Beyond War and Militarism  CNY Solidarity Coalition  February 8, 2018

This piece, written by Ed Kinane on behalf of the Beyond War and Militarism committee, is the Committee’s working paper. We see this as a living document to stimulate discussion and action, and it evolves as our conversations evolve. Please join in.

Violence begets violence. War profits only the few, the rich, the powerful — the 1%. As moral beings and tax paying citizens we must vigorously oppose war. Especially those wars of aggression perpetrated by the United States and its allies and proxies. These mostly occur in or near the Islamic oil lands (Gaza, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen).

If we are to live authentically, we must oppose resource war and war for corporate profit. War industry lobbying (Lockheed Martin) and election buying corrupt our Congress, our Executive Branch and any legitimate defense force. War dehumanizes the “other.” It dehumanizes and disempowers us as well.

War diverts unimaginably vast federal tax funds from their most worthy function: meeting human needs – feeding, housing, schooling, healthcare, infrastructure. And disaster relief — these days so criminally paltry (Puerto Rico).

War solves no legitimate problem; war spawns problems. War impoverishes, erodes democracy, undermines law. War targets civilians, creates refugees and triggers ethnic cleansing. War encourages rape, maims bodies and minds (veterans’ PTSD), cheapens life. War spurs environmental devastation (Viet Nam) and climate disaster. Nuclear war risks nuclear winter and, with it, the extinction of the human species.

Not only must we oppose war, we must oppose militarism: the incessant search for enemies, the incessant preparation for war, the saturation of our economy and culture with martial values and vested interests in war.

Our ultimate mission: “achieving just peace globally by abolishing war and militarism.” Okay, we’re unlikely to achieve that utopian goal. But work on these “can-do” campaigns has a huge payoff: reducing human suffering, plus empowering ourselves and others. We can’t do everything, but we can do something. Each of us needs to do what we can, with what we have, where we are.

What more authentic way to live our lives than that?

What Must Be Done

1. Replace toxic with renewable energy.

2. Avoid dependence on the war economy.

3. Expose the Main Stream Media’s unholy alliance with militarism. The corporate media reflexively align with military policy. The MSM generate fear, normalize violence, villainize rival powers, gloss over war crime.

4. “Take a knee” against nationalism/exceptionalism – major enablers of war.

5. Stamp out racism – also a major enabler of war (end the “new Jim Crow,” de-militarize the police, abolish the prison/industrial complex).

6. Resist the Islamophobia that enables invasions and genocide (Yemen).

7. End U.S. military aid and exports to any invading nation or entity (Saudi Arabia/Yemen, Israel/Palestine).

8. Abolish nuclear weapons.

9. Abolish weaponized drones.

10. Stop deploying mercenaries.

11. Negotiate in good faith with adversaries.

12. Expose the phony “war on terrorism” – that war of terrorism (a.k.a. state terrorism) — cynically keeping the pot boiling.

13. Withdraw U.S. and NATO forces from Iraq, Afghanistan and Eastern Europe.

14. Withdraw clandestine U.S. special forces — officially 70,000 in about 80 countries — from the continents they infest (Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America).

15. Dismantle U.S. military bases menacing rival economic systems (Venezuela, Russia, China, Iran, North Korea).

16. Dismantle the myriad, redundant domestic military bases not necessary for defending our borders.

17. Finance the reconstruction of those nations that U.S. bombs destroyed; compensate the victims (1950s North Korea, Viet Nam north and south, Laos, Iraq, Libya).

18. Avoid lifestyle pitfalls (addictions, distractions, consumerism, co-optation, debt). These impede our capacity to speak out, to take risks, to ratchet up our resistance.

19. Build solidarity with kindred – and sometimes not so kindred – spirits. Get beyond our bubbles, our turfs, our silos.

20. Cultivate and promote critical thinking. Overcome obliviousness and compartmentalization. The compartmentalized mind is a colonized mind. People of good will here often bemoan the lack of federal funding for domestic needs. Yet many refuse to acknowledge – much less oppose – the elephantine impact U.S. military spending has at home. Such needs, if addressed, would provide more employment and security than high-tech war industries do.

21. Overhaul corporate campaign spending regulations. Slash the Pentagon budget. Doing so will boost most of the foregoing initiatives. Doing so will impede this nation’s mounting decay and insolvency.

22. Become a war tax resister.

This article was originally published in the January/February 2018 issue of the Syracuse Peace Council’s Peace Newsletter.

Editor’s Note: In an article regarding Dorothy Day’s quote, Brian Tyrell discusses the origin of the quotation and cites research from a biographer of Dorothy Day:

One of Dorothy’s biographers, Jim Forest, did a search of the word rotten and found this in a column by Dorothy from 1956: “We need to change the system. We need to overthrow, not the government, as the authorities are always accusing the Communists of conspiring to teach to do, but this rotten, decadent, putrid industrial capitalist system which breeds such suffering in the whited sepulcher of New York.”

She might have said “the whited sepulcher” of the White House in these rise up times.