A post from Sott.net, by David Swanson, War is a Crime. Source linked here.
It provides a picture of the unnecessary promotion and inhumanity of wars to which I dedicate this blog.
The Pentagon, the beating heart of the American War MachineMilitarized Chicago – Next month in Baltimore they’re going to celebrate the War of 1812. That’s what we do with wars. We say they’re the last resort. We say they’re hell. We say they’re for the purpose of eliminating themselves: we fight wars for peace. Although we never keep peace for wars. We claim to wage only wars we have been forced into despite all possible effort to find a better way. And then we celebrate the wars. We keep the wars going for their own sake after all the excuses we used to get them started have expired. The WMDs have not been found. Osama bin Laden’s been killed. Al Qaeda is gone from the country where we’re fighting it. Nobody’s threatening Benghazi anymore. But the wars must go on! And then we’ll celebrate them. And we’ll celebrate the old ones too, the ones that were fought here, the ones that were in their day not quite so heavily painted as last resorts or humanitarian missions. Last year Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee persuaded Congress to create an Iraq-Afghanistan Wars holiday. It’s on our calendars now along with Loyalty Day (formerly May Day), Veterans Day (formerly Armistice Day), Memorial Day, Yellow Ribbon Day, Patriots Day, Independence Day, Flag Day, Pearl Harbor Day, and of course September 11th, among many others. Last week there was an Armed Forces Spouses Appreciation Day. The military holiday calendar is like the Catholic saints’ days now: there’s something every day of the year. But there’s no celebration of the times we avoided war. We claim to prefer peace to war, but we don’t make heroes of those presidents or Congresses who most avoided war. In fact, we erase them. Our history books jump from war to war as if nothing happened in between. Nobody celebrates 1811, only 1812. Even the peace movement doesn’t celebrate the past decade’s prevention, thus far, of a war on Iran. Some might say that once an unavoidable war begins we have to celebrate the brave sacrifices of the soldiers and sailors. Even if the war was a bad idea, we can’t blame those who participated in it. They were too ignorant and obedient to do otherwise, but they were brave and loyal. We weren’t in their shoes. We had other means to pay for college. So we are obliged to celebrate their moral failings. We must value bravery and loyalty above intelligent independent thinking. And, because they ignorantly and obediently supported the war, we must do so too — even if we honestly don’t.
