Ex Cathedra

We cannot have peace if we are only concerned with peace. War is not an accident. It is the logical outcome of a certain way of life. If we want to attack war, we have to attack that way of life.”~A. J. Muste

Via Cindy Sheehan.

Insert passage from 1984 here.

Obama Confirms Libya War to Continue – But Will He Ever Ask Congress? — News from Antiwar.com.

Clinton used cruise missiles. He would have used drones if he’d had them. Bush had them but seldom used them. Bush wanted Christian boots on the ground conquering and torturing people for Jesus.

Juan Cole’s An Open Letter to the Left on Libya has been getting a lot of circulation among otherwise sensible people.

Look at how Cole frames one argument against military violence: “1. Absolute pacifism (the use of force is always wrong).” Not only is this brazen straw man salesmanship, he mistakes force for violence. Nonviolent force is winning  in Egypt and Wisconsin. Violence failed in Mississippi and Afghanistan.

Juan Cole  drools over violence like a tween drools over Justin Bieber.

I was watching Desert Storm on TV in 1991 and as I saw one of our tanks blow up an Iraqi tank I cheered. Then I realized, I just cheered somebody’s death.

I cheered someone’s death. It took that gross a betrayal of my own commitment to nonviolence to show me how far I’d fallen by going along and not making waves. I had become dense and immune to the moral dimension of too much of life.

That realization changed me. What will it take to keep me from sliding back into moral numbness?

If will has anything to do with it, I will not hope for the death of Kadaffi and his troops. I hope he and they fail and are brought to justice, and I will only speak in favor of using nonviolent means to accomplish that. That is what I will and won’t do. How about you?

I have always honored and supported our veterans, but it must be said: war is not automatically an honorable pursuit.

War teaches obedience & violence. Not only are those skills useless in an enlightened democracy, they are dangerous to it.

I’ve never found it ennobling to subordinate my moral judgment to someone else’s. When I do it, I feel diminished, ashamed.

Members of our armed services, from Generals down to Privates, followed Bush’s orders to run secret prisons, kill civilians, and torture captives. How many servicemembers said no? Where was everyone else’s honor? Where is the honor of the homophobes in the services and the people who tried to turn the US Army into the Army of Jesus? Where is the honor in following orders and killing a man?

Who you are (veteran, civilian, or servicemember) means nothing and is worthy of neither praise nor blame. What you do is everything. Honor the honorable acts of our servicemembers. Honor nothing else.

Conservatives will never even notice the most bizarre self-contradictions from fellow conservatives.  Why? Because conservatism isn’t about principles or consistency. Conservatism is about race.

Race is the most highly cathected sign of class, and race is a sufficient reason for rank and file conservatives to support the interests of the stockholder class against their own interests, even if the stockholder class kills their children in its wars.

Here’s the site at PeaceActionWest.

The default message speaks to us and people like us.

But if you’re stuck with a ConservaDem or live here in the Incest Belt, try this message:

I am writing to urge you to cosponsor the Stop Outsourcing Security Act (HR 4650) to stop paying contractors for military and security work.

Outsourcing hollows out American military capabilities and leaves America unprepared to meet our military and security obligations. Skimming profits off the top for performing military functions is wasteful spending.

Please write to tell me what action you will take on this issue.

You think the scale-back of the Constellation program was bad news?

Huntsville has built its economy around weapons of war.

According to the Defense.gov – Quadrennial Defense Review, they’re useless weapons for the wrong damn war.

As you sowed, Huntsville, so shall ye reap.

Better get our smart people started on building a sustainable economy.

Is it a smart idea to repeat Bush’s 8 years of failure, or is it a stupid idea?

Do we want to keep killing and dying in wars or do we want to back up and start to fix the damage Bush did to America?

Please watch  the video and sign the petition:

Rethink Afghanistan.

when free people shall stand

Between their loved homes and t he war’s desolation.

Thank you, veterans.
It’s appropriate that Veterans’Day/Commemoration Day  is celebrated on the anniversary of a day when a war ended.  A particularly stupid and unnecessary war in which so many gave their  last full measure of devotion.

Theirs  not to reason why.

Theirs but to do and die.

To emphasize that our obligation to our veterans is still unfulfilled,  2,266 veterans died in 2008 because they were uninsured.

Let’s celebrate every Veterans’ Day by ending a war.

And by reducing profits on defense contracts to less than 1% of costs. Our servicemembers do their work out of devotion to their country. Wall Street stockholders should do the same or find more sustainable  investments that aren’t drenched in blood.

Special thanks to vet Markos Moulitsas for showing up Tom Tancredo as a Yellow Elephant.