It has become fashionable in our overly conservative society to have a certain disdain, be it mild or extreme, for pacifists. I guess it's been long enough since our national humiliation in Vietnam that the concept of war has been successfully rehabilitated, and people who would counsel against it are deemed unwise or somehow disconnected from the `real world.' Yes, it seems America has overcome its squeamishness, shaken off its self-doubt, and gotten its swagger back. Once again we are the cocky kid on the block, the neighborhood bully, the macho superpower prepared to dominate the world. We have come to a place where the lessons of Vietnam have been discarded, our national memory of it buried and forgotten.
I guess every generation is doomed to fight its war...suffer the loss of the same old illusions, and learn the same old lessons on its own.
~ Phillip Caputo, author of A Rumor of War and Vietnam combat veteran
(more over the fold)...
DISCLAIMER: I believe in legitimate self-defense and in intervention in the case of genocide, etc. as I see a qualitative difference between waging war and coming to someone's rescue. This is known as the
pragmatic school of pacifism.
My view is that pacifists are the real heroes - and I say that as the son of a warrior. As much as I love and admire my father, a career soldier, it is the peacemakers whom I look up to. Why? Because as the son of a warrior, and one who lived for 3 months among warring factions in Laos, I know what war is. The people who really know war are those who have lived through them. Ask any combat veteran...
It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood...War is hell.
~ General William Tecumseh Sherman
I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.
~ Dwight D. Eisenhower
War is the business of barbarians.
~ Napoleon Bonaparte
For me war has become a flat, black depression without highlights, a revulsion of the mind and an exhaustion of the spirit.
~ Ernie Pyle
I've been immersed in it too long. My spirit is wobbly and my mind is confused. The hurt has become too great.
~ Ernie Pyle
War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious.
~ General Smedley Butler
Yes, the right-wingers in our country have rehabilitated the concept of war just as they have trashed the concepts of liberal and pacifist. And the hell of it is these guys are all certified chickenhawks. Not a one of them has ever heard a shot fired in anger. It's always easier to be a hawk when you are ignorant about war.
Name: George W. Bush (R-TX)
Born: 1946
Employer: The U.S. Taxpayer
Conflict Avoided: Vietnam
Notes: You know when a guy walks away from a National Guard obligation during wartime and gets away with it, he must come from "a good family." Not that his daddy had anything to do with his getting a Guard slot in the first place - oh, no ...
Name: Richard "Dick" Cheney (R-WY)
Born: 1942
Employer: The U.S. Taxpayer
Conflict Avoided: Vietnam
Notes: Says he had "other priorities." You bet he had other priorities. Imagine how early in life you must begin scheming to get away with what this guy has. He was too busy thinking about Halliburton to go fight Charlie. Five deferments this guy.
Name: Karl Rove
Born: 1950
Employer: Baal
Conflict Avoided: Vietnam
Notes: This little cherub was born on Christmas Day, 1950. Karl "Bush's Brain" Rove ran George W.'s campaign, right down to the tiny detail of deciding Bush was going to run. Rove compromised national security, putting lives of American agents in danger when he outted Valorie Plame for political revenge against her husband, Joseph Wilson, whose crime was telling the truth. Rove is the Republicans evil genius and may be the greatest threat to American democracy ever.
Name: Paul Wolfowitz
Born: 1943
Employer: The U.S. Taxpayer
Conflict Avoided: Vietnam
Notes: Deputy Secretary for Defense - yet another Bush administration man in the Pentagon who has no idea what it's like to wear a uniform. He got a BA at Cornell in 1965. Maybe if we'd had a guy as bright as he thinks he is in Vietnam, it would have turned out differently.
Name: I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby
Born: 1950
Employer: Until recently the U.S. Taxpayer
Conflict Avoided: Vietnam
Notes: I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby was, until recently, Dick Cheney's Chief of Staff. He's had a string of no-doubt well-paying government jobs in State and Defense. He's also practiced law. In fact, he was Marc Rich's lawyer for years. Yes -- the Marc Rich whose pardon from President Clinton was excoriated by so many high and mighty Republicans. Maybe if Scooter had been a better lawyer, his client wouldn't have needed that pardon. Speaking of legal questions, "Scooter" is alleged by some to have traded energy stocks while helping his buddy Dick Cheney cook up a new energy policy in secret. He's also suspected of having inserted the bogus "Niger yellowcake" reference into the President's State of the Union address. As if all that weren't enough, he's also under indictment for outing of CIA operative Valeria Plame. He was also ignominiously booted from the White House for same. Clearly "Scooter" is a ballsy kind of guy, so it's a complete mystery why, when he graduated from Phillips Andover in 1968, he didn't enlist in the Marines or go Airborne instead of going to Yale.
Name: Donald "Rummy" Rumsfeld
Born: 1932
Employer: The U.S. Taxpayer
Conflict Avoided: Korea
Notes: When the shooting started in Korea Rummy here was either 18, or about to turn 18. Not to worry for him, though -- he spent the war at Princeton, wearing a ROTC uniform. Once the war was over he flew jets for the Navy for a few years. Defenders of Rumsfeld will say he's no chickenhawk -- he served, and it's not his fault the war ended before he got his commission. To which others answer, "plenty of farmers and mechanics and kids just out of high school served. Anyone as full of whatever that stuffing in him is, could have tried out for a battlefield commission."
Name: Spencer Abraham
Born: 1952
Employer: Formerly the U.S. Taxpayer
Conflict Avoided: Vietnam
Notes: Our former Secretary of Energy was once the Senator from Detroit. In his failed run for re-election the auto industry gave him $700,000 - more than it gave any other senatorial candidate. Now, there's a guy who's eager to promote alternative energy sources! Couldn't muster up the gumption to take on Uncle Ho, though.
Name: Eliot Abrams
Born: 1948
Employer: The U.S. Taxpayer
Conflict Avoided: Vietnam
Notes: Elliott Abrams now holds a National Security Council staff position. This despite widespread feeling that he ought to be in jail somewhere. After all, he was convicted of lying to Congress about the Iran/Contra affair.
Name: Richard Perle
Born: 1941
Employer: Impossible to say for sure
Conflict Avoided: Vietnam
Notes: Along with Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle is one of the chief architects of the present debacle in Iraq. Nicknamed "The Prince of Darkness," he was chairman of the Defense Policy Board. He got demoted to board member after an ethics flap. Space does not permit even an index to the reasons why this man should not be trusted.
Name: Douglas Feith
Born: 1953
Employer: The U.S. Taxpayer
Conflict Avoided: Vietnam
Notes: Our Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, Feith has been implicated in Abu Ghraib and virtually every other Iraq war screw up and GWOT disgrace. A true scumbag this one.
Yes, chickenhawks every one. Not a combat veteran in the bunch. Only under the freedom from such constraints as actual experience can the average human being work up the zeal for war displayed by this sorry crowd. The reality of war is a sobering thing, and it would do these assholes a lot of good to be dumped right into the middle of a hot one - and without body armor too, just as they've done to our troops.
As our rotten gang of chickenhawks cheer the madness, violence, and destruction, the world descends into a hellish nightmare of their making. The mind-blowing part of it is that they have done this intentionally. They have schemed and plotted for decades to bring us to the brink. They're like children playing war games, only with real human lives. Yes, like mean ignorant children they are wasting the treasure and blood of real nations. What a pity for the world that we have allowed these destructive and dangerous fools to get their bloody hands on the levers of power.
War's Dirty Little Secret
Wars are rarely fought for the reasons that are claimed. Those reasons amount to nothing more than bogus excuses, ways to hoodwink the gullible public, and the vilest propaganda designed to incite people to sacrifice their children for a supposedly glorious cause. The defense of freedom and democracy is one false claim that we often hear in this country. This shameful claim could not be further from the truth. No one ever bothers to explain how our freedom and democracy are at risk in some obscure little country halfway around the world. That's because the sad and dirty truth is that wars are fought for empire and the financial gain of the few.
I was a Gangster for Capitalism
by Major General Smedley Butler
November 1935
I spent thirty-three years and four months in active service in the country's most agile military force, the Marines. I served in all ranks from second Lieutenant to Major General. And during that period I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.
I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all members of the military profession I never had an original thought until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of the higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service.
(snip)
Major General Smedley Darlington Butler (July 30, 1881 - June 21, 1940) was at the time of his death the most decorated U.S. Marine in history. He was twice the recipient of the Medal of Honor, one of only nineteen to be so honored.
Yes, wars are fought for the benefit of war profiteers. Generally speaking, that is the only grand and glorious cause involved. It was true in Vietnam, and it is true today in Iraq.
There are no high-minded principles involved in the war in Iraq. There is no noble purpose at stake there. Our freedom and democracy is not and was never threatened by Iraq. When you strip it to its essentials, this war is all about greed. It's no different now in Iraq than it was in Vietnam. These wars are waged to enrich the already wealthy.
The horror and heartbreak of war is a heavy price to pay to increase the already obscene wealth of a handful of evil little men.
There are no noble principles to die for, no glorious causes, no WMDs, no exportation of democracy, no defending our freedom or democracy. All there is are the despicable lies of men so greedy that they don't care that their war profits come soaked in the blood of patriots and children.
The realization that such abominations are intentionally perpetrated for such a base motive as financial gain turns the heartbreak of decent human beings into outrage.
Eisenhower warned us about the Military Industrial Complex a long time ago.
We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.
~ Dwight D. Eisenhower 1961
And so did General McArthur.
Our country is now geared to an arms economy bred in an artificually induced psychosis of war hysteria and an incessant propaganda of fear.
~ General Douglas MacArthur
And so did our dear old General Smedley Butler.
War is a racket. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.
~ General Smedley Butler
That we have not heeded these warnings is a pity beyond measure. Much more recently we have received confirmation that ignoring those warnings has had profoundly undesirable consequences. We must not overlook the warning inherent in the following statement:
The Department of Defense is the behemoth...With an annual budget larger than the gross domestic product of Russia, it is an empire.
~ The 9/11 Commission Report
Now get a load of this post-9/11 quote from the dimwitted maniac we have allowed to seize control of our government.
Our nation is somewhat sad, but we're angry. There's a certain level of blood lust, but we won't let it drive our reaction. We're steady, clear-eyed and patient, but pretty soon we'll have to start displaying scalps.
~ George W. Bush
If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator.
~ George W. Bush
All we have standing between this man and us are a bunch of `wimpy pacifists.' The pacifists among us are the only ones consistently calling bullshit on these outrageous wars.
Now check out these words - and this is from the least of them:
I want to scare the hell out of the rest of the world.
~ General Colin Powell
Some `leadership' we have in this country. They have all failed us miserably.
During the war in Vietnam it was the pacifists, the Quakers, the peaceniks, the anti-war activists who finally pricked the American conscience. These people are the voices of compassion, reason, and civilization. These are the voices we need to hear. These are the voices of humanity.
Either war is obsolete, or men are.
~ R. Buckminster Fuller
If you are a pacifist, you're in damned good company.
UPDATE:
So the next time you hear someone dissing pacifists or peaceniks, call them on it and educate them if they'll let you. They're probably just ignorant.
Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind.
~ John F. Kennedy