My inner response was, “Of course I do.” But I did not say so because I know that it is easy to say anything, but doing takes more effort. So, I told him how during the Vietnam War I discovered that our country was doing a terrible harm to ourselves as well as the Vietnamese people. Because the goal was a continuation of colonialism (French or American), the war was without doubt immoral and a great wrong, so I decided to do everything I could to stop it. I spent almost three years and some months marching across and around the country, demonstrating, sitting in front of draftee buses, speaking, talking, arguing, being attacked, getting beaten, jailed, and jailed for a long time. We even ran an “Underground Railway” to move AWOL soldiers to refuge in Canada.
At first, the American people were solidly in favor of the War, but slowly the truth bested the lies of Johnson, Nixon, and the Pentagon. I don’t know how much our efforts made a difference. I do know that the soldiers over there played a big part in ending the war and the the draft. Still, I would like to think that what I and my fellow resistors did helped end the war.
Now, we no longer have a draft, so the Pentagon does not have the same soldier pressure. Nevertheless, just as then, our war-making and warmongering are wrong and causing great damage to the world and ourselves.
The government (Bush, Obama, Trump, it does not matter) tell us that America promotes peace, democracy, and economic well-being, while their hidden agenda smashes the target countries. Take Afghanistan. After 9/11 some hype was for us to “bomb Afghanistan back to the Stone Age”, not realizing that we had already done that in concert with our Russian and Mujahideen buddies (the jihadists we supported who morphed into the Taliban). American meddling transformed a social democracy into a wasteland, and Afghanistan is still a wasteland, even after billions of dollars have been spent in so-called Reconstruction.
Iraq has not been much better, although we got rid of a dictator that we did not like and replaced him with a dictator we liked.
If we look dispassionately at all the wars we have engaged in since the victory of WW II, the same pattern shows itself. We make aggressive war on any nation or people resisting our control, showing no interest in dialog or compromise. Historical records show that right after WW II, there was an opportunity for peace and cooperation with the Soviet Union, our bugaboo. That offer was rejected and the Cold War ensued, an event that enriched the weapons purveyors and impoverished the people. Look at North Korea. The Koreans have made a simple proposal: end the decades long war with a peace treaty and cease threatening war games and overflights with nuclear-armed aircraft. The offer was rejected.
I am a bit cynical, but in the end, our wars mainly serve the interests of money and pride. They are immoral, contrary to the spirt of democracy, and a violation of the values of human rights enthroned in the Constitution.
