (if a slight rewrite of that classic song were allowed) less than nothing.


Unless, of course, you consider an expanding series of failed states, spreading terror movements, wrecked cities, countries hemorrhaging refugees and the like as accomplishments...

FUBAR Morality

The Fog of Intelligence:

You get the point. Whatever the efforts of that expansive corps of intelligence analysts (and the vast intelligence edifice behind it), when anything happens in the Greater Middle East, you can essentially assume that the official American reaction, military and political, will be “surprise” and that policymakers will be left “scrambling” in a quagmire of ignorance to rescue American policy from the unexpected. In other words, somehow, with what passes for the best, or at least most extensive and expensive intelligence operation on the planet, with all those satellites and drones and surveillance sweeps and sources, with crowds of analysts, hordes of private contractors, and tens of billions of dollars, with, in short, “intelligence” galore, American officials in the area of their wars are evidently going to continue to find themselves eternally caught “off guard.”

The Republicans think that war is moral and that war deserves as many tax dollars as we can throw at it. Even when it is not working. Even when it lasts FOURTEEN YEARS.

The Republicans think that womens health issues are immoral and deserve zero tax dollars.

FUBAR morality.

Stop War Now

Vested in War:

A few weeks ago as summer waned, and another crisis dawned, the Pope like a new product launched in September, donned his vestments of holiness and as if like the don of all such dons presided over a multi-faith ceremony at the monument for the World Trade Center in New York and earlier in Washington DC spoke to the Americans by speaking to the Congress. But never once during his speeches directed to the Americans did he use the word war or say ‘Stop war now.' He spoke of peace, spoke of conflict, spoke of poverty, of excess of wealth, spoke of charity, spoke about the climate, but not once the word war.  He never uttered the word war in the context of today's wars.  Oh right, I stand corrected he mentioned the Great War as in World War in quoting a sentence by a previous Pope. That's it. And please keep in mind that those wars aren't referred to as the Great Conflict One and the Great Conflict Two. They are called wars. That means something. That means something terrible. Words matter. They mean things. The world's most weapon wealthy and weapon powerful and weapon producing nation is at War. It is not at a conflict. It is at War. Conflict suggests, that those involved may be involved in resolving conflict, conflicted—they could be peacemakers. They are not. They are warmongers, warriors and they are involved in making War. They are vested, financial, economically, industrially, psychologically, emotionally, politically, religiously in war. They are vested in war.

Is it so impractical, too unreasonable and idealistic to ask that the word War be used for War? More unreasonable than believing in God? More unreasonable than believing in the Pope's agency?  Believing in God, we have no problem with—believing that he speaks for God—no problem—having him address a secular institution such as the Congress-----no problem---but expecting him to say: stop war—that's a problem? Stop war? For him to use the word ‘War'. Because you see there are declarations and resolutions to go to war. Not conflict. There are colleges for War. And there are weapons for war. These are not labeled as colleges, weapons and soldiers for conflict. To expect the Pope to say the word War and ask him to say Stop War might be like expecting the Pope and other religious headmen to accept women as equal to men. Absurd.

Why Does Everyone Seem To Ignore This?

From WAR: It's Not the President's Decision by David Swanson:

The U.S. Constitution leaves the decision to wage war to Congress, and Congress can enforce its decision not to wage war by refusing to fund it. Blocking a funding bill for wars requires the House of Representatives alone, and both Democrats and Republicans in the House are rapidly joining us in saying No to war funding.

It's time to finally get serious, to lobby, to protest, to sit in, to nonviolently disrupt and resist in local district offices until enough Representatives commit to voting No on any bill to fund more war.

Public Opposes Wars, Will Our Representatives?

Meet The New War President, Same As The Old War President?

From An Open Letter to President Obama from Michael Moore by Michael Moore:

Dear President Obama,

Do you really want to be the new "war president"? If you go to West Point tomorrow night (Tuesday, 8pm) and announce that you are increasing, rather than withdrawing, the troops in Afghanistan, you are the new war president. Pure and simple. And with that you will do the worst possible thing you could do -- destroy the hopes and dreams so many millions have placed in you. With just one speech tomorrow night you will turn a multitude of young people who were the backbone of your campaign into disillusioned cynics. You will teach them what they've always heard is true -- that all politicians are alike. I simply can't believe you're about to do what they say you are going to do. Please say it isn't so.

It is not your job to do what the generals tell you to do. We are a civilian-run government. WE tell the Joint Chiefs what to do, not the other way around. That's the way General Washington insisted it must be. That's what President Truman told General MacArthur when MacArthur wanted to invade China. "You're fired!," said Truman, and that was that. And you should have fired Gen. McChrystal when he went to the press to preempt you, telling the press what YOU had to do. Let me be blunt: We love our kids in the armed services, but we f*#&in' hate these generals, from Westmoreland in Vietnam to, yes, even Colin Powell for lying to the UN with his made-up drawings of WMD (he has since sought redemption).

So now you feel backed into a corner. 30 years ago this past Thursday (Thanksgiving) the Soviet generals had a cool idea -- "Let's invade Afghanistan!" Well, that turned out to be the final nail in the USSR coffin.

When we elected you we didn't expect miracles. We didn't even expect much change. But we expected some. We thought you would stop the madness. Stop the killing. Stop the insane idea that men with guns can reorganize a nation that doesn't even function as a nation and never, ever has.

Stop, stop, stop! For the sake of the lives of young Americans and Afghan civilians, stop. For the sake of your presidency, hope, and the future of our nation, stop. For God's sake, stop.

There is more here.

I used to think that Obama was intelligent and moral. Now I’m not so sure. How smart is it to turn the Left against you when the Right already hates your guts? And, how moral is it to become the new War President?

Bill Moyers Meditates On War

Here is Bill Moyers from the May 22, 2009 edition of Bill Moyers Journal:

…my friend Louis Bickford spends his days, and often his nights, on the healing and prevention of atrocities and crimes against humanity. Cruelty, horror, and misery are part of his portfolio at the International Center for Transitional Justice, along with the power of memory.

On The Huffington Post, Louis has an essay in which he says that Memorial Day is meant to remind us of the hardship of war. But he goes on to ask, "What does it mean to choose how to remember?" What does it say about us, for example, if "...we choose to remember the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, more in terms of heroism than error..." This, he reminds us, is the "...tendency of all nations."

Louis got me to thinking that when we meditate on war this weekend - our recent wars that is - will we overlook the suicides? Sweep under history's rug the recent murder in Iraq of five American soldiers by a comrade who may have been driven mad by the horrors around him? Will we forget the death from friendly fire of a Pat Tillman and the shameful cover-up by the brass, including the role of the very general who now heads our operations in Afghanistan?

What of all those villagers killed by drones remotely fired in our name? Why aren't they part of the narrative we tell ourselves about war? Louis Bickford wonders if we'll ever remember, "...that there was a place called Abu Ghraib on the dusty outskirts of Baghdad, and that torture took place there, for which we were responsible?" After all, he says, it was the complicity of Republicans, Democrats, journalists and lawyers - some of them scholars - that allowed us to ignore international and American law prohibiting torture.

Over some 40 years now it has seemed to me that as time goes by we tend to remember wars, and the suffering they bring, as if they were inevitable, natural acts of history, rather than politically inspired choices. But war, as was famously said, is politics by another means - the lethal legacy of failed leadership, enabled, even ennobled, by propaganda, the partisan opiate of politics. It is good to be reminded, as my friend Louis so eloquently reminds us, that war is too important to forget, and that's one reason to observe Memorial Day. There is another - to hold before our face a mirror, so that we might see the images of war reflected in our own eyes.

Question Authority

From And there lie the bodies by Gideon Levy:

The legend, lest it be a true story, tells of how the late mathematician, Professor Haim Hanani, asked his students at the Technion to draw up a plan for constructing a pipe to transport blood from Haifa to Eilat. The obedient students did as they were told. Using logarithmic rulers, they sketched the design for a sophisticated pipeline. They meticulously planned its route, taking into account the landscape's topography, the possibility of corrosion, the pipe's diameter and the flow calibration. When they presented their final product, the professor rendered his judgment: You failed. None of you asked why we need such a pipe, whose blood will fill it, and why it is flowing in the first place.

Read the rest here.

Antiwar Republicans

Are there any antiwar Republicans? How many of us vote the party line without doing any research and thinking?

From Tribute to Seven Antiwar Republicans by couturma:

To celebrate the sixth year of the never-ending conflict in Mess-o-Potamia, this writer believes that the time has come to take a look back at the original Iraq War Resolution that Congress passed in 2002.

Specifically, I want to focus on seven courageous Republicans who bucked their party and voted “nay” on giving President George W. Bush a blank check to take the country to war against the regime of Saddam Hussein.

The greatest irony is that nearly half of these Republicans were voted out of office in the 2006 midterm elections, in part because of public dissatisfaction with the war they had opposed from the very beginning.

Because of the highly misleading Left/Right debate that rages in the mainstream media and talk radio, many Americans may not even be aware that ANY Republicans were against the Iraq War from the get-go. After all, everyone knows that Democrats are antiwar and Republicans are pro-war.

Although all of the members of Congress who voted “nay” on taking the U.S. into what has turned out to be an unnecessary and tragic conflict deserve kudos – regardless of party – it can be argued that those Republicans who did so paid a heavier price than their Democratic and Independent counterparts. To be a politician of any stripe and vote against the war resolution may not have been popular with many Americans at the time, but to be a Republican and vote against the will of your party – not to mention a president who happens to lead that party – was nothing short of heresy.

Here is the first comment to Tribute to Seven Antiwar Republicans by couturma:

rwahrens on July 29 2008 15:06:12
Besides not joining in on any "celebration" of the sixth year of any war, I also take umbrage on your characterization of the war as "unnecessary". "Tragic" fits any war, as that human activity is tragic by any description.

I am sure that most of the Iraqi population do not see the war as unnecessary, but rather as unmanaged or mismanaged, even as deliberately so. But I would say that most of them are glad to be rid of Saddam and his henchmen, especially that criminally insane son of his.

One can argue that it was badly timed, or that Bush was less than honest in his characterization for the immediacy of the need for it, as well as his excuses for doing it, but I will always assert that sooner or later, Saddam Hussein would have stepped over that line again and made it necessary. He was just that crazy.

I do not celebrate people being against war for the sake of being against it. One can oppose the idea of war itself, yet still realize the fact that it can be not only unavoidable, but at times better than the alternatives. Folks that oppose war, always, unequivocally, and without thinking, are doing so out of idealism, which is blind at best.

Of course, if these Republicans opposed that war out of an honest disagreement with Bush & Co. about the immediate timing of the war, or the need for it, as a mental exercise of opinion and not plain idealism, they do truly deserve kudos, for that is the hardest kind of thing to stick with of all.

I am singling out this comment because it is typical of much that I read and hear that basically leaves me shaking my head in wonder. Obviously the writer is no pacifist and seems to hold some animosity for those that are.

Why is he offended that the Iraq War was characterized as “unnecessary”? Obviously, he believes that it was necessary, but to be offended by someone who thinks the opposite seems like an overreaction and just plain weird. He then seems to imply that we must find the means to justify some wars as necessary, while at the same time acknowledging that all wars are tragic. Does this make sense? What sane person seeks tragedy? When does it become necessary to kill other people? Shouldn’t this be the last thing we consider doing?

The second paragraph is pure speculation without any facts at all to back it up. Yet, he is “sure that most of the Iraqi population do not see the war as unnecessary.” Anyone can win an argument if he is allowed to make up his own facts.

The third paragraph takes this non-use of facts to yet another level. Now he uses “facts” from the future. Saddam Hussein might do something bad in the future so let’s punish him for it now. Is this how justice is supposed to work? My neighbor might shoot me tomorrow so I better have the police arrest him today. The actual facts are that the United States broke international law by being the aggressor and actually invading, not one, but two countries.

As for the fourth paragraph, let’s just change one word.

I do not celebrate people being against murder for the sake of being against it. One can oppose the idea of murder itself, yet still realize the fact that it can be not only unavoidable, but at times better than the alternatives. Folks that oppose murder, always, unequivocally, and without thinking, are doing so out of idealism, which is blind at best.

Does this make any sense to you?

The last paragraph is simply more of the same. If you oppose war unequivocally then I suppose you are some sort of sap, and not worthy of the kudos of an illogical person who likes to make up his own facts, and also likes to justify killing people.

Why am I picking on this comment and the person that wrote it? Because I am tired of people pretending that what they say or write makes sense, when it actually makes no sense at all. If it were only this commenter doing this it would not matter to me very much. It becomes problematic when this kind of thinking is the same “logic” that is used by nearly every journalist, reporter, and politician in the United States. This “logic” (along with a strong dose of fear) was used by the Bush Administration to move the entire United States further away from the side of the righteous and just.

Self-defense is the only acceptable justification for murder. Self-defense is also the only acceptable justification for war.

Illegal Quagmires

All wars are illegal. All wars are quagmires.

War has become a part of our culture and our legacy. It is embedded into our consciousness as a nation. It is embedded into the consciousness of the world. War has damaged our collective psyche. Is this what we want? Is this the way it must be?

How many of us consider the consequences of the United States wielding its considerable military might with great frequency all around the world? Do we ever wonder what kind of emotional damage we cause to our soldiers, to our enemies, and to those civilians referred to as collateral damage?

What kind of damage is done to civilization when nations train people to kill, send them to face the horror of war, and then bring them back to civilization expecting them to fit in as if nothing has happened? Can we possibly be more cruel?

What kind of damage is done to civilization when nations savage the earth and its civilian population with the never ending memories of blood, dismemberment, and death? Can we possibly be more cruel?

Are any wars absolutely necessary? Are any of them worth the terrible price that must be paid? The true cost of war is paid by those who are witness to war. Unless they have previously experienced it first hand, the Generals and Commanders in Chiefs know nothing of war. The citizenry sitting safely back home know nothing of war. Those in the midst of it are the only ones who truly know. They deserve a voice. A voice that should be listened to.

Joe Allen has written a history of the movement against the war in Vietnam. It is called Vietnam: The (Last) War the U.S. Lost.

From Vietnam Blues by Ron Jacobs:

Although Allen does not mention the current US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan until the book’s last chapter, it is difficult to read Vietnam: The (Last) War the U.S. Lost without thinking about those quagmires. Both countries have an occupation government propped up by the US that have at times talked with opposition groups and individuals in the hopes that their government will survive; both are badgered by a US government intent on staying in the country despite even the puppet government’s opposition to the idea. To top it off, both occupations have also featured US GIs refusing to go on missions because in their understanding they have no real reason to be doing what they are doing. Yet, Washington continues to prevail, bankrupting the US national treasury and leaving death in its wake. Furthermore, the once thriving US antiwar movement has become a collection of groups waging occasionally noisy protests while too much of its leadership kisses the Democratic Party’s ass, futilely hoping that its elected representatives will vote against Washington’s interests without being pushed against the wall.

And here is a comment to Vietnam Blues by Ron Jacobs:

Erroll said on June 30th, 2008 at 11:16 am

Evie’s comments are confusing if not bizarre. Is she saying that soldiers who had returned from Vietnam should have been showered with praise for what they witnessed and/or participated in while in Vietnam? She complains that there was no “gratitude” given to returning veterans from Vietnam. This is the same knee-jerk response that I get from people who thank me for serving in Vietnam. After keeping buried what I went through over there for many years, I finally realized and acknowledged that I had contributed to the deaths of many innocent Vietnamese people. The last thing that I wish to hear is that I should be thanked for doing what I did to those wretched people.

Her comments are similar to what many on the left, as well as the right do, and that is to apparently confuse or conflate being victims with being heroes. I submit that there is nothing heroic about invading and occupying another country, whether that country is Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan. Why in the world would one want to hold a parade for those who helped and aided in the subjugation of another country? Miss Evie may want to read the transcripts of those soldiers who participated in the Winter Soldier hearings of 1971 and the more recent one that took place a few months ago. If she were to do so, she would discover that there is nothing for Americans to be proud of regarding the military service of those who served in places like Vietnam and the Middle East.

Those who should be thanked and who should have parades given in their honor are those soldiers, such as the ones shown in the powerful documentary Sir! No Sir!, who had the courage to say no to taking part in the oppression of the Vietnamese people. Their equivalent today are the members of the IVAW, who have likewise said NO the illegal orders that they were given regarding the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.

To reiterate, soldiers who have had the misfortune of being in a combat zone should not thanked or have people express gratitude [for what, killing people?] but rather lamented, because they had ended up being placed in an abattoir by their leaders. All the more reason for soldiers today to say NO to the illegal orders that they are given by their uncaring government.

IVAW stands for Iraq Veterans Against the War. You can find information on the Winter Soldier hearings of 1971 here.

Will the not-so-rich and not-so-powerful ever stand up to the rich and powerful and simply tell them to fight their own damn wars?

Private Military Contractors

From Outsourcing Sacrifice by Mateo Taussig-Rubbo:

I wish to draw your attention to another problem: the contractor’s relation to the traditional understanding of sacrifice, which has undergirded Americans’ imaginings about those who kill and are killed on behalf of the nation. There is an important tradition in the U.S. that says those who die and suffer for the country are honored in a certain way. Soldiers are eligible for medals and other honors; they can be buried in the hallowed ground of Arlington National Cemetery; their deaths are included in the body counts released by the Pentagon. We expect the president to acknowledge those deaths and to explain why they were meaningful. Although the reality often falls far short of these ideals, as we saw with the scandal surrounding soldiers’ inadequate treatment at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, the fact that this was seen as a scandal presupposes the tradition I am describing.

This tradition should prompt us to ask about the place of sacrifice in a democracy. For generations, military service and citizenship were thought to be intimately linked. How should the burden of defending the country, or advancing its interests globally, be distributed?

Using paid contractors, especially those who are armed and are U.S. citizens, complicates the tradition of honoring military sacrifice. At the moment, contractors are officially excluded from the forms of recognition extended to soldiers. If we think of them as mercenaries, this seems legitimate. Yet before we dismiss the contractor as a mercenary, we need to keep in mind the way in which calling a death a sacrifice can function as a form of accountability between officials and the public. If the government can deploy private military contractors to supplement its conventional forces, might that make it easier to get involved in a war?

Read more here.

Genuine Madmen And Non-Crazy People

From The Appeasement Paradox by Matthew Yglesias:

That's all fine, but the premise of the appeasement frame is that we're dealing with hardcore irrational ideologues who'll stop at nothing to destroy us. Adolf Hitler actually was such a man and, not coincidentally, he wasn't particularly interested in acquiring the international prestige and legitimacy associated with a sit-down with English politicians -- he wanted a giant war. In general, the right wants us to believe that world history is littered with countries whose rulers, like Hitler, will stop at nothing short of world-domination but who also spend their evenings fondly dreaming of the chance at a White House photo-op. But that’s absurd. One shouldn’t, of course, strike a bad bargain with a foreign country just because you held a meeting, but to fear that the very act of holding a meeting is a blow to the national interest is silly. Genuine madmen aren’t going to care what “signal” we’re sending, and non-crazy people can be productively bargained with.

War and conflict are incredibly costly and destructive. Wise statesmen recognize the negative-sum nature of relating to foreigners primarily by blowing them up. Moreover, it's usually possible to reach agreements with even very bad people that both sides deem preferable to fighting. In refusing to even contemplate negotiations, conservatives are being flatly irrational, spurning offers of a half a loaf for no real reason.

They're acting, in short, like the demonic foreigners of their own anti-appeasement rhetoric, impervious to objective reality and hell-bent on total victory no matter what the cost or how dim the prospects of success.

Read more here.

Out Of Sight, Out Of Mind, Out Of Our Minds

From Forget About It by Dennis Perrin:

I was nudged into these thoughts by a recent AP story about mass graves being unearthed in South Korea, showing that in 1950-51, the US-backed South regime slaughtered untold thousands of citizens, many of whom, women and children included, were killed execution-style, then dumped into trenches. It's the kind of human rights nightmare that, had it been attributed to Saddam or Milosevic, would be denounced as fascist terrorism. Yet so far I've seen no serious American commentary about what these mass graves mean, given that the US was in charge of the South Korean military that committed the massacres. Of course, defenders could point out that South Korea was at war with the North, and that grisly actions were bound to occur. But Saddam and Milosevic used the same reasoning to explain their killing fields, and I don't recall many stateside commentators who accepted that as a reasonable defense.

Mr. Perrin then goes on to explain what the United States did in Korea:

Mass executions are indeed savage, but even in this awful case, these killings were hardly the "most tragic and brutal chapter of the Korean War." US air strikes went far beyond shooting someone in the back of the head. The US firebombed Korean villages and towns into smoldering graves, dropping hundreds of tons of napalm in the effort, killing millions. On top of all that, the Truman administration seriously debated using nuclear weapons in Korea (the insane Douglas MacArthur, who proposed that the US drop up to 30 nuclear bombs, was thankfully kept outside of the inner-policy debates). As I put it in "Savage Mules": "In the end, nuclear weapons were not used, and really weren’t necessary. Destruction of the Korean peninsula, North and South, was so vast, the death toll so high, that all nukes would have added was a radioactive exclamation point."

This aerial destruction built upon the firebombing of Japanese cities at the end of World War II, and set the stage for the murderous assaults on Vietnam.

Mr. Perrin rightly points out that many Americans are ignorant of this and other savage parts of our history. This ignorance is upsetting enough, but what truly upsets and confounds me are the people who are informed of this side of our history and see it as necessary and just. With their support, and the tacit approval of the ignorant, the United States continues to commit atrocities all over the globe. The people calling for an end to this are marginalized, mocked, and labeled as kooks. Dennis Kucinich, Jeremiah Wright, and Noam Chomsky come to mind, off the top of my head. The main message of Kucinich, Wright, and Chomsky is one of peace. One of stopping all the killing. Yet they are generally considered to be nuts. Why? It is sickening to me to see them not be taken seriously. Who would choose war over peace, killing and destruction over not killing and destroying? Who would choose the insanity of massacre over the logic of negotiation? American history is filled with examples of us choosing the violent way. We are out of our minds.

The Dog Of War Is Unchained

From Rutgers Clinic Sues President Bush Over Iraq War by David Swanson:

The Rutgers/Newark Constitutional Litigation Clinic filed suit today in the Federal District Court in Newark against President Bush over the War in Iraq. The Complaint seeks a Declaratory Judgment that the President’s decision to launch a preemptive war against a sovereign nation in 2003 violated Article I, Section 8 of the United States Constitution, which assigns to Congress the power to Declare War.

According to Professor Frank Askin, founding director of the Clinic and attorney for the Plaintiffs in New Jersey Peace Action v. George W. Bush, six law students worked with him through much of the academic year studying the issues and preparing the law suit.

The unusual 20-page Complaint relies very heavily on the annals of the 1787 Constitutional Convention, at which the Founders deliberately denied to the president the power to wage war except in response to a sudden attack when Congress did not have time to act. “The Founders were very clear,” said Askin “that only Congress could make that awesome decision. They were not permitted to delegate that power to the president and thus be able later to disclaim responsibility for a decision gone bad. It was that momentous decision that allowed Thomas Jefferson to proclaim that the Convention had ‘chained the dog of war.’”

Without Merit

From An Interview with Tom Farer, Author of ‘Confronting Global Terrorism’ by Scott Horton:

The Bush “doctrine” when first announced in the heady days when the President-Cheney-Rumsfeld-Rove quadrumvirate were sweeping all before them, seemed to declare a right to attack, without regard to borders, persons and groups deemed to be America-threatening “terrorists” even if no attack was thought to be imminent. In effect they were adopting a policy Israel had been employing for years.

In the normal use of the word pre-emption in diplomacy or law, this was not a doctrine of pre-emption, because it had specifically excluded the condition of imminence with which pre-emption had been associated even before the adoption of the UN Charter. Rather it sounded like the doctrine of “preventive” war, that is war in anticipation of threats that are not imminent and may never materialize. In defending themselves at the post-World War II Nuremburg War Crimes against the charge of having committed as one “crime against peace,” the invasion of Norway, some Nazi defendants in effect invoked a preventive war justification, arguing that they believed the British would occupy Norway as a base for operations against Germany if Germany did not do so first. The Nuremberg Court found the defense to be without merit.

Not A Virtue

From An Interview with Tom Farer, Author of ‘Confronting Global Terrorism’ by Scott Horton:

As I note in my book in the chapter on the use of force, for liberals war is always the lesser evil, not a virtue or a phenomenon that brings out the best in a nation. For about war only two things are certain: One is that it will destroy things and two is that there will be “collateral damage,” i.e. innocents will be maimed. Because liberals believe in the moral equality of human beings, the fact that the killed and maimed are predominantly on “the other side” does not provide moral solace. No liberal will ever sound or think like the turn-of-the-Twentieth-Century German conservative Heinrich von Treitschke who declared that “The greatness of war is just what at first sight seems to be its horror—that for the sake of their country men will overcome the natural feeling of humanity, that they will slaughter their fellow-men who have done them no injury.”

Chaos Theory

From Red Mind, Blue Mind? by Wray Herbert:

New York University psychologist John Jost and his colleagues have been using time-tested instruments to plumb the unconscious attitudes of both self-proclaimed conservatives and liberals. Although most everyone prefers order to chaos, the psychologists found this yearning to be much more potent in conservatives than in liberals. Put another way, conservatives have little tolerance for any messiness, let alone rebelliousness, even on this basic neuronal level. Liberals, by contrast, have a deep-wired preference for flexibility and progress over tradition. The starkest difference between conservatives and liberals was related to feminism, which conservatives believe in their gut to be a threat to their ordered world.

This does not make much sense to me. If this is true why are conservatives so hawkish? War is the most chaotic, messy, rebellious, and disorderly activity invented since the dawn of time. You would think conservatives would hate it.

I guess as long as it is out of sight and not in their own backyard it is OK.

A Disreputable American Presidential Candidate And The Crazy People In Washington

The American people are sick and tired of war. How does Hillary Clinton's tough talk help us? How many innocent people would die because of her proposed obliteration? How many people in the Middle East would turn against us because of this? Why the hell do we care so much about Israel? War, war, war, what is it good for? I am so angry and frustrated with the crazy people in Washington.

Iranian cleric responds to Clinton's warning with a warning of his own:

War And Responsibility

From Wars of Choice and Crimes of War by Mike The Mad Biologist:

The revisionist pro-Iraq war argument that 'the idea was sound, but the implementation was problematic' has always bothered me. It assumes that a 'war of choice'--that is, an unprovoked assault against another nation which does not pose an immediate threat--will work out just fine. So when it doesn't work out--and it almost never does--it's not the fault of war supporters, it's someone else's. Never mind that wars of choice almost always end in massive blowback, there's just no conceivable way anyone could have foreseen the outcome…

The Pretended Causes Of War

From The Federalist Papers, Number 4, Here are the words of John Jay:

…there are pretended as well as just causes of war.

It is too true, however disgraceful it may be to human nature, that nations in general will make war whenever they have a prospect of getting anything by it; nay, absolute monarchs will often make war when their nations are to get nothing by it, but for the purposes and objects merely personal, such as thirst for military glory, revenge for personal affronts, ambition, or private compacts to aggrandize or support their particular families or partisans. These and a variety of other motives, which affect only the mind of the sovereign, often lead him to engage in wars not sanctified by justice or the voice and interests of his people. But, independent of these inducements to war, which are more prevalent in absolute monarchies, but which well deserve our attention, there are others which affect nations as often as kings; and some of them will on examination be found to grow out of our relative situation and circumstances.

John Jay wrote these words on November 7, 1787. What would he think of George W. Bush if he were alive today? What would he think of our current crop of presidential candidates?