By Winslow Myers

Since 9-11, the United States, by any objective assessment a globe-girdling military empire, has been sucked into an ongoing global civil war between brutal extremists (often fighting among themselves) and those, including us, they perceive as their mortal enemies. We are rightfully outraged by cruel beheadings videotaped for Internet distribution. The beheaders and suicide bombers are equally outraged by our extensive military presence in their ancestral homelands and drone attacks upon weddings.

The Nobel Peace Prize is required by Alfred Nobel's will, which created it, to go to "the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses." The Nobel Committee insists on awarding the prize to either a leading maker of war or a person who has done some good work in an area other than peace.

The 2014 prize has been awarded to Kailash Satyarthi and Malala Yousafzay, which is not a person but two people, and they have not worked for fraternity between nations or the abolition or reduction of standing armies but for the rights of children. If the peace prize is to be a prize for random good works, then there is no reason not to give it to leading advocates for the rights of children. This is a big step up from giving it to leading makers of war. But then what of the prize for peace and the mission of ending war that Nobel included in his will in fulfillment of a promise to Bertha von Suttner?

Malala Yousafzay became a celebrity in Western media because she was a victim of designated enemies of Western empire. Had she been a victim of the governments of Saudi Arabia or Israel or any other kingdom or dictatorship being used by Western governments, we would not have heard so much about her suffering and her noble work. Were she primarily an advocate for the children being traumatized by drone strikes in Yemen or Pakistan, she'd be virtually unknown to U.S. television audiences.

But Malala recounted her meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama a year ago and said, "I also expressed my concerns that drone attacks are fueling terrorism. Innocent victims are killed in these acts, and they lead to resentment among the Pakistani people. If we refocus efforts on education, it will make a big impact." So, she actually advocated pursuing education rather than war, and yet the Nobel Committee had not a word to say about that in announcing its selection, focusing on eliminating child labor rather than on eliminating war. The possibility exists then that either of this year's recipients might give an antiwar acceptance speech. There has, after all, only been one pro-war acceptance speech, and that was from President Obama. But many speeches have been unrelated to abolishing war.

Fredrik S. Heffermehl, who has led efforts to compel the Nobel Committee to give the peace prize for peace, said on Friday, "Malala Yousafzay is a courageous, bright and impressive person. Education for girls is important and child labor a horrible problem. Worthy causes, but the committee once again makes a false pretense of loyalty to Nobel and confuses and conceals the plan for world peace that Nobel intended to support.

"If they had wished to be loyal to Nobel they would have stressed that Malala often has spoken out against weapons and military with a fine understanding of how ordinary people suffer from militarism. Young people see this more clearly than the grown ups."

The leading contenders for this year's prize, as speculated in the media, included the Pope who has in fact spoken against all war, abandoning the "just war" idea; and some advocate or other for Japan's Article Nine which forbids war and ought to be a model for other nations but is being threatened in Japan instead. These recipients would at least have bordered on Nobel's ideal, as perhaps might be said for last year's recipient, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.

Also on the list was a Russian newspaper supportive of Western aggression, the President of Uruguay for legalizing marijuana, Edward Snowden for leaking evidence of U.S. spying, Denis Mukwege for helping victims of sexual violence, and Chelsea Manning for exposing U.S. war crimes. Manning would have made a certain amount of sense, and her work has probably gone some way toward discouraging war. The same might be said, to a lesser degree, of Snowden. But none of these fit the description in Nobel's will. If the peace prize were actually awarded to a leading peace activist, at this point the world would be rather scandalized and scratch its collective head in wonderment at what the significance could be in that person's work.

Look at this list of recent recipients of a prize meant for peace:
The European Union
Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Leymah Gbowee and Tawakkol Karman
Liu Xiaobo
Barack H. Obama
Martti Ahtisaari
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Albert Arnold (Al) Gore Jr.
Muhammad Yunus and Grameen Bank

There you have the two leading makers of war in the world: Obama and the E.U. You have advocates for green energy and small loans and women's rights and human rights. Martti Ahtisaari's prize announcement actually quoted from Nobel's will, but he himself supported NATO and Western militarism.

While good work in other areas can in fact contribute to peace, it is unlikely to do so in the absence of recognition of the goal of peace and of work directly aimed at abolishing war. 

The National Priorities Project, a U.S. organization that actually works against militarism, was nominated this year, as no doubt were others relevant to the purpose for which the peace prize was created.

October 3, 2014 — A statement on the current and enduring crisis, by the coordinating committee of WorldBeyondWar.org

This statement as PDF.

SUMMARY

The following is an assessment of the current ISIS crisis. The statement examines: (1) the social context of the destructive violence in Syria and Iraq — where we are; (2) viable nonviolent alternatives — what should be done; and (3) opportunities for civil society to advocate and push for those alternatives — how we can make it happen. The alternatives and pathways toward achieving those are not only preferable from a perspective of humanity, but proven to be more effective.

Graphic beheadings and other quite real stories of horrors committed by a new enemy — ISIS — have led to increased support for U.S. involvement. But a war on ISIS will make things worse for all concerned, following, as it does, a pattern of counterproductive action. Through the course of the so-called global war on terrorism, terrorism has been on the rise.

Nonviolent alternatives to war are abundant, morally superior, and strategically more effective. Some but not all are: apologies for past actions; arms embargoes; a Marshall Plan of restitution for the Middle East; meaningful diplomacy; appropriate conflict resolution responses to terrorism; addressing the immediate crisis with humanitarian intervention; redirecting our energies at home; supporting peace journalism; working through the United Nations; and de-authorizing the war on terror.

No solution by itself will bring peace to the region. Many solutions together can create a strong web of peacebuilding fabric superior to continued war. We cannot expect to make all of the above happen immediately. But by working toward those ends we can achieve the best results as quickly and as lastingly as possible.

We need teach-ins, communications, and education of all sorts. People should know enough facts to give their positions context. We need demonstrations, rallies, sit-ins, town forums, disruptions, and media productions. And if we make this a part of ending the whole institution of war, rather than just a particular war, we may move closer to not having to keep opposing new wars all the time.

WHERE WE ARE

Public opinion on wars in the United States follows a tragic pattern, soaring — sometimes to over a majority — in support of a war when it’s new, and then predictably sinking. During most of the 2003-2011 U.S. war on Iraq, a majority in the U.S. said the war should never have been begun. In 2013, public opinion and pressure played a prominent role in preventing the launching of a new U.S. war on Syria. In February 2014, the U.S. Senate rejected legislation that would have moved the United States closer to war with Iran. On July 25, 2014, with the U.S. public against a new U.S. war in Iraq, the House of Representatives passed a resolution that would have required the President to obtain authorization before launching a war (just as the Constitution already requires) had the Senate passed the resolution too. At that distant date of a few months back, it was still possible to talk about an “antiwar mood,” to applaud the Catholic peace group Pax Christi for its historic decision to reject “just war” theory, to celebrate the state of Connecticut’s creation of a commission to transition to peaceful industries, to point to public support for taxing the rich and cutting the military as the top two solutions whenever the U.S. government and media discussed a debt crisis, and to envision a less-militarized future approaching.

But support for U.S. drone strikes remained relatively high, opposition to Israel’s war on Gaza with U.S. weapons remained weak (and in Congress and the White House virtually nonexistent), the CIA was arming Syrian rebels against the overwhelming preference of the U.S. public, and the proposed missile strikes into Syria had not been replaced with any significant effort to create an arms embargo, negotiate a ceasefire, provide major humanitarian aid, or otherwise reject a war-focused foreign policy and economic agenda that had merely been put on hold. Moreover, public opposition to war was weak and ill-informed. Most Americans lacked even a roughly accurate idea of the destruction their government had caused in Iraq, could not name the nations their government was striking with drones, didn’t study the evidence that their government had lied about chemical weapons attacks in Syria and threats to civilians in Libya, didn’t pay much attention to the human rights abuses or support for terrorism by U.S.-backed kings and dictators, and had been long trained to believe that violence arises out of the irrationality of foreigners and can be cured with greater violence.

Support for a new war was driven by graphic beheadings and other quite real stories of horrors committed by a new enemy: ISIS.[1] This support is as likely to be short-lived as support for other wars has been, barring some dramatic new motivation. And this support has been exaggerated. Pollsters ask whether something should be done and then simply assume that the something is violence. Or they ask whether this type of violence should be employed or that type of violence, never offering any nonviolent alternatives. So, other questions could produce other answers right now; time is likely to change the answers for the better; and education would accelerate that changing.

Opposition to the horrors of ISIS makes perfect sense, but opposition to ISIS as a motivation for war lacks context in every way. U.S. allies in that region, including the Iraqi government and the so-called Syrian rebels, behead people, as do U.S. missiles. And ISIS isn’t such a new enemy after all, including as it does Iraqis thrown out of work by the U.S. disbanding of the Iraqi military, and Iraqis brutalized for years in U.S. prison camps. The United States and its junior partners destroyed Iraq, leaving behind sectarian division, poverty, desperation, and an illegitimate government in Baghdad that did not represent Sunnis or other groups. Then the U.S. armed and trained ISIS and allied groups in Syria, while continuing to prop up the Baghdad government, providing Hellfire missiles with which to attack Iraqis in Fallujah and elsewhere. Even opponents of the Saddam Hussein government (which was also put into power by the United States) say there could have been no ISIS had the United States not attacked and destroyed Iraq.

Additional context is provided by the manner in which the U.S. occupation of Iraq temporarily ended in 2011. President Obama withdrew U.S. troops from Iraq when he couldn’t get the Iraqi government to give them immunity for any crimes they might commit. He has now obtained that immunity and sent troops back in.

ISIS has religious adherents but also opportunistic supporters who see it as the force resisting an unwanted rule from Baghdad and who increasingly see it as resisting the United States. That’s how ISIS wants to be seen. U.S. wars have made the United States so hated in that part of the world, that ISIS openly encouraged U.S. attacks in an hour-long film, provoked them with the beheading videos, and has seen huge recruitment gains since the U.S. began attacking it.[2]

ISIS is in possession of U.S. weaponry provided directly to it in Syria and seized from, and even provided by the Iraqi government. At last count by the U.S. government, 79% of weapons transferred to Middle Eastern governments come from the United States, not counting transfers to groups like ISIS, and not counting weapons in the possession of the United States.

So, the first thing to do differently going forward: stop bombing nations into ruins, and stop shipping weapons into the area you’ve left in chaos. Libya is of course another example of the disasters that U.S. wars leave behind them — a war in which U.S. weapons were used on both sides, and a war launched on the pretext of a claim well documented to have been false that Gadaffi was threatening to massacre civilians.

So, here’s the next thing to do: be very skeptical of humanitarian claims. The U.S. bombing around Erbil to protect Kurdish and U.S. oil interests was initially justified as bombing to protect people on a mountain. But most of those people on the mountain were in no need of rescue, and that justification has now been set aside, just as Benghazi was.

A war on ISIS isn’t a bad idea because the suffering of ISIS’s victims is not our problem. Of course it’s our problem. We are human beings who care about each other. A war on ISIS is a bad idea because it is not only counterproductive, but will make things worse. Through the course of the so-called global war on terrorism, terrorism has been on the rise.[3] This was predictable and predicted. The wars on Iraq and Afghanistan, and the abuses of prisoners during them, became major recruiting tools for anti-U.S. terrorism. In 2006, U.S. intelligence agencies produced a National Intelligence Estimate that reached just that conclusion. Drone strikes have increased terrorism and anti-Americanism in places like Yemen. The new U.S. attacks on ISIS have already killed many civilians. “For every innocent person you kill, you create 10 new enemies,” according to General Stanley McChrystal. The White House has announced that strict standards for avoiding large numbers of civilian deaths do not apply to its latest war.

ISIS is fighting against the government of Syria, the same government that President Obama wanted to bomb last year. The United States is arming close allies of ISIS in Syria, while bombing ISIS and other groups (and civilians) in Syria. But the U.S. State Department has not changed its position on the Syrian government. It is entirely possible that the United States will attack both sides of the Syrian war. Even the fact of already attacking the opposite side from a year ago, and the same side you’re arming ought to be enough to make anyone ask whether the point is largely to bomb somebody for the sake of bombing somebody. Bombing people is one of the best known methods by which the U.S. government convinces the U.S. media that it is “doing something.”

It is tearing down the rule of law, among other things. Without Congressional authorization, President Obama is violating the U.S. Constitution, and his earlier professed belief. “The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation,” said Senator Barack Obama quite accurately.

With a Congressional authorization, this war would still violate the U.N. Charter and the Kellogg-Briand Pact, which are the supreme law of the land under Article VI of the U.S. Constitution.[4] The British Parliament voted to approve assistance in attacking Iraq, but not Syria — the latter being too clearly illegal for their taste.

The White House has refused to estimate the duration or the cost of this war. There is every reason to assume that conditions on the ground will worsen. So only public pressure, not some sort of victory, will end the war. In fact, military victories are almost unheard of in this era. The RAND corporation studied how terrorist groups come to an end, and found that 83% are ended through politics or policing, only 7% through war. This may be why President Obama keeps saying, quite accurately, “There is no military solution,” while pursuing a military solution.

So what should be done and how can we make it happen?

WHAT SHOULD BE DONE

Adopt a new approach toward the world: Apologize for brutalizing the leader of ISIS in a prison camp and to every other prisoner victimized under U.S. occupation. Apologize for destroying the nation of Iraq and to every family there. Apologize for arming the region and its kings and dictators, for past support for the Syrian government, and for the U.S. role in the Syrian war.[5] Cease to support abusive governments in Iraq, Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, etc.

Pursue an arms embargo[6]: Announce a commitment not to provide weapons to Iraq or Syria or Israel or Jordan or Egypt or Bahrain or any other nation or ISIS or any other group, and to begin withdrawing U.S. troops from foreign territories and seas, including Afghanistan. (The U.S. Coast Guard in the Persian Gulf has clearly forgotten where the coast of the U.S. is!) Cut off the 79% of weapons that flow to the Middle East from the United States. Urge Russia, China, European nations, and others to cease shipping any weapons to the Middle East. Open negotiations for a nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons free region, to include the elimination of those weapons by Israel.

Create a Marshall Plan of restitution to the entire Middle East. Deliver aid (not “military aid” but actual aid, food, medicine) to the entire nations of Iraq and Syria and their neighbors. This can generate sympathy in the population supportive of terrorists. This can be done on a massive scale for less cost than continuing to shoot $2 million missiles at the problem. Announce a commitment to invest heavily in solar, wind, and other green energy and to provide the same to democratic representative governments. Begin providing Iran with free wind and solar technologies — at much lower cost, of course, than what it is costing the U.S. and Israel to threaten Iran over a nonexistent nuclear weapons program. End economic sanctions.

Give real diplomacy a chance: Send diplomats to Baghdad and Damascus to negotiate aid and to encourage serious reforms. Open negotiations that include Iran and Russia. Use the mechanisms provided by the United Nations constructively. The political problems in the region require political solutions. Employ peaceful means to pursue representative governments respectful of human rights, regardless of the consequences for U.S. oil corporations or any other influential profiteers. Propose the creation of truth and reconciliation commissions. Allow for citizen diplomacy efforts.

Apply an appropriate conflict resolution response to terrorism by creating a multi-layered policy framework. (1) Prevention by reducing proneness to terrorism; (2) persuasion by reducing motivation and recruitment; (3) denial by reducing vulnerability and defeating hardliners; (4) coordination by maximizing international efforts.[7]

Dissolve terrorism at its roots. It is proven that civilian-based nonviolent forces can produce decisive change in societies, consequently reducing the demand for terrorism as a form of struggle, even driving a wedge between militants and their sympathizers.[8] We need engagement through strategic contact, consultation and dialog rather than military force. Sustainable peacebuilding processes require the engagement of multiple stakeholders from multiple sectors of societies affected by violent conflict. Strengthening the civil society in the conflict zone will diminish the support base for terrorist groups.[9] Responding with more violence is the victory which extremists seek. Deliberative dialogue inclusive of all views assists in understanding the sources of violence; addressing them through nonviolent strategies and creating conditions for sustainable peace will drive a wedge between militants and their sympathizers.[10]

Address the immediate crisis with a firm but caring humanitarian intervention: Send journalists, aid workers, international nonviolent peaceworkers, human shields, and negotiators into crisis zones, understanding that this means risking lives, but fewer lives than further militarization risks.[11] Empower people with agricultural assistance, education, cameras, and internet access.

Redirect our energies at home: Launch a communications campaign in the United States to replace military recruitment campaigns, focused on building sympathy and desire to serve as critical aid workers, persuading doctors and engineers to volunteer their time to travel to and visit these areas of crisis. At the same time, make economic transition from war to peace industries in the United States a collective public project of top priority.

Support peace journalism: “Peace journalism is when editors and reporters make choices — about what to report, and how to report it — that create opportunities for society at large to consider and to value non-violent responses to conflict.”

Stop going rogue: Work through the United Nations on all of the above. Adhere to international law, more specifically the UN Charter and Kellogg-Briand Pact. Sign the United States on to the International Criminal Court and voluntarily propose the prosecution of top U.S. officials of this and the preceding regimes for their crimes.

De-authorize the war on terror (Authorization For Use of Military Force) as a “forever war authorization” — The AUMF can be challenged by taking partial but important steps. Those include reining in the drone warfare program and increasing government accountability. These steps have broad support among human rights and legal rights groups.

HOW WE CAN MAKE IT HAPPEN

We cannot expect to make all of the above happen immediately. But we can move in that direction as quickly as possible. The government will come further toward meeting us the more persuasive and powerful our demand. So, determining Congress members’ current position and asking them for just that or a little better is unlikely to produce better results and could produce worse ones — both in the short and long term. A compromise is usually made between two sides of a debate, so it matters where the side of peace is established. And if we demand a limited war, we eliminate the opportunity to inform anyone about the advantages of avoiding war altogether. Thus, people will lack that information when the next war is proposed. We also cannot expect to organize large numbers of people to demonstrate, protest, or lobby for “a war of no more than 12 months.” It lacks the poetry and the morality of “No War.”

Once a war is well underway and a debate is framed around how many more months it should go on, and the reality on the ground is predictably worsening, and “support the troops” propaganda is insisting that the war go on for the supposed benefit of the troops killing, dying, and committing suicide in it, the problem of how to end it is likely to loom much larger than if the popular position of “No War, Nonviolence Instead” has been well-articulated and defended.

A demand is going to be heard for “no ground troops.” This should not be the focus of a peace movement. For one thing there already are some 1,600 U.S. ground troops in Iraq. They’re labeled “advisors” as are the 26 Canadians who just joined them. But nobody actually believes 1,626 people are giving advice. Another 2,300 troops will be deployed as a Middle East Marine Corps task force. By demanding “No Ground Troops” while accepting the pretense that they aren’t there now, we can actually give our stamp of approval to any ground troop labeled something else. In addition, a war dominated by air strikes is likely to kill more people, not fewer people, than a ground war. This is an opportunity to inform our neighbors who may be unaware that these wars are one-sided slaughters killing mostly people who live where they’re fought, and killing mostly civilians. Once we’ve acknowledged that reality, how can we continue with cries of “No ground troops” rather than “No war”?

We need teach-ins, communications, and education of all sorts. People should know that beheading victim James Foley was opposed to war. People should know that ISIS gives George W. Bush credit in their film for being right about the need for war and pushes for greater warmaking against them by the United States. People should understand that ISIS promotes martyrdom as the highest goal, and that bombing ISIS strengthens it.

We need demonstrations, rallies, sit-ins, town forums, disruptions, and media productions.

Our message to people is: get active and engaged in what we’re doing; you’ll be surprised how this can be turned around. And if we make this a part of ending the whole institution of war, rather than just a particular war, we may move closer to not having to keep opposing new wars all the time.

Our message to Congress members is: publicly pressure Speaker Boehner and Senator Reid to get back to work and vote to halt this war, or do not expect our votes to keep you in office for another term.

Our message to the President is: now would be a good time to end the mind-set that gets us into wars, as you said you wanted to do. Is this really what you want to be remembered for?

Our message to the United Nations is: the U.S. government is in blatant violation of the U.N. Charter. You must hold the United States accountable.

Our message to all parties is: war has no justification and no benefit, now or ever. It is immoral, makes us less safe, threatens our environment, erodes liberties, impoverishes us, and takes $2 trillion a year away from where it could do a world of good.

World Beyond War has a bureau of speakers who can address these topics. Find them here: http://worldbeyondwar.org/speakers

[1] The atrocities committed by ISIS are rightfully condemned. The threat ISIS poses is considered exaggerated.

[2] According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights

[3] According to the Global Terrorism Index by the Institute for Economics and Peace, the number of terrorist incidents has increased virtually every year since 9/11.

[4] The Kellogg–Briand Pact is a 1928 international agreement in which signatory states promised not to use war to resolve “disputes or conflicts of whatever nature or of whatever origin they may be, which may arise among them.” For an in-depth exploration see David Swanson’s When the World Outlawed War (2011).

[5] Political apologies are considered part of a complex peacebuilding process in conjunction with other conflict transformation techniques. See a summary of Apologia Politica: States and their apologies by proxy.

[6] UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, for example, urged the Security Council to impose an arms embargo into Syria.

[7] The framework is explained in detail by conflict transformation scholars Ramsbotham, Woodhouse and Miall in Contemporary Conflict Resolution (2011)

[8] Outlined thoroughly by Hardy Merriman and Jack DuVall, experts from the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict.

[9] See for example: Syrian Civil Defense

[10] As discussed by peace and conflict studies experts John Paul Lederach in Addressing terrorism: a theory of change approach (2011) and David Cortright in Gandhi and Beyond. Nonviolence for a new political age (2009)

[11] The Nonviolent Peaceforce has a proven successful track record of unarmed civilian peacekeeping to prevent, reduce and stop violence

By Dave Lindorff

In a perverse way, maybe it's progress that the US is now admitting that it doesn't really care about how many civilians it kills in its efforts to "decapitate" a few suspected terrorist leaders.

A serious case has been made repeatedly by unknown scholars and globally celebrated geniuses for well over a century that a likely step toward abolishing war would be instituting some form of global government. Yet the peace movement barely mentions the idea, and its advocates as often as not appear rather naive about Western imperialism; certainly they are not central to or well integrated into the peace movement or even, as far as I can tell, into peace studies academia. (Here's a link to one of the main advocacy groups for world government promoting a U.S. war on ISIS.)

All too often the case for world government is even made in this way: Global government would guarantee peace, while its absence guarantees war. The silliness of such assertions, I suspect, damages what may be an absolutely critical cause. Nobody knows what global government guarantees, because it's never been tried. And if national and local governments and every other large human institution are any guide, global government could bring a million different things depending on how it's done. The serious question should be whether there's a way to do it that would make peace more likely, without serious risk of backfiring, and whether pursuing such a course is a more likely path to peace than others.

Does the absence of world government guarantee war? I haven't seen any proof. Of 200 nations, 199 invest far less in war than the United States. Some have eliminated their militaries entirely. Costa Rica is not attacked because it lacks a military. The United States is attacked because of what its military does. Some nations go centuries without war, while others seemingly can't go more than half an election cycle.  In their book One World Democracy, Jerry Tetalman and Byron Belitsos write that nations do not go to war because they are armed or inclined toward violence but because "they are hopelessly frustrated by the fact that they have no legislative or judicial forum in which their grievances can be heard and adjudicated."

Can you, dear reader, recall a time when the U.S. public had a grievance with a foreign country, lamented the absence of a global court to adjudicate it, and demanded that Congress declare and the Pentagon wage a war?  How many pro-war marches have you been on, you lover of justice? When the Taliban offered to let a third country put Bin Laden on trial, was it the U.S. public that replied, "No way, we want a war," or was it the President? When the U.S. Vice President met with oil company executives to plan the occupation of Iraq, do you think any of them mentioned their frustration at the weakness of international law and arbitration? When the U.S. President in 2013 could not get Congress or the public to accept a new war on Syria and finally agreed to negotiate the removal of chemical weapons without war, why was war the first choice rather than the second? When advocates of world government claim that democracies don't wage war, or heavily armed nations are not more likely to wage war, or nations with cultures that celebrate war are not more likely to wage war, I think they hurt their cause.

When you start up a campaign to abolish the institution of war, you hear from all kinds of people who have the solution for you. And almost all of them have great ideas, but almost all of them think every other idea but their own is useless. So the solution is world government and nothing else, or a culture of peace and nothing else, or disarmament and nothing else, or ending racism and nothing else, or destroying capitalism and nothing else, or counter-recruitment and nothing else, or media reform and nothing else, or election campaign funding reform and nothing else, or creating peace in our hearts and radiating it outward and nothing else, etc. So those of us who find value in all of the above, have to encourage people to pick their favorite and get busy on it. But we also have to try to prioritize. So, again, the serious question is whether world government should be pursued and whether it should be a top priority or something that waits at the bottom of the list.

There are, of course, serious arguments that world government would make everything worse, that large government is inevitably dysfunctional and an absolutely large government would be dysfunctional absolutely.  Serious, if vague, arguments have been made in favor of making our goal "anarcracy" rather than world democracy. These arguments are overwhelmed in volume by paranoid pronouncements like the ones in this typical email I received:

"War is a crime, yes agreed totally, but Man-made Global Warming is a complete scam.  I know this to be a fact.  Aurelio Peccei, co-founder of the Club of Rome, offered me a job as one of his PAs (my uncle, Sir Harry, later Lord Pilkington went to the first ever Bilderberg Conference in 1954, a year before he came a Director of the Bank of England and was a loyal member of the global corporate elite) and he told me that this was all a scheme to help frighten the world into accepting global governance on their terms. Be very careful, you are unwittingly playing their game.
Best wishes
Justin"

One of the huge advantages of global government would seem to be that it might globally address global warming. Yet the horror of global government is so great that people believe the droughts and tornados destroying the earth all around them are somehow a secret plot to trick us into setting up a world government. 

A half-century ago the idea of world government was acceptable and popular.  Now, when we hear about those days it's often in sinister tones focused on the worst motivations of the worst players at the time. Less common are accounts reminding us of a hopeful, well-meant, but unfinished project.

I think advocates for a world federation and global rule of law are onto an important idea that ought to be pursued immediately. Global warming leaves us little time for taking on other projects, but this is a project critical to addressing that crisis. And it's a project that I think can coexist with moving more power to provinces, localities, and individuals.

The bigger the Leviathan, claims Ian Morris, the less war there will be, as long as the Leviathan is the United States and it never stops waging wars. Advocates of world government tend to agree with the first part of that, and I think they're partially right.  The rule of law helps to regulate behavior.  But so do other factors. I think Scotland could leave the UK or Catalonia leave Spain, Quebec leave Canada, Vermont leave the United States without the chance of war increasing. On the contrary, I think some of these new countries would be advocates for peace. Were Texas to secede, that might be a different story. That is to say, habits of peace and cultures of peace necessary to allow a world federation might render such a federation less necessary -- still perhaps necessary, but less so. If the U.S. public demanded peace and cooperation and participation in the International Criminal Court, it would be ready to demand participation in a world federation, but peace might already have -- at least in great measure -- arrived.

Extreme national exceptionalism, which is not required by nationalism, is clearly a driver of war, hostility, and exploitation. President Obama recently said that he only wakes up in the morning because the United States is the one indispensible nation (don't ask what that makes the others). The theme of his speech was the need to start another war. Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul was once booed at a primary debate, not for opposing war, but for suggesting that the golden rule be applied to relations with foreign countries. Clearly we need to become world citizens in our minds as well as in written law.

Rudolf Gelsey recently sent me his book, Mending Our Broken World: A Path to Perpetual Peace, which led me on to Tetalman and Belitsos's book. I think these authors would benefit from the wisdom of the 1920s Outlawry movement, but I think they do an excellent job of recognizing the successes and failures of the United Nations, and proposing reforms or replacement.  Should we be scared of an international rule of law? Tetalman and Belitsos reply:  

"In truth, living under a system of war and anarchy with WMDs readily available for use on the field of battle -- that is the really frightening choice when it is compared with tyranny."

This is the key, I think. Continuing with the war system and with environmental destruction threaten the world. Far better to try a world with a government than to lose the world. Far better a system that tries to punish individual war makers than one that bombs entire nations.

How do we get there? Tetalman and Belitsos recommend abolishing the veto at the United Nations, expanding Security Council membership, creating a tax base for a U.N. that currently receives about 0.5 percent what the world invests in war, and giving up war powers in favor of U.N. policing. They also propose kicking out of the United Nations any nations not holding free elections, or violating international laws. Clearly that would have to be a requirement going forward and not enforced retroactively or you'd lose too many big members and spoil the whole plan.

The authors envision some transition period in which the U.N. uses war to prevent war, before arriving at the golden age of using only police. I'm inclined to believe that imagined step would have to be leapt over for this to work. The U.S./NATO/U.N. have been using war to rid the world of war for three-quarters of a century with a dismal record of failure. I suspect the authors are also wrong to propose expansion of the European Union as one way to get to a global federation. The European Union is the second greatest purveyor of violence on earth right now. Perhaps the BRICS or other non-aligned nations could begin this process better, which after all is going to require the United States either rising or sinking to humility unimaginable today.

Perhaps a federation can be established only on the question of war, or only on the question of nuclear disarmament, or climate preservation. The trouble, of course, is that the willingness of the dominant bullies to engage in one is as unlikely as, and intimately connected to, each of the others. What would make all of this more likely would be if we began talking about it, thinking about it, planning for it, dreaming it, or even just hearing the words when we sing John Lennon songs. The U.S. peace movement is currently drenched in nationalism, uses "we" to mean the U.S. military, and thinks of "global citizen" as a bit of silly childishness. That needs to change. And fast.

By Judy Bello

There are those who want to support emerging bills in Congress that would limit the administration's ability to put 'boots on the ground' and give  Obama an authorization for the current air war with an expiration date.   I very much disagree with this strategy and believe that even promoting it is counter productive.   Sometimes, instead of supporting a new law that does not do the whole job, and which will cause the current 'status' to become 'quo' and to be taken for granted, we should encourage people to stand up and say 'no' 'no' 'no' to the whole initiative.  We should be protesting in the streets about the current bombing campaign in Syria and Iraq, and talking to our Congressional  representatives about that rather than giving them an opportunity to kick the can down the road.  What negative authorization has ever been retired at the appointed hour?   It's just a way of buying time.  

What I am talking about is the usefulness of taking a 'moderate' position at time where only drastic measures will make any difference - it isn't useful.    What I mean is that the way politicos implicitly frame the problem when they talk about Congressional positions backing Obama and related political logistics is buying and perpetuating a misleading story line.     The entire perception of reality that this bombing campaign (dare I say 'War') is based on is a lie.  The United States has been, either deliberately or through incompetence, supporting ISIS along with al Nusra (al Qaeda) and Ahrar al Sham and the Farooq Brigade (regressive, native Syrian extremists) for at least a couple of years.   The weapons from Libya transported through Turkey and the money to pay the fighters coming from wealthy Saudi, Qatari, Emirati  and Kuwaiti patrons have been combined with US training that does not (most likely cannot) discriminate between 'moderate rebel' and 'extremist jihadi'.   And now Congress just voted to do more of it, despite the fact that our Air Force is aggressively attacking these same guys, and despite the massive media campaign in support of the military expedition, even the mainstream media has had to admit that there is no longer a 'moderate' opposition in Syria, if there ever was one.

It can't have been a big surprise when the ISIS rolled into Mosul and soon left with a very long caravan of shiny new unopened US weapons intended for the Iraqi military.   It must have taken many hours for them to traverse the five or six hundred miles  from Mosul to Raqqa.    If we were going to bomb, the long and slow moving caravan with tanks and car carriers traveling through open desert from Iraq to Syria would have made a clean target.   But instead,  we are bombing the infrastructure of Syria, a country - not a regime and not Assad.   We are bombing  the resources of a community while we say our opponent is a group of fighters who, by happenstance, don't care a whit about the welfare of the people or the infrastructure and have the capability to disappear into the background when there is an attack.   It is crazy!  Those fanatical Saudi Clerics who lead the call to Jihad must be laughing their butts off!    Those dumb Americans terrorizing the people from the air, destroying the infrastructure of the country so it will be impossible for anyone to govern and provide services, and then, soon enough, they'll tire of it - their authorization will expire - and the rubble will be left to . . . guess who?  ISIS and al Nusra.     

The United States has other resources for defeating ISIS and their Ilk besides bombing.  The mighty USA ought to  have the capability (through economic and social carrots and sticks) to deter our allies in the Middle East from arming ISIS and paying militants to fight the governments ISIS is attacking.    We ought to have the capability to shut down ISIS' oil business.   We did a pretty good job of wrecking Iran's economy.   Why not target an upstate like ISIS?  Yes, today or yesterday we bombed Syrian Oil Refineries.   But you can bet we won't bomb the ones in Iraq and Kurdistan.    What we need to do is get Turkey and our good friends the Kurds to stop selling ISIS' oil on the black market.   I bet that if we promised the Kurds customers for their own oil in return for boycotting ISIS, things would change pretty quickly.    Turkey is a different problem because there are a lot of ISIS fighters bunked there.   But, they just might be ready for some assistance in clearing up that problem.      The US war on Syria and Iraq will, if even temporarily successful, push an increasing number of ISIS fighters back into Turkey, which is surely  a problem for Turkey.  

We can use sanctions to make certain that ISIS can't get parts to maintain their oil wells and refineries and engineering support which they surely need to produce the oil.   The wells started to function in 2013 after the EU lifted their sanctions on the Syrian oil wells.  Instead of bombing refineries which are valuable to the people of Syria, we should be sanctioning ISIS oil business.   So, we are not without resources for fighting ISIS if we forgo the bombing campaign.   And it is time to do so before another country is completely laid to waste.

Look carefully at what we accomplished when we saved Libya from, from, well from law and order and fresh drinking water, from free medical care and free education.  Boy are they free!  And then there is Afghanistan - have we really helped the Afghan people over the last 13 years of war?   Are they secure and rich and living in freedom in a secular democracy?   Are they rid of the Taliban and the Warlords (still on our payroll)?  Afghanistan had a secular socialist government that was modernizing the country and beginning to provide services when somebody (oh, that was us!) decided they were too chummy with our arch enemy the USSR,  and trained death squads to 'provide the Soviet Union with their very own Vietnam'.    And look where we are now.
 
So lets not to encourage people to buy into the big lie by trying to modify our response within it, but rather to shine a light on the truth.    The truth is, the US  bombing campaign in Iraq and Syria needs to end now, because in any ordered world, it is crazy and contradictory and destructive.    People, including Congress, and I talk to my rep and her aides about this regularly, need to see past the lie so they can know what the right thing to do is, and so they can understand why it is the right, and the  only thing to do that will make a difference.   And by the way, I don't take full credit, but I (along with other activists) have been talking to our congressional rep about arming the militants for about a year - and she voted against the bill.    We need to start driving towards the truth and not just setting up a fence in the distance.  

I know many of us want to intercede with Congress where they are at, but sometimes you have to get outside the box; not just think outside the box, but operate outside the box, to see real change.     And we very much need real change right now.    Whoever is driving this initiative is setting up a third world war, and I don't even want to think about what that would mean.    Talk about a 'race to the bottom', they are betting on "which will come first: economic collapse or global war?"    And our guys choose global war!   We need to start resisting the paradigm advanced by the powers that be and the lies in the mainstream media because these wars can have no good outcome for the people. . . and the people are us.

We won't necessarily know what a Musteite is, but I'm inclined to think it would help if we did. I'm using the word to mean "having a certain affinity for the politics of A.J. Muste."

I had people tell me I was a Musteite when I had at best the vaguest notion of who A.J. Muste had been. I could tell it was a compliment, and from the context I took it to mean that I was someone who wanted to end war. I guess I sort of brushed that off as not much of a compliment. Why should it be considered either particularly praiseworthy or outlandishly radical to want to end war? When someone wants to utterly and completely end rape or child abuse or slavery or some other evil, we don't call them extremist radicals or praise them as saints. Why is war different?

The possibility that war might not be different, that it might be wholly abolished, could very well be a thought that I picked up third-hand from A.J. Muste, as so many of us have picked up so much from him, whether we know it or not. His influence is all over our notions of labor and organizing and civil rights and peace activism. His new biography, American Gandhi: A.J. Muste and the History of Radicalism in the Twentieth Century by Leilah Danielson is well worth reading, and has given me a new affection for Muste despite the book's own rather affection-free approach.

Martin Luther King Jr. told an earlier Muste biographer, Nat Hentoff, "The current emphasis on nonviolent direct action in the race relations field is due more to A.J. than to anyone else in the country." It is also widely acknowledged that without Muste there would not have been formed such a broad coalition against the war on Vietnam. Activists in India have called him "the American Gandhi."

The American Gandhi was born in 1885 and immigrated with his family at age 6 from Holland to Michigan. He studied in Holland, Michigan, the same town that we read about in the first few pages of Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army, and at a college later heavily funded by the Prince Family, from which Blackwater sprang. The stories of both Muste and Prince begin with Dutch Calvinism and end up as wildly apart as imaginable. At the risk of offending Christian admirers of either man, I think neither story -- and neither life -- would have suffered had the religion been left out.

Muste would have disagreed with me, of course, as some form of religion was central to his thinking during much of his life. By the time of World War I he was a preacher and a member of the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR). He opposed war in 1916 when opposing war was acceptable.  And when most of the rest of the country fell in line behind Woodrow Wilson and obediently loved war in 1917, Muste didn't change. He opposed war and conscription. He supported the struggle for civil liberties, always under attack during wars. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) was formed by Muste's FOR colleagues in 1917 to treat symptoms of war, just as it does today. Muste refused to preach in support of war and was obliged to resigned from his church, stating in his resignation letter that the church should be focused on creating "the spiritual conditions that should stop the war and render all wars unthinkable." Muste became a volunteer with the ACLU advocating for conscientious objectors and others persecuted for war opposition in New England. He also became a Quaker.

In 1919 Muste found himself the leader of a strike of 30,000 textile workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts, learning on the job -- and on the picket line, where he was arrested and assaulted by police, but returned immediately to the line. By the time the struggle was won, Muste was general secretary of the newly formed Amalgamated Textile Workers of America. Two years later, he was directing Brookwood Labor College outside of Katonah, New York. By the mid-1920s, as Brookwood succeeded, Muste had become a leader of the progressive labor movement nationwide. At the same time, he served on the executive committee of the national FOR from 1926-1929 as well as on the national committee of the ACLU. Brookwood struggled to bridge many divides until the American Federation of Labor destroyed it with attacks from the right, aided a bit with attacks from the left by the Communists. Muste labored on for labor, forming the Conference for Progressive Labor Action, and organizing in the South, but "if we are to have morale in the labor movement," he said, "we must have a degree of unity, and, if we are to have that, it follows, for one thing, that we cannot spend all our time in controversy and fighting with each other -- maybe 99 per cent of the time, but not quite 100 per cent."

Muste's biographer follows that same 99 percent formula for a number of chapters, covering the infighting of the activists, the organizing of the unemployed, the forming of the American Workers Party in 1933, and in 1934 the Auto-Lite strike in Toledo, Ohio, that led to the formation of the United Auto Workers. The unemployed, joining in the strike on behalf of the workers, were critical to success, and their commitment to do so may have helped the workers decide to strike in the first place.  Muste was central to all of this and to progressive opposition to fascism during these years. The sit-down strike at Goodyear in Akron was led by former students of Muste.

Muste sought to prioritize the struggle for racial justice and to apply Gandhian techniques, insisting on changes in culture, not just government. "If we are to have a new world," he said, "we must have new men; if you want a revolution, you must be revolutionized." In 1940, Muste became national secretary of FOR and launched a Gandhian campaign against segregation, bringing on new staff including James Farmer and Bayard Rustin, and helping to found the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). The nonviolent actions that many associate with the 1950s and 1960s began in the 1940s. A Journey of Reconciliation predated the Freedom Rides by 14 years.

Muste predicted the rise of the Military Industrial Complex and the militarized adventurism of the post-World War II United States in 1941. Somewhere beyond the comprehension of most Americans, and even his biographer, Muste found the wisdom to continue opposing war during a second world war, advocating instead for nonviolent defense and a peaceful, cooperative, and generous foreign policy, defending the rights of Japanese Americans, and once again opposing a widespread assault on civil liberties.  "If I can't love Hitler, I can't love at all," said Muste, articulating the widespread commonsense that one should love one's enemies, but doing so in the primary case in which virtually everyone else, to this day, advocates for the goodness of all-out vicious violence and hatred.

Of course, those who had opposed World War I and the horrible settlement that concluded it, and the fueling of fascism for years -- and who could see what the end of World War II would bring, and who saw the potential in Gandhian techniques -- must have had a harder time than most in accepting that war was inevitable and World War II justified.

Muste, I am sure, took no satisfaction in watching the U.S. government create a cold war and a global empire in line with his own prediction. Muste continued to push back against the entire institution of war, remarking that, "the very means nations use to provide themselves with apparent or temporary 'defense' and 'security' constitute the greatest obstacle to the attainment of genuine or permanent collective security. They want international machinery so that the atomic armaments race may cease; but the atomic armaments race has to stop or the goal of the world order recedes beyond human reach."

It was in this period, 1948-1951 that MLK Jr. was attending Crozer Theological Seminary, attending speeches by, and reading books by, Muste, who would later advise him in his own work, and who would play a key role in urging civil rights leaders to oppose the war on Vietnam. Muste worked with the American Friends Service Committee, and many other organizations, including the Committee to Stop the H-Bomb Tests, which would become the National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy (SANE); and the World Peace Brigade.

Muste warned against a U.S. war on Vietnam in 1954. He led opposition to it in 1964. He struggled with great success to broaden the anti-war coalition in 1965. At the same time, he struggled against the strategy of watering down war opposition in an attempt to find broader appeal. He believed that "polarization" brought "contradictions and differences" to the surface and allowed for the possibility of greater success. Muste chaired the November 8 Mobilization Committee (MOBE) in 1966, planning a massive action in April 1967. But upon returning from a trip to Vietnam in February, giving talks about the trip, and staying up all night drafting the announcement of the April demonstration, he began to complain of back pain and did not live much longer.

He did not see King's speech at Riverside Church on April 4. He did not see the mass mobilization or the numerous funerals and memorials to himself. He did not see the war ended. He did not see the war machine and war planning continue as if little had been learned. He did not see the retreat from economic fairness and progressive activism during the decades to come. But A.J. Muste had been there before. He'd seen the upsurges of the 1920s and 1930s and lived to help bring about the peace movement of the 1960s. When, in 2013, public pressure helped stop a missile attack on Syria, but nothing positive took its place, and a missile attack was launched a year later against the opposite side in the Syrian war, Muste would not have been shocked. His cause was not the prevention of a particular war but the elimination of the institution of war, the cause also of the new campaign in 2014 World Beyond War.

What can we learn from someone like Muste who persevered long enough to see some, but not all, of his radical ideas go mainstream? He didn't bother with elections or even voting. He prioritized nonviolent direct action. He sought to form the broadest possible coalition, including with people who disagreed with him and with each other on fundamental questions but who agreed on the important matter at hand. Yet he sought to keep those coalitions uncompromising on matters of the greatest importance. He sought to advance their goals as a moral cause and to win over opponents by intellect and emotion, not force. He worked to change world views. He worked to build global movements, not just local or national. And, of course, he sought to end war, not just to replace one war with a different one. That meant struggling against a particular war, but doing so in the manner best aimed at reducing or abolishing the machinery behind it.

I'm not, after all, a very good Musteite. I agree with much, but not all. I reject his religious motivations. And of course I'm not much like A.J. Muste, lacking his skills, interests, abilities, and accomplishments. But I do feel close to him and appreciate more than ever being called a Musteite.  And I appreciate that A.J. Muste and millions of people who appreciated his work in one way or another passed it on to me. Muste's influence on people everyone knows, like Martin Luther King, Jr., and people who influenced people everyone knows, like Bayard Rustin, was significant. He worked with people still active in the peace movement like David McReynolds and Tom Hayden. He worked with James Rorty, father of one of my college professors, Richard Rorty. He spent time at Union Theological Seminary, where my parents studied. He lived on the same block, if not building, where I lived for a while at 103rd Street and West End Avenue in New York, and Muste was apparently married to a wonderful woman named Anne who went by Anna, as am I. So, I like the guy. But what gives me hope is the extent to which Musteism exists in our culture as a whole, and the possibility that someday we will all be Musteites.

And here is one of many great things he created: http://warisacrime.org/lesssafe

SaveCivilianEducation.org

Signers listed at bottom

Over the last several decades, the Pentagon,conservative forces, and corporations have been systematically working to expand their presence in the K-12 learning environment and in public universities. The combined impact of the military, conservative think tanks and foundations,  and of corporatization of our public educational systems has eroded the basic democratic concept of civilian public education.   It is a trend that, if allowed to continue, will weaken the primacy of civilian rule and, ultimately, our country’s commitment to democratic ideals.

The signers of this statement believe it is urgent for all advocates of social justice, peace and the environment to recognize the dangerous nature of this problem and confront it with deliberate action.

THE THREAT TO CIVILIAN EDUCATION

The most aggressive outside effort to use the school system to teach an ideology with ominous long-term implications for society comes from the military establishment. Over the last two decades, with relatively little media coverage or public outcry, the Pentagon’s involvement in schools and students’ lives has grown exponentially. Now, for example:

• Every school day, at least half a million high school students attend Junior ROTC classes to receive instruction from retired officers who are handpicked by the Pentagon to teach its own version of history and civics. These students are assigned “ranks” and conditioned to believe that military and civilian values are similar, with the implication that unquestioning obedience to authority is therefore a feature of good citizenship.

• Armed forces academies are being established in some public schools (Chicago now has eight), where all students are given a heavy dose of military culture and values.

• A network of military-related programs is spreading in hundreds of elementary and middle schools. Examples are the Young Marines and Starbase programs, and military programs that sneak into schools under the cloak of Science / Technology / Engineering / Math (STEM) education.

• Military recruiters are trained to pursue “school ownership” as their goal (see: “Army School Recruiting Program Handbook”). Their frequent presence in classrooms, lunch areas and at assemblies has the effect of popularizing military values, soldiering and, ultimately, war.

• Since 2001, federal law has overridden civilian school autonomy and family privacy when it comes to releasing student contact information to the military. Additionally, each year thousands of schools allow the military to administer its entrance exam — the ASVAB — to 10^th-12^th graders, allowing recruiters to bypass laws protecting parental rights and the privacy of minors and gain access to personal information on hundreds of thousands of students.

THE THREAT TO PUBLIC EDUCATION

Efforts by groups outside the school system to inject conservatism and corporate values into the learning process have been going on for a number of years. In a recent example of right-wing educational intervention, The New York Times reported that tea party groups, using lesson plans and coloring books, have been pushing schools to “teach a conservative interpretation of the Constitution, where the federal government is a creeping and unwelcome presence in the lives of freedom-loving Americans.” (See:http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/17/us/constitution-has-its-day-amid-a-struggle-for-its-spirit.html )

Corporations have been projecting their influence in schools with devices like Channel One, a closed-circuit TV program that broadcasts commercial content daily to captive student audiences in 8,000 schools. Some companies have succeeded in convincing schools to sign exclusive contracts for pizza, soft drinks and other products, with the goal of teaching early brand loyalty to children. A National Education Policy Center report issued in November 2011 documents the various ways in which business/school partnerships are harming children educationally by channeling student thinking “into a corporate-friendly track” and stunting their ability to think critically. (See: http://nepc.colorado.edu/publication/schoolhouse-commercialism-2011 )

The development of this corporate-friendly track dovetails with a radical corporate agenda to dismantle America’s public education system. States across the country are slashing educational spending, outsourcing public teacher jobs, curbing collective-bargaining rights, and marginalizing teachers’ unions. There is a proliferation of charter and “cyber” schools that promote private sector involvement and a push toward for-profit schools where the compensation paid to private management companies is tied directly to student performance on standardized assessments.  The cumulative effect is the creation of institutions that cultivate a simplistic ideology that merges consumerism with subservience. (See: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/12/michigan-privatize-public-education )

The corporatization of education via charter schools and the administration sector growth at universities is another troubling trend for public education.  Diane Ravitch’s book Reign of Error ( http://www.npr.org/2013/09/27/225748846/diane-ravitch-rebukes-education-activists-reign-of-error ) and Henry A. Giroux’s newest book, Neoliberalism’s War on Higher Education,  ( http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/22548-henry-giroux-beyond-neoliberal-miseducation ) give pointers to the doubtful role of corporate values in public education. 

Why is this happening?  Giroux notes that “Chris Hedges, the former New York Times correspondent, appeared on Democracy Now! in 2012 and told host Amy Goodman the federal government spends some $600 billion a year on education—“and the corporations want it.”

There are also some organizations supporting efforts to introduce history and civics lessons from a progressive perspective, such as the Howard Zinn Education Project (https://zinnedproject.org ) and Rethinking Schools ( http://www.rethinkingschools.org ). And a small movement is working against Channel One and the commercialization of the school environment (e.g., http://www.commercialalert.org/issues/education and ( http://www.obligation.org ).

STOPPING THESE THREATS

There is reason to be hopeful about reversing this trend if we look, for example, at some of the successes in grassroots efforts to curb militarism in schools. In 2009, a coalition of high school students, parents and teachers in the very conservative, military-dominated city of San Diego succeeded in getting their elected school board to shut down JROTC firing ranges at eleven high schools. Two years later, the same coalition got the school board to pass a policy significantly limiting military recruiting in all of its schools. Though such initiatives are relatively few in number, similar victories have been won in other school districts and on the state level in Hawaii and Maryland.

There are also some organizations supporting efforts to introduce history and civics lessons from a progressive perspective, such as the Zinn Education Project (www.zinnedproject.org) and Rethinking Schools (www.rethinkingschools.org). And a small movement is working against Channel One and the commercialization of the school environment (e.g., http://www.commercialalert.org/issues/education/ and http://www.obligation.org/ ).

As promising and effective as these efforts are, they pale in comparison to the massive scale of what groups on the other side of the political spectrum are proactively doing in the educational environment to preserve the influence of conservatism, militarism and corporate power.

It is time for progressive organizations, foundations and media to confront this and become equally involved in the educational system. It is especially important that more organizations unite to oppose the growing intrusion of the Pentagon in K-12 schools and universities. Restoring the primacy of critical thinking and democratic values in our culture cannot be done without stopping the militarization and corporate takeover of public education.

Michael Albert
Z Magazine

Pat Alviso
Southern California
Military Families Speak Out (MFSO)

Marc Becker
Co-chair,
Historians Against the War

Bill Bigelow
Curriculum Editor,
Rethinking Schools

Peter Bohmer
Faculty in political economy,
Evergreen State College

Bill Branson
VVAW National Office

Noam Chomsky
Professor, Retired, MIT

Michelle Cohen
Project Great Futures,
Los Angeles, CA

Tom Cordaro
Pax Christi USA Ambassador
of Peace, Naperville, IL

Pat Elder
National Coalition to
Protect Student Privacy

Margaret Flowers
Co-director,
It’s Our Economy 

Libby Frank
Northwest Suburban Peace
& Education Project,
Arlington Hts., IL

Hannah Frisch
Civilian Soldier
Alliance

Kathy Gilberd
National Lawyers Guild
Military Law Task Force

Henry Armand Giroux
Professor, McMaster
University

Frank Goetz
Director, West Surburban
Faith Based Peace Coalition,
Wheaton, Il

Tom Hayden
Activist, Author,
Teacher

Arlene Inouye
Treasurer, United Teachers
of Los Angeles

Iraq Veterans Against
the War (IVAW)
National Office,
New York City

Rick Jahnkow
Project on Youth and
Non-Military Opportunities,
Encinitas, CA

Jerry Lembcke
Emeritus Professor,
Holy Cross College

Jorge Mariscal
Professor, Univ. of
California San Diego

Patrick McCann
National VFP President,
Montgomery County (MD)
Education Association
Board Member

Stephen McNeil
American Friends
Service Committee
San Francisco

Carlos Muñoz
Professor Emeritus
UC Berkeley Ethnic
Studies Dept.

Michael Nagler
President, Metta Center
for Nonviolence

Jim O’Brien
Co-chair, Historians
Against the War

Isidro Ortiz
Professor, San Diego
State University

Jesus Palafox
American Friends Service
Committee, Chicago

Pablo Paredes
AFSC 67 Sueños

Michael Parenti, Ph.D.
Author & lecturer

Bill Scheurer
Executive Director
of On Earth Peace,
Stop Recruiting Kids
Campaign

Cindy Sheehan
Peace and Social
Justice Activist

Joanne Sheehan
New England Regional
War Resisters League

Mary Shesgreen
Chair, Fox Valley Citizens
for Peace & Justice,
Elgin, IL

Sam Smith
Fellowship of
Reconciliation,
Chicago

Kristin Stoneking
Executive Director
Fellowship of
Reconciliation USA

David Swanson
World Beyond War

Chris Venn
San Pedro Neighbors for
Peace & Justice,
San Pedro, CA

Veterans for Peace
National Office,
St. Louis, MO

Veterans for Peace
Chicago Chapter

Vietnam Veterans
Against the War
National Office,
Champaign, IL

Amy Wagner
YA-YA Network
(Youth Activists-Youth
Allies), New York City

Harvey Wasserman
Activist

West Suburban
Faith-based
PEACE Coalition
Wheaton, IL

Colonel Ann Wright,
Retired U.S. Army/
Army Reserves

Mickey Z.
Author of Occupy
this Book: Mickey Z.
on Activism

Kevin Zeese
Co-director,
It’s Our Economy

Open invitation to
additional
Endorsements

By Joshua Denniss from Darwin, Australia.

On Tuesday the U.S began bombing ISIS targets inside Syria, in concert with its five allied regimes: Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Jordan. It began doing so without the approval of the U.S. Congress nor the United Nations, making the war in Syria unconstitutional and illegal. As it is, empires are rarely held accountable for their actions, including switching sides i.e. who they fight and who they support in the Middle East.

It was just over a year ago that officials from the U.S were insisting that bombing and attacking Bashar al-Assad (president of Syria) was a moral and strategic imperative. To combat Al-Assad, the U.S government armed and trained Syrian rebels that opposed President Al-Assad's regime. These men, once rebels turned into trained soldiers, went on to join ISIS. This was due to the fact that both groups are opposed to President Al-Assad and the ISIS success in fighting the Iraqi government. The ISIS existence, its growing number of members and its resources are mostly the result of U.S. interference.

Now that U.S interests have changed they've turned and switched sides, declaring war on the very people that they have armed and trained. If, when I broadly blanket the entire reason for the ongoing war in the Middle East to be the United States and its allies' fault, you sit there and say "Well, it's easy to just say something like that without providing proper reason of how or why." Let me tell you why I believe it is. The U.S. and its allies constantly provide arms and resources to both sides of a conflict under the pretense that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend."

In reality, they are just creating more enemies; strengthening them and then having to fight them in some future conflict. Weapons do not rain from the sky in the Middle East like some of you may think. Seventy nine percent of them are shipped there by the U.S, with the rest mostly by its five allies mentioned above. When loyalties and alliances change as with ISIS, the only answer they have is to bomb the ISIS stronghold which, in actuality, kills more innocents than terrorists, destroying civilians' homes.

These actions create more anti-American sentiment in the area, resulting to a soar in ISIS recruits. The increasing number of people wanting to join ISIS is understandable -- why not join the group who defends you from the people bombing your home and your people? This exact situation has been created and emulated time and time again just pertaining to different groups. This same reason is the cause for the ongoing conflict.

Do we, as the people of this world, honestly not see how this works by now? Do we, as global citizens, honestly believe going to war AGAIN is the right answer? Do we want our fathers, brothers, mothers and sisters dying on both sides in another futile and frivolous war? Stop following your government blindly into war because this is not the answer!

We, as a people, need to begin prompting our governments and leaders to form peaceful and solution-based efforts, not more wars. I, for one, feel that a large portion of the world is also sick and tired of the hatred and violence being perpetuated by these groups, sick of people believing borders drawn on a map define who we are, sick of people thinking these men, women and children are any different from us! Some of them may be angry and misguided, but so are a great number of us. It's time we think of each other as ONE people because that's what we are.

Listen here.

By David Swanson

War, our leaders tell us, is needed to make the world a better place.

Well, maybe not so much for the 43 million people who've been driven out of their homes and remain in a precarious state as internally displaced persons (24 million), refugees (12 million), and those struggling to return to their homes.

The U.N.'s figures for the end of 2013 (found here) list Syria as the origin of 9 million such exiles. The cost of escalating the war in Syria is often treated as a financial cost or -- in rare cases -- as a human cost in injury and death. There is also the human cost of ruining homes, neighborhoods, villages, and cities as places in which to live.

Just ask Colombia which comes in second place following years of war -- a place where peace talks are underway and desperately needed with -- among other catastrophes -- nearly 6 million people deprived of their homes.

The war on drugs is rivaled by the war on Africa, with the Democratic Republic of the Congo coming in third after years of the U.S.-backed deadliest war since World War II, but only because the war on "terror" has slipped. Afghanistan is in fourth place with 3.6 million desperate, suffering, dying, and in many cases understandably angry and resentful at losing a place to live.  (Remember that over 90% of Afghans not only didn't participate in the events of 9-11 involving Saudis flying planes into buildings, but have never even heard of those events.) Post-liberation Iraq is at 1.5 million displaced and refugees. Other nations graced by regular U.S. missile strikes that make the top of the list include Somalia, Pakistan, Yemen -- and, of course, with Israeli help: Palestine.

Humanitarian wars have a homelessness problem.

Part of that problem finds its way to Western borders where the people involved should be greeted with restitution rather than resentment. Honduran children aren't bringing Ebola-infected Korans. They're fleeing a U.S.-backed coup and Fort Benning-trained torturers.  The "immigration problem" and "immigrants rights" debate should be replaced with a serious discussion of refugee rights, human rights, and the-right-to-peace.

Start here.

By Dave Lindorff

How’s this for a juxtaposition on how nations respond to a global health catastrophe. Check out these two headlines from yesterday’s news:

Cuba Sends Doctors to Ebola Areas

US to Deploy 3000 Troops as Ebola Crisis Worsens

Join us for the powerful documentary Body of War (co-produced and co-directed by Phil Donahue), followed by a discussion with whistleblowers and journalists.

Nonviolent civil resistance for peace and climate at the White House

When: Tuesday, September 23, 10 a.m.

Where: Pennsylvania Ave. in front of White House.

More information.

Late Wednesday night, President Obama announced the expansion of ongoing U.S. airstrikes in Iraq and the start of airstrikes in Syria for the first time with the aim to "degrade and ultimately destroy" ISIS, also known as IS.

In recent months IS has spread a wave of oppression and violence that goes well beyond the headline-catching executions and massacres to affecting millions of Iraqis and Syrians through fear, exploitation and gender-based violence. Now 12 years into the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Iraq, we witness how militarism expands violence and destroys hope rather than create lasting solutions to ongoing crisis.

War Resisters League condemns the violence of both U.S. military intervention, and the reactionary forces - led by IS - that it claims to be intervening. Further, it is the sectarian lens through which U.S. administrations have viewed Iraq, and increasingly Syria, that contributes to the suppression of emancipatory social movements while establishing the conditions for the rise of reactionary groups. By playing a major role in institutionalizing sectarianism in Iraq, and continuing to arm some the most repressive and sectarian regimes in the region - such as Saudi Arabia – the U.S. is deeply implicated in the dynamics at play.

The U.S. however is far from the only player on the scene, with global powers such as Iran, Russia and China backing Bashar al-Assad's campaign of mass death and repression. Beyond competing regimes, there are an Iraqi and Syrian people, and it is their movements – striving for resilience, to survive and thrive – which War Resisters League lends our support:

Grassroots organizing by Organization of Women's Freedom in Iraq, building shelters in a context of ISIS attacks against women.

Federation of Workers Councils and Unions in Iraq writing and organizing against the basic assumptions of global and local oppressors 'Sectarianism is the product of a political conflict, not the reverse'.

Mohja Kafh of Syrian Nonviolence Movement explaining: “People didn't rush to Syria's side and bring with them the people power to mobilize a new kind of horizontal help on the ground, this new kind of power that is not about states and super-states but the technologies and geniuses of a new rising generation”.

Against cynicism and despair that can only offer more destructive violence, these projects and their daily work build hope for a future beyond militarism and empire.

War Resisters League – National Office

(Image by Maysaloun Faraj, "Ahlam: Kites and Shattered Dreams" (2011). Courtesy of Ava Gallery, copyright Maysaloun Faraj)

By John Grant

To do nothing is to send a message to the wrongdoer, and the general public, that the victim has no self-worth and will not marshal the internal resources necessary to reclaim his or her honor. Shattered dignity is not beyond repair, but no elevating and equalizing of dignity can occur without the personal satisfaction of revenge.
        -Thane Rosenbaum, Payback: The Case For Revenge

By Erin Niemela and Tom H. Hastings

President Obama’s Wednesday night address on the Islamic State (ISIL) reintroduced a war weary nation to more violent intervention in Iraq, another war weary nation. The Obama administration claims that airstrikes, military advisors and a Muslim states-American military coalition are the most effective counterterrorism tactics, but that is demonstrably false for two major reasons.

One, the history of US military action in Iraq is a repeatedly failed strategy featuring extremely high costs and poor outcomes.

Two, scholarship in both terrorism and conflict transformation indicates this mix of strategies is a statistical loser.

The people in ISIL are not a "cancer," as President Obama claims. The massive and multifaceted global public health problem is violence, which shares characteristics with many diseases, such as cancer, meth addiction, the Black Death and Ebola. Violence is the disease, not the cure.

This metaphor applies to the violence committed by ISIL and the US alike. Both claim to be using violence to eliminate injustice. Both ISIL and the US dehumanize entire swaths of people in order to justify that violence. Much like drug addicts, both armed groups alienate and indiscriminately harm others while claiming it’s in everyone’s best interest.

The disease of addiction isn’t eradicated when police raid the addict’s family home, accidentally gun down his brother and then shoot him in the head. An addiction--in this case, violence by militarists on all sides--is vanquished with an entirely different approach that scholars in counterterrorism and conflict transformation have found and recommended for years--continually ignored by successive US administrations despite the growing evidence. Here are eight scientifically supported treatments for the ISIL threat that both realists and idealists can and should advocate.

One, stop making more terrorists. Abandon all violent repression tactics. Violent repression, whether by airstrikes, torture or mass arrests, will only backfire. “Despite the conventional confidence in deterrence approaches, repressive actions have never led to decreases in terrorism and have sometimes led to increases in terrorism,” Erica Chenoweth and Laura Dugan stated in their 2012 study in American Sociological Review on 20 years of Israeli counterterrorism strategies. The authors found that indiscriminate repressive counterterrorism efforts – violence used against the entire population from which the terrorist cells operate, such as airstrikes, destruction of property, mass arrests, etc., were associated with increases in terror acts.

Two, stop transferring military arms and equipment to the region. Stop buying and selling the stuff, profitable to a few dealers and harmful to everyone else. We already know that U.S. military weapons sent to Syria, Libya and Iraq, among other Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) states, have been seized or purchased and used by ISIL against civilians.

Three, start generating real sympathy in the population that terrorists claim to "defend." The 2012 Chenoweth and Dugan counterterrorism study also found that indiscriminate conciliatory counterterrorism efforts – positive rewards that benefit the entire identity group from which terrorists draw their support – were the most effective in reducing terror acts over time, particularly when those efforts were sustained over the long-term. Examples of these efforts include signaling negotiation intentions, withdrawing troops, earnestly investigating claims of abuses and admitting mistakes, among others.

Four, stop creating more terrorism targets. Anyone the US purports to protect with violence becomes a target. The Responsibility to Protect does not require violence, and a better policy would be to consult with and support unarmed nonviolent forces that have already succeeded in hot conflict zones. For example, Muslim Peacemaker Teams, located in Najaf, Iraq works with civil society organizations and international and local nongovernmental organizations in Iraq to decrease hostilities and serve civilian survivors. Another group is Nonviolent Peaceforce, a by-request unarmed peacekeeping team with successful fieldwork in South Sudan, Sri Lanka and other armed conflict arenas.

Five, ISIL's violence is an addiction best treated with a humanitarian intervention by caring but firm stakeholders. A humanitarian intervention targets behavior, not the existence of the addict, and mandates collaboration with all on-the-ground stakeholders, including Sunni, Shi'a, Kurds, Christians, Yazidis, businesses, educators, healthcare providers, local politicians, and religious leaders to intervene on the destructive practices of the group. ISIL is entirely made up of ex-civilians – family members, friends and children of civil society; any true humanitarian intervention must include the work and support of the community – not foreign armed forces.

Six, look at the ISIL issue as a community policing problem, not a military problem. No one likes warplanes flying over their home or tanks rolling into their neighborhood, whether in Ferguson, Mo. or Mosul, Iraq. Terrorist activities in a region are best prevented or mitigated by community-based solutions that are culturally sensitive and subject to legitimate laws.

Seven, accept world law enforcement, not US global policing. It is time to strengthen the sovereignty of civil society of all humanity, not arrogate the power to those with war jets and missiles.

Eight, stop pretending to be a leader in MENA. Accept that the borders there will be redrawn by those who live there. This is their region and they resent a full millennium of the combination of crusades followed by colonialism capped off by imperial powers drawing their boundaries and extracting their resources. Stop feeding that long history of violent intervention and give the region a chance to heal. It will not be pretty but our ugly repeated adventures into Iraq have unleashed too much death and destruction too many times. Repeating those disastrous treatments and expecting different outcomes is a symptom of our affliction.

The addiction to violence is curable, but not by more violence. Starving any disease works better than feeding it and more violence produces the obvious--more violence. The Obama administration, and every US administration preceding it, should know better by now.

Erin Niemela (@erinniemela), PeaceVoice Editor and PeaceVoiceTV Channel Manager, is a Master’s Candidate in the Conflict Resolution program at Portland State University, specializing in media framing of violent and nonviolent conflict. Dr. Tom H. Hastings is PeaceVoice Director.

      David Hartsough is featured in a long article and interview in Street Spirit. The article begins:

A Quaker’s Ceaseless Quest for a World Without War

After a lifetime of civil rights sit-ins, blockades at nuclear plants, and acts of anti-war resistance, David Hartsough remains a utopian believer in peace and justice. His latest campaign is perhaps the most quixotic of all. It dreams the impossible dream of a world that has abolished war.

By Terry Messman

      During a long lifetime spent working for peace and social justice, David Hartsough has shown an uncanny instinct for being in the right place at the right time. One can almost trace the modern history of nonviolent movements in America by following the trail of his acts of resistance over the past 60 years.

READ MORE.

*****

Interview by Terry Messman

Steet Spirit: Looking back at a lifetime of nonviolent activism, can you remember the first person who helped set your life on this path?

David Hartsough: Gandhi. My parents gave me Gandhi’s book, All Men Are Brothers, on my 14th or 15th birthday. And Martin Luther King who I met when I was 15.

Spirit: Why was Gandhi’s All Men Are Brothers such an inspiration?

READ MORE.

*****

Interview by Terry Messman

Spirit: David, when were you hired as staff organizer for the American Friends Service Committee in San Francisco?

Hartsough: I was hired in 1973 to be part of the Simple Living Program. My wife Jan and I shared the staff position. Then I began the AFSC Nonviolent Movement Building Program in 1982.

Spirit: As an AFSC staff, how did you become involved in the massive protests at the Diablo Canyon nuclear reactor in the late 1970s and early 1980s?

READ MORE.

*****

Waging Peace: Global Adventures of a Lifelong Activist

by David Hartsough

Published by PM Press, November 2014, 272 pages

Available on Amazon.com

* * * * * * *

Book Readings by David Hartsough

Sunday, November 2, 1 p.m

San Francisco Friends Center, 65 Ninth Street, San Francisco

Sunday, November 9, 7 p.m.

Berkeley Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, 1924 Cedar (at Bonita), Berkeley

Come meet author and activist David Hartsough. David will read from his new book Waging Peace: Global Adventures of a Lifelong Activist, and discuss his adventures in peacemaking.

By Erin Niemela

The re-emergence of former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and his latest book, “World Order,” has prompted accolades and resentments from across the political spectrum. “World Order” is realism re-emerging in a time of American idealistic, “moral” foreign policy. Kissinger campaigns once again for the Westphalian model of world peace in which nation-states draw borders, balance power, demonstrate mutual respect for sovereignty and work to manage conflict, and peace, accordingly.

Kissinger’s realism and humility, as Time Magazine’s Walter Isaacson emphasizes in his Sept. 6 overview of the book, are probably in order for a nation constantly intruding violently in a multitude of conflicts under the guise of democracy, human rights and policing morality. But while a dose of realism is certainly needed in the U.S., Kissinger’s realism is missing the slap-in-the-face reality that strategies and borders drawn by elites with the intention of creating world order and peace are fundamentally irrelevant in the face of massive determined civil resistance.

For a guy who claims to be a realist, Kissinger sure doesn’t seem to recognize the real conditions nation-states are currently facing.  Recent revolutions and movements for change around the world – in the Middle East/North Africa (MENA) region, Asia, the Americas – have brought collective injustices, identity and agency to the forefront of affairs of state, foreign and domestic. We see over and over again that the modern nation-state is no longer nearly as empowered by its monopoly on violence. The existence and security of a nation-state depends now on serving and satisfying citizen needs more than overweening violence or crafting cunning foreign policies. Even discussing world peace and order without including popular demonstrations and civil society is, well, unrealistic. If we want stability, we’re going to have to face real collective injustices on the ground first. That’s where the real power lies, less latent and more real every time it flexes and increases self-awareness.

In his Sept. 6 National Public Radio interview, Kissinger states that the threat of Iran lies with its opportunity to “reconstruct the ancient Persian Empire … in the rebuilding of the Middle East that will inevitably have to take place when the new international borders [are] drawn. Because the borders of the settlement of 1919-’20 are essentially collapsing.” ISIS, however, “is a group of adventurers with a very aggressive ideology. But they have to conquer more and more territory before they can become a strategic, permanent reality.” That’s Kissinger’s realism – power comes with permanence and territorial conquest, and this stable control is determined by elite border-drawers with strategic interests.

What new realists know is that territorial control and monopolized violence are outdated forms of power. Motivated, disciplined people with a collective grievance are the most genuine threat to nation-state stability and security.  Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan’s 2011 book, “Why Civil Resistance Works,” demonstrated this threat when their study of 323 maximal goal campaigns (overthrowing dictatorships or authoritarian regimes) found that nonviolent people power movements were twice as likely to succeed as violent insurgencies.

With this kind of knowledge, Iran is less threatening because it’s not just a permanent territory full of “mad mullahs” who can tell people where and when to fight and with which weapons. Iran is full of, well, Iranians. Real people who value education, use gadgets, share photoshopped memes and wear jeans; people who have collective efficacy and, realistically, more capacity to rein in any disruptive behavior (especially when it comes to the mutually assured destruction of even one 'tiny' nuclear war) as any Westphalian-inspired model. ISIS is full of empowered people too, but its overreaching violence will inevitably be its downfallwhen Syrian and Iraqi people take control (if the U.S. would stop bombing them, of course.)

Kissinger should, but fails to, realize the irony that borders – whether those of a regional or geographic nature or those along identity or political lines – are collapsing in the MENA region for one major reason: the people who live within those borders know they had no part in drawing them and are continually recognizing that they can now take part. This makes the Westphalian world order model of elite border drawing even more unrealistic. When will Western-European elites learn that people aren’t going to continue to just follow orders, to build the walls and live within them that the elites desire?

Advocating international governance and respect for law is fine if we take consensus, cultural sensitivity and civil society needs into consideration. But if world leaders want real peace and order, borders and sovereignty, they need to recognize their real dependence on civil society and that they cannot achieve either order or peace without our full and valued consent. That’s the new realpolitik.

Erin Niemela is a Master’s Candidate in the Conflict Resolution program at Portland State University and Editor for PeaceVoice.

An excellent report (click for PDF):

By Dave Lindorff

Flash! The US has re-invaded Iraq!

By John Horgan

Once again, U.S. leaders are beating the war drums–or rather, beating them harder, because when in recent memory have the drums fallen silent? Aspiring President Hillary Clinton and Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham are all urging President Obama to take stronger military measures against ISIS, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, which has seized large chunks of Iraq and Syria. So are the Washington Post and other influential publications. The U.S. is already attacking ISIS directly—with U.S. bombs and special forces–and indirectly, by arming its alleged opponents, but Clinton et al want Obama to escalate U.S. force.

READ THE REST.

A new calendar of peace holidays has just been published. And none too soon, if you’ve noticed the epidemic of military holidays around us.

I can understand that Catholics have a saint for every day of the year. And I’m not shocked that various ancient religions have holidays for a high proportion of the year’s days. But what to make of the United States, which now has a military holiday for at least 66 separate days, including Memorial Day, Veterans Day, and lesser known days like the just passed Marine Corps Reserve Birthday?

In the coming weeks we have V-J Day, 9/11 Remembrance Day / Patriot Day, the U.S. Air Force Birthday, National POW / MIA Recognition Day, and Gold Star Mother’s Day. There are, in addition, six week-long military holidays and three month-long ones. May, for example, is National Military Appreciation Month.

The military memorializes past war lies (Remember the Maine Day), cultural depravity normalized by eternal war (Month of the Military Child), and past crimes like attacking Cuba and killing a mule (Mantanzas Mule Day). This website even — wonderfully and accidentally — includes the Global Day of Action on Military Spending, which is a day dedicated to opposing militarism. The same website — disgustingly and inappropriately — includes Martin Luther King Jr.’s Birthday as a military holiday.

Still, the general pattern is this: in the United States there are holidays to celebrate militarism just about every week, and increasingly one hears about them on the radio, at public events, and in corporate advertising that apparently believes militarism sells.

What would a calendar of peace holidays look like? At WorldBeyondWar we believe it would look something like this.

We’re making it available for free as a PDF that you can print out and make use of: PDF, Word.

We’re also displaying on the front page of WorldBeyondWar.org the holiday, if any, to be marked or celebrated on whatever day it happens to be at the time. So you can always just check there.

We think that part of developing a peace culture is marking great peace moments from the past. Knowing what peace holiday any given day is, or what holidays are coming up soon, can be very useful in creating and promoting events, writing op-eds, and interesting the corporate media in something that is otherwise too important and news worthy to be touched.

World peace holidays can build unity among activists. They can be used for education (celebrating the Hague Peace Conference of 1899 on May 18th could cause someone to want to know what that conference was). And they can be used for encouragement and inspiration (on a gloomy March 20th it might be nice to know that “on this day in 1983, 150,000 peace rallies were held in Australia”).

In this initial draft of the World Beyond War Calendar we’ve included 154 holidays, all of them days — no weeks or months. We could have included a significant peace event for 365 days a year but chose to be selective. It’s a tightly held secret, of course, but there has been a lot more peace than war in the world.

Some of the days are also military days re-purposed. For example:

September 11. On this day in 1973 the United States backed a coup that overthrew the government of Chile. Also on this day in 2001 terrorists attacked in the United States using hijacked airplanes. This is a good day to oppose violence and nationalism and revenge.

Others are military days the military doesn’t celebrate. For example:

January 11. On this day in 2002 the United States opened its notorious prison in Guantanamo. This is a good day to oppose all imprisonment without trial.

August 6. On this day in 1945 the U.S. dropped a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, killing some 140,000 men, women, and children. President Truman went on the radio to justify this as revenge and lie that Hiroshima was a military base rather than a city. This is a very good day to oppose nuclear weapons.

Others are well-known days reclaimed for peace. For example:

January 15. On this day in 1929 Martin Luther King Jr. was born. The holiday, however, is celebrated on the third Monday of January. These are good opportunities to recall King’s work against militarism, extreme materialism, and racism.

Mothers Day is celebrated on different dates around the world. In many places it is the second Sunday in May. This is a good day to read the Mother’s Day Proclamation and rededicate the day to peace.

December 25. This is Christmas, traditionally a holiday of peace for Christians. On this day in 1776, George Washington led a surprise night crossing of the Delaware River and pre-dawn raid on unarmed hung-over-from-Christmas troops still in their underwear — a founding act of violence for the new nation. Also on this day in 1875 Jessie Wallace Hughan, founder of the War Resisters League, was born. Also on this day in 1914, soldiers on both sides of the trenches of World War I took part in a Christmas Truce. This is a good day to work for peace on earth.

Other days are new to most people. For example:

August 27. This is Kellogg-Briand Day. On this day in 1928, in what was the biggest news story of the year, the major nations of the world gathered in Paris, France, to sign the Kellogg-Briand Pact banning all war. The treaty remains on the books today. The day is increasingly being recognized and celebrated as a holiday.

November 5. On this day in 1855 Eugene V. Debs was born. Also on this day in 1968 Richard Nixon was elected U.S. president after secretly and treasonously sending Anna Chennault to sabotage Vietnam peace talks, campaigning on a nonexistent secret plan for peace, and actually planning to continue the war, as he did once elected. This is a good day to think about who our real leaders are.

November 6. This is the International Day for Preventing the Exploitation of the Environment in War and Armed Conflict.

Here’s the web version.

Here’s the PDF.

Here’s the Word.

The calendar is a first of what we expect to be many editions. In fact, it will be constantly updated. So please send additions and corrections to info@worldbeyondwar.org.

Host Dave Lindorff interviews David Swanson, labor and peace activist, author of the book “War No More: The Case for Abolition” and the website warisacrime.org, about the rapidly expanding crises that the US has been promoting in Ukraine, Syria, Iraq, the Persian Gulf, and the many countries where the US is using attack drones. Swanson argues that the US has been working hard to make Russia into an enemy again, that after portraying Syrian leader Bushar al Assad as a “Hitler” and arming and training his islamic rebel enemies, now a year later, Washington sees Assad as the “good guy” and is gearing up to bomb and kill the rebels, both in Syria and in Iraq, where they have expanded their rebellion. At least two of the crises, in Ukraine and the Persian Gulf, where a Coast Guard vessel has fired at an Iranian vessel, there is a real risk of war, either against Russia or Iran, Swanson warns.

From THIS CAN'T BE HAPPENING

Stephen McKeown reports:

We had a good turnout at the Bridge Peace Vigil today to commemorate the the 86th anniv. of the KBP.  About 70 people with 30 VFP members held signs and VFP flags.  VFp rang Armistice bells 11 times on all 4 corners of the bridge...bells that we made ourselves.  Fourteen people then walked the 6 miles to the Science Center on Kellogg Boulevard and claimed the Blvd for Peace again.  We rang the bells again. There were not a lot of spring chickens in the walk.  It was a good day...Steve

Learn what it's all about at http://davidswanson.org/outlawry

By John Grant

Back in June 2011, James Foley gave an hour-long interview to an auditorium of students from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, where he had graduated three years earlier with a Master’s degree in journalism. It was 15 days after he had been released from 45 rough days of captivity in Libya. He was a handsome young hero returning to his alma-mater.

In October, Pax Christi will buy a full-page ad in the National Catholic Reporter prior to the annual meeting of the U.S. bishops. The ad will advocate abandoning the idea of a "just war," something the Catholic church, including in recent statements by the current Pope, shows signs of possibly being willing to do. James Rauner's article below reports how the Catholic church outside of the United States has opposed past wars, and suggests how little it would take to move the church in the U.S. to the same position. But opposing particular wars as "unjust," and suggesting that there might be just ones, leaves the war industry in place, making new wars inevitable. Pax Christi is to be applauded for urging the church to drop that outdated way of thinking, as the current Pope's statements suggest he already has. —DCNS

When Catholics Become a Peace Church
By Deacon James Rauner, Pax Christi Michigan         

From Just War to Just Peace: The Time Is Now!

The Ides of War, March, 2003 …

In 2003, weeks before the attack, Pope John Paul II warned President Bush that his “preemptive war” on Iraq would throw the Middle East into chaos, that this war would be a “defeat for humanity which could not be morally or legally justified.”

On March 5, 2003, Pope John Paul II sent the Italian Cardinal, Pio Laghi, to intervene with President George W. Bush and ask him not to invade Iraq and overthrow Saddam Hussein, but the US leader rejected the appeal claiming he was “convinced it was God’s will”.  

The pope had already referred to this planned military intervention as an “adventure” and had warned that war would have serious consequences for both nations and the world. The pope had chosen Laghi for this delicate mission, because he was a friend of the Bush family and might have stood a better chance of being listened to.

The day before the scheduled meeting with the President, the cardinal was asked to meet with officials from the US State Department, as the President wanted to know the agenda of the meeting in advance.   Cardinal Laghi was “interrogated” by the National Security Advisor, Condoleeza Rice.

When the Cardinal arrived at the meeting with the President the next day, he handed Pope John Paul II’s letter to the President, “who
immediately put it on a side table without opening or reading it.”

The President then launched into an argument for war,. He told the cardinal that he, the president, “was convinced it was God’s will”, and sought to convince the papal envoy that it was the right thing to do.

“After a few minutes of what the Cardinal termed ‘a sermon’”,  Laghi interrupted President Bush and said, “Mr. President, I came here in order to speak to you and to give you a message from the Holy Father and I would like you to listen to me.”

Cardinal Laghi told Bush that three things would happen if the United States went to war.  First, it would cause many deaths and injuries on both sides. Secondly, it would result in civil war. And, thirdly, the United States might know how to get into a war, but it would have great difficulty getting out of one.

Cardinal Laghi realized from this exchange that the President had already made up his mind. This was confirmed shortly afterwards by General Pace, as he accompanied the Cardinal to his car. He shook hands with the Cardinal and told him, “Your Eminence, don’t be afraid. We’ll do it quickly and we will do it in the best way.”

Laghi knew his mission had failed, but he also realized that the Bush administration was very naïve about the consequences of war.

The press corps was waiting outside the White House after the meeting to interview the cardinal, but administration officials did not allow him to speak to them at the White House.

In the weeks and months before the U.S. attacked Iraq, not only the Holy Father, but also many in the Vatican spoke out against a “preemptive” or “preventative” strike. They declared that the just war theory could not justify such a war.

The Vatican also spoke out against war in Iraq. Archbishop Renato Raffaele Martino, a former U.N. envoy and current prefect of the Council for Justice and Peace, told reporters that war against Iraq was a preventive war and constituted a "war of aggression", and thus did not constitute a just war. The foreign minister, Archbishop Jean-Louis Tauran, said that such a war of aggression is a crime against peace.

On September 13, 2002, US Catholic bishops had signed a letter to President Bush stating that any "preemptive, unilateral use of military force to overthrow the government of Iraq" could not be justified at the time. They came to this position by evaluating whether an attack against Iraq would satisfy the criteria for a just war as defined by Catholic  theology.

On 15 February 2003, a month before the invasion, there were worldwide protests against the Iraq War, including  a rally of three million people in Rome, which is listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the largest ever anti-war rally. According to the French academic Dominique Reynié, between 3 January and 12 April 2003, 36 million people across the globe took part in almost 3,000 protests against the Iraq war.

Americans, and of course American Catholics, were largely unaware of the depth and importance of the opposition of Church leaders everywhere to an attack on Iraq, since for the most part the mainstream American media did not carry these stories. In the same way, many Americans were unaware that Pope John Paul II had spoken out against the first Gulf War at least 56 times. Media in the United States, controlled by corporate, government biased owners, omitted this from news commentaries on these wars.

We go to war ...

The invasion was preceded by an air strike on the Presidential Palace in Baghdad on 19 March 2003. The following day, coalition forces launched an incursion into Basra Province from their massing point close to the Iraqi-Kuwaiti border.

While the Special Forces launched an amphibious assault from the Persian Gulf to secure Basra and the surrounding petroleum fields, the main invasion army moved into southern Iraq, occupying the region and engaging in the Battle of Nasiriyah on 23 March. Massive air strikes across the country and against Iraqi command and control threw the defending army into chaos and prevented an effective resistance. On 26 March, the 173rd Airborne Brigade was airdropped near the northern city of Kirkuk, where they joined forces with Kurdish rebels and fought several actions against the Iraqi army to secure the northern part of the country.

As the Bombs fell, …  American Opposition became Silent…

“Son of man, Can these Bones Come to Life ?” Ezekiel 37:1-14

But, what if…

Following the solitary example of Bishop John Michael Botean, who had, on March 7^th, just twelve days before the Iraq invasion,   issued a Pastoral Letter to his U.S. diocese morally denouncing the War on Iraq as gravely evil,… 

….  Bishop Wilton Gregory, President of the USCCB, decides to call an emergency meeting of the entire American Catholic Hierarchy.

He had been powerfully moved by the strong words of Bishop Botean’s Pastoral Letter:

“When a moral conflict arises between Church teaching and secular morality, when contradictory moral demands are made upon a Catholic’s conscience, he or she, ‘must obey God rather than man’ (Acts 5:29).”

“A moment of moral crisis has arisen for us, I must now speak to you as your bishop… with the authority and responsibility I, though a sinner, have been given as a successor to the apostles on your behalf…. It is a moral imperative that I not allow you, by my silence, to fall into grave evil.”

“I must declare to you my people, for the sake of your salvation as well as my own, that any direct participation and support of this war against the people of Iraq is objectively grave evil, a matter of mortal sin. Beyond a reasonable doubt this war is morally incompatible with the Person and the Way of Jesus Christ. With moral certainty I say to you it does not meet even the minimal standards of the catholic just war theory.”

Noticing that Botean was the first and only Bishop to yet speak out against the war, in support of the Pope’s urgent message, Bishop Gregory, as president, began calling all American bishops to a special session of the USCCB, to start the evening of Sunday, March 16^th .

In doing so, Bishop Gregory believes it is necessary for the American Catholic church to reinforce the message sent to President Bush by Pope John Paul II….

When he consults with Bishop Skylstad, vice-president of the USCCB, Skylstad becomes very alarmed at the possibility of confronting the government. He tells Gregory that he has too much on his plate, that he has just had some real success with issuing “The Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People” in his efforts to gain control of the scandal of the Roman Catholic sex abuse cases. Now wasn’t the time to anger both the public and the government.

Bishop Gregory knew there was great danger, and he saw that he had two obstacles to overcome. First, the conference itself would have to unite the bishops in support of the papal initiative, and in giving up their usual strategy of always proving Catholics were faithful and patriotic citizens no matter what. But then that would create the second difficulty. They would have to explain to American Catholics why there had been no teaching preparing them for something like this beforehand.

Gregory thought of the passage he had read recently from Richard Rohr:

"We are saddled and bridled with a religion that is not sure if it wants to become church.  It’s adherent’s expectations are very set. … It is a comfortable and very materialistic religion, which tests it’s people’s commitment on the level of doctrine but is afraid to test that commitment on issues of lifestyle or mature conscience.” —Near Occasions of Grace, page 52.

Tensions and grumbling mounts within the church as its bishops prepare to travel to the emergency  meeting.  The Archbishop of the Military Vicarate,  Edwin O’Brien, starts objecting loudly to the possibility of confronting his Commander-in-Chief.

 … Speculation abounds…..

Some are estimating that if the church were to confront the government over this war, as many as 20% of Catholics might leave the church, and certainly the church, in  parishes, dioceses, and organizations, would lose at least half of its income from collections and rich donors. One smart-alec suggested that it might solve the priest shortage,… if not too many of them left !

On Sunday evening, March 16^th …  the USCCB gathered in closed session.  The question being put before the bishops was this:  Should we, the Catholic Hierarchy of the United States, support the teaching of Pope John Paul II that a preventative war against Iraq is immoral, illegal and unjust, and should we teach our Catholic people to resist this war and refuse to serve in it?  Or, should we simply be silent and do nothing, as we have always done during wartime? While the meeting is ‘completely closeted’, word does leak out in dribbles here and there. There seems to be a terrible argument going on, back and forth. Some want to be faithful to the pope, many are reluctant.  Some are angry, many are scared.

Bishop Botean had said: “the Gospels reveal our Lord, God, and Savior Jesus Christ to be nonviolent.  In them, Jesus teaches a Way of life that his disciples are to follow, a Way of nonviolent love of friends and enemies”…. “All well and good, but it’s not practical!”...  “All the recent popes have said the same thing!” … “But It doesn’t work. We’ll lose everything.”

“It’s our sacred and patriotic duty to sacrifice our children to defend our American life styles.”

“Any killing associated with this war is unjustified and, in consequence, unequivocally murder. Direct participation in this war is the moral equivalent of direct participation in  abortion”……”We have a moral obligation to overthrow the vicious and evil regime of Saddam,  the tyrant”…Time passes,… Monday …and then …Tuesday, … the arguments go back and forth until finally on Wednesday morning, the feeling is they can’t move any further …

It’s time to take a vote:… 79 % of the bishops vote in support of the Papal teaching, …14 % of the bishops dissociate themselves from the USCCB and walk out in protest…  The holy Spirit has spoken through the majority,… we Catholics are now a church of Peace, and will try to dissuade President Bush from going to war. 

Efforts are made all day long to get through to President Bush in the White House, but he is taking no calls from the American bishops, as he took no heed of the Pope himself.

By now, it’s the evening of March 19, 2003, President Bush is in the White House enjoying the evening with Rev Billy Graham, who prays that our American bombs may find their targets and destroy our enemies.

Before the USCCB meeting ends…

Special Peace and Justice committees are set up to determine what steps to take to implement the decision taken. It will be a multiple step process. It is a difficult time for the church in the United States.  They begin listing what steps are needed and what organizing will be useful.

*****

(1) A committee of reconciliation sets to work with the 14% of bishops who walked out.

(2) A committee is set up to review and update the  Pastoral letter on War: 1983 -“The Challenge of Peace”  originally planned to be ambiguous, and now outdated by advances in catholic  thinking  and Papal teaching about war since that time.

(3) The Gospel teaching of nonviolence, and how “just war” theories are like “just abortion” theories will be taught in all parishes and pulpits in the country.

(4) Conscientious Objector counseling is set up in all dioceses and support offered for all Catholics confronted with situations of legal jeopardy due to their need to be C.O.s to this war.

(5) State Catholic Conferences  begin lobbying Senators and Representatives explaining  why the church will no longer support war…  We begin to feel a chill in Church-State relationships!

(6) Homilists are beginning to explain to our congregations what it was like during the primitive church’s ‘communities of resistance’ to the Roman Empire, and how this is now similar to our Catholic parishes within the American Empire.

(7) We begin prayer and study groups in parishes to teach contemplation and help live in intimate union with Jesus, and follow his teachings to love one another, friends and enemies, learning forgiveness as we have been forgiven.

(8) Our efforts to support justice for immigrants and refugees is radicalized, we begin offering sanctuary for them and other minority group- victims in our society, opening our churches and communities across the country.

(9) Our jail/prison ministries protest inhumane conditions and practices, demand closing of ICE prisons, and release of millions of people, especially racial minorities, held for minor drug and non-violent crimes

(10) Most catholic parishes stop flying American flags as a counter cultural practice. Jesus is our commander-in-chief, not the president.

(11) 4^th degree Knights of Columbus  decide to no longer use their swords during church services, and hide them away in closets. A big revue and reorganization is going on with the 4^th degree political/ patriotic level.

(12) Bishops' meetings begin discussing the ways of “critical collaboration” in working with the government – supporting efforts that benefit the common good, opposing legislation that harms the common good.

(13) Training in techniques of nonviolent Protest, Resistance, and Alternative  Structures are offered in all dioceses, and these actions are used to enforce critical collaboration, and to offer a new means of nonviolent national defense.

(14) Movements are supported by the church, working with other religious, and non-religious groups, with Occupy citizen groups, and even international organizations to bring about the Kingdom of God, “on earth as it is in heaven”: Justice and Peace for all.

(15) Movements that would:

A. Create a just foreign policy. Cessation of all foreign military aid, outlaw all arms trade. Increase foreign peaceful aid and sharing by 10% each following year.. Strengthen the United Nations, and the World Court.

B. Dismantle the military-industrial complex, converting our industry to alternative energy and peaceful purposes.  Start reducing our “Defense” spending by 20% for each following year. Invest this money in the Department of Peace. Close down the CIA, and department of Homeland Security

C. Take all private money out of the political election system,  let all primary elections be open to everyone. Redraw all one party districts.

D. Corporations are not people – take away all rights of free speech or religious liberty. Severely limit corporations’ size and  power, make them subject to the cost of their use of public commons and their damage to the environment.

E. Diocesan and parish action committees begin supporting citizen organizing to protest economic injustice, class warfare by the rich against workers, and to promote labor unions for everyone, and public banks.

F. These committees encourage the creation of a New Economic Bill of Rights.

a.  Set Taxation of the rich back to the 1950’s. No one needs more than ‘enough’ to live well. Confiscatory inheritance tax of all but modest amount – a year’s average wage.

b.  Free education for all capable students through college  and professional universities / with social responsibilities afterwards.

c.   Free and complete, single payer, Health Care for every person in the country, even visitors.

d.  Minimum wages of $15 / hour indexed for inflation.

e.  Guaranteed Job for every person able to work.

f.   Guaranteed Income for every person unable to work.

(16) The church throws itself into supporting the Franciscan efforts to protect God’s creation, to save the environment and prevent catastrophic climate change.

... Well, you can see how easily I can go on, and on … I’d like to stop now …..And turn it over to you……   Why don’t you play with these ideas for awhile, and see what good things the Spirit leads you to….. Please let me know what you do come up with…. thank you,

Today, back in October, of the year 2014,

We members of Pax Christi are calling on  “the US Catholic church to embrace nonviolence as the only stance consistent with Christian discipleship and to reject the just war tradition, as expressed, among other places, in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (#2309). The just war theory is unChristian and obsolete… We urge our Church  to return to its roots, as a power for peace, before it allied itself with the power of empire in the time of Constantine….”

“Clearly,  it is time to embrace and reaffirm our primary tradition of just peace. Our Catholic Church, with 1.2 billion adherents worldwide and 22% of the US population, is ideally positioned to support peacebuilding, and avert what Pope Francis calls ‘the suicide of humanity.’”

“Do we expect it to be easy? No indeed. But we are a people of hope. As Martin Luther King Jr. said, ‘The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.’  We invite our Church to lend its prophetic voice to the abolition of war and the promotion of the way of just peace.”

CONTACT THE AUTHOR:

Deacon James Rauner,

Pax Christi Michigan, state council

jimrauner@gmail.com

www.PeaceIStheWay.US

 From Just War to Just Peace: The Time Is Now
“Those who use the sword are sooner or later destroyed by it.” - Matthew 27:52

“If we cannot know from the New Testament that Christ totally rejects violence, then we can know nothing of His person or message. It is the clearest of teachings.” - Rev. John L. McKenzie, Biblical Scholar

“War is the suicide of humanity because it kills the heart and kills love." - Pope Francis, June 2, 2013