Peace and War

In planning an upcoming conference and nonviolent action aimed at challenging the institution of war, with the conference to be held at American University, I can’t help but be drawn to the speech a U.S. president gave at American University a little more than 50 years ago. Whether or not you agree with me that this is the best speech ever given by a U.S. president, there should be little dispute that it is the speech most out of step with read more

Audio here.

If there’s any debate right now in the major U.S. media regarding blowing people up with missiles from drones, it’s about “transparency” (official reporting on who’s killed) or death counts of those people somehow identified as civilians. But unless drones are just a means of vicariously venting rage, or of profiting drone manufacturers, they are — like the wider wars they are part of — supposed to serve some purpose.

Although terrorism keeps increasing read more

In the dialect of Gaza, where drones buzzed and blew things up for 51 days two years ago, there’s an onomatopoetic word for drones: zanana. When Atef Abu Saif’s kids would ask him, during that war, to take them out of doors somewhere, and he would refuse, they would then ask: “But you’ll take us when the zanana stops?”

Saif has published his diary from that time, with 51 entries, called The Drone Eats With Me. I recommend reading one chapter a day. You’re read more

President Barack Obama’s lawyers, working on our dime, have just laid out a 46-page explanation of why current wars are legal. They’ve done so in response to a lawsuit, which has limited the argument in some significant ways.

First, while Obama has bragged about bombing seven nations, this lawsuit deals only with whichever parts of the world ISIS is in. But there is every reason to believe that Obama would make similar arguments for the legality of his other wars.

Second, while Tony read more