Peace and War

=&0=& =&1=& Academy Award winning director Errol Morris (The Fog of War) offers a portrait of Donald Rumsfeld, one of the key architects of the Iraq War, and a larger-than-life character who provoked equal levels of fury and adulation from the American public. (103 mins)   “The film is a cat-and-mouse game in which each player thinks he’s the cat, making it both thrilling and disconcerting to watch. It is also a nature documentary about behavior at the very top of the imperial food chain and a detective story about the search for a mystery that is hidden in plain sight.” – A.O. Scott, The New York Times   =&2=& =&3=& is an author, speaker, radio host, and activist. His books include War No More: The Case for Abolition, Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency, and When The World Outlawed War. He is founder of the organization and movement http://worldbeyondwar.org   For more info visit http://www.narocinema.com   Sign up and share here! http://bit.ly/1txI1zE    

When Donald Rumsfeld used to hold press conferences about the Iraq war, the press corps would giggle at the clever ways in which he refused to actually say anything or answer any questions. 

In a new film about Rumsfeld called The Unknown Knowns, the aging criminal is occasionally confronted with evidence that what he’s just said is false. He maintains a frozen grin and acts as if nothing has happened.  The film’s director, interviewing Rumsfeld, never presses the read more

Listen to the second of the two hours here.

Sorry for the headline if it got you hoping for a quick 1-step guide on how to bomb a country without breaking a sweat. I didn’t actually mean that I could teach a dummy to wage a war. I meant that only dummies want to wage wars.

Need proof?

Check out a recent Washington Post report. 

Now there I go misleading you again.  While it’s true that the editors of the Washington Post are often dummies and often want wars to be waged, that’s not what I mean right now.  read more

It’s important to distinguish terrorism from war. Because otherwise war would look bad.

It’s important to distinguish genocide from war. Because otherwise war would be indefensible.

It’s important to distinguish civil war from war. Because civil war seems so gruesome and irrational.

It’s important to distinguish the horrors of war from war’s higher purposes. Because otherwise who would let war continue?

It’s important to distinguish wars people have seen from possible read more

“Secretary Kerry? It’s Ukraine on the phone asking about liberation again. Have you been able to get them a reference letter yet from Libya or Iraq or Afghanistan? How about Vietnam? Panama? Grenada? Kosovo maybe? Ukraine says Syria says you have a reference letter in the works from Kosovo. No? Huh. They said they’d accept one from Korea or the Dominican Republic or Iran. No? Guatemala? The Philippines? Cuba? Congo? How about Haiti? They say you promised them a glowing read more

Two professional sports teams in Washington, D.C., have intolerable names: the Redskins and the Nationals. 

The Redskins name is disgusting racism that recalls the nation’s original genocidal sin, a crime that carries over to today’s naming of weapons and operations after various Native Americans and treating other groups of people as valueless.

But I for one find it easier to imagine a crowd of Redskins fans as ignorant and oblivious — which is really the best you can hope read more

“The notion of a ‘humanitarian war’ would have rang in the ears of the drafters of the UN Charter as nothing short of Hitlerian, because it was precisely the justification used by Hitler himself for the invasion of Poland just six years earlier.” —Michael Mandel

Fifteen years ago, NATO was bombing Yugoslavia.  This may be difficult for people to grasp who believe the Noah movie is historical fiction, but: What your government told you about the bombing of Kosovo read more

Urge the ending of war these days and you’ll very quickly hear two words: “Hitler” and “Rwanda.”  While World War II killed some 70 million people, it’s the killing of some 6 to 10 million (depending on who’s included) that carries the name Holocaust. Never mind that the United States and its allies refused to help those people before the war or to halt the war to save them or to prioritize helping them when the war ended — or even to refrain read more