Do Individual Politicians Matter?

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It is entirely possible that President Al Gore would not have attacked Afghanistan or Iraq. President Henry Wallace might very well not have nuked Hiroshima or Nagasaki. President William Jennings Bryan almost certainly would not have attacked the Philippines.

Presidents are pushed into war and held back from war all the time, but they also do some pushing and pulling of their own. Within days of Germany’s surrender in World War II, Winston Churchill proposed recruiting German troops into read more

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What Became of the Vikings?

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When the United States is identified as an empire, albeit of a different sort than some others, it’s common to point to the fate of ancient Rome or the empires of Britain, Spain, Holland, etc., as a warning to the Pentagon or even to CNN debate moderators.

But a closer analogy to the current United States than ancient Rome, in a certain regard, might be the Vikings. The United States doesn’t create colonies in the places it wages war or wields influence. It raids. It pillages. It plunders read more

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U.S. Government Decides Voting Is Less Important Than a Military Draft

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I know what you’re thinking. There is no draft. There hasn’t been a draft in decades. They’d let entire Central American nations immigrate, pay recruits six-figure salaries, and let robots fly the drones before they’d create a draft. Crackpot Congress members only bring up a draft as a supposed bank-shot maneuver for ending all the damn wars. Yeah, yeah, whatever. Your government has nonetheless decided that registering men for a possible draft (whether they like it or read more

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When Peace Activists Met With the U.S. Institute of Peace

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I was part of a debate on Tuesday that involved a larger disagreement than any exhibited at the Democratic presidential candidates debate that evening. A group of peace activists met with the president, a board member, some vice presidents, and a senior fellow of the so-called U.S. Institute of Peace, a U.S. government institution that spends tens of millions of public dollars every year on things tangentially related to peace (including promoting wars) but has yet to oppose a single U.S. war read more

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Bernie Drones and Bernie Volunteers

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The “senior digital organizer” of Bernie Sanders for President volunteers Aidan King, has this to say:

“I was so excited about Obama. And I still think he’s done amazing things. But I wanted more follow-through,” says King, listing “drone strikes, kill lists, NSA spying on Americans, the expansion of Bush-administration policies, a failed drug war, failed foreign policy,” and the increasing influence of money in politics as his main concerns. “I put read more

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Amnesty International Once Again Refuses to Oppose War

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In an online discussion I asked Salil Shetty, Secretary General of Amnesty International, a fairly straightforward question:

“Will Amnesty International recognize the UN Charter and the Kellogg Briand Pact and oppose war and militarism and military spending? Admirable as it is to go after many of the symptoms of militarism, your avoidance of addressing the central problem seems bizarre. The idea that you can more credibly offer opinions on the legality of constituent elements of a crime if read more

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Video and Audio of Pilots Who Bombed Hospital

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There is video and audio. It exists. The Pentagon says it’s critically important. Congress has asked for it and been refused. WikiLeaks is offering $50,000 to the next brave soul willing to be punished for a good deed in the manner of Chelsea Manning, Thomas Drake, Edward Snowden, and so many others. You can petition the White House to hand it over here.

The entire world thinks the U.S. military intentionally attacked a hospital because it considered some of the patients enemies, didn’t read more

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Columbus Lives

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Columbus was not a particularly evil person. He was a murderer, a robber, an enslaver, and a torturer, whose crimes led to possibly the most massive conglomeration of crimes and horrific accidents on record. But Columbus was a product of his time, a time that has not exactly ended. If Columbus spoke today’s English he’d say he was “just following orders.” Those orders, stemming from the Catholic “doctrine of discovery,” find parallels through Western history read more

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Nobel Peace Prize for Peace

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Alfred Nobel’s will, written in 1895, left funding for a prize to be awarded 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.”

Most winners in recent years have either been people who did nice things that had nothing whatsoever to do with the relevant work (Kailash read more

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