Author: David Swanson

It’s sort of silly that it matters. The United States bombed North Korea flat with ordinary, non-bioweapons bombs. It ran out of standing structures to bomb. People lived in caves, if they lived. Millions died, most of them from regular old non-scandalous but mass-murderous bombs (including, of course, Napalm which melts people but doesn’t give them exotic diseases). North Koreans to this day live in such terror of a repetition of history that their behavior is sometimes inexplicable and bewildering read more

If you had just asked me if peace needed a “business plan,” I’d have replied, “Sure! Just like it needs a toupeed golfing fascist reality-TV creep in the White House! That’ll just about fix everything! War is over! Thanks!”

But after reading Scilla Elworthy’s book The Business Plan for Peace, I say, “Yeah, OK, that sounds pretty good, actually. Here, let me tweak it some!” In fact, I’ve added this book, despite some quibbles, to my bookshelf of war abolition advocacy. read more

Michael Knox is an Emeritus Distinguished University Professor at the University of South Florida, Chair of the US Peace Memorial Foundation, and Editor of the US Peace Registry. His antiwar activities began in 1965 in opposition to the war in Vietnam. As a delegate to the 20th National Student Congress, he introduced a successful resolution to hold an antiwar demonstration in August of 1967 in front of the White House. In 1970, Knox co-founded a draft counseling center and in 1971 he blew the read more

Dear Taliban,

Thank you for your letter to the American people.

As one person in the United States I cannot offer you a representative reply on behalf of all of us. Nor can I use polls to tell you what my fellow Americans think, because, as far as I know, polling companies haven’t asked the U.S. public about the war on your country in years. Possible explanations for this include:

1. We have several other wars going on, and the blowback includes a lot of self-inflicted mass-shootings.
2. Too many wars at a time doesn’t make the most desired packaging for advertisements.
3. Our previous president announced that your war was over.
4. Many here actually think it is over, which makes them useless for polling on the topic of ending it.

I do want to let you know that some of us saw your letter, that some news outlets reported on it, that people have read more

35% of U.S. mass shooters are military veterans, as compared with 14.76% in the general population for the same gender and age. See documentation of this below.

First a couple of Tweets:

Now an image from: https://jrotceagles.com

Whether the latest school shooter’s participation in a JROTC program that took NRA money and trained in marksmanship contributed to the shooting or not, it is symptomatic of a culture in which many schools are forgetting that read more

Anna Baltzer’s amazing book Witness in Palestine: A Jewish American Woman in the Occupied Territories has been updated over the years, and I’ve just read it for the first time. Rather unfairly, and — as it turns out — wrongly, my first response upon turning the initial pages was: Do we really need another one of these? Jewish person believes pile of myths. Jewish person confronts reality. Jewish person tries to open the eyes of others. It’s become as familiar as “Dog Bites read more

Our first debate was February 12th. This was our second, held February 13, 2018, at Eastern Mennonite University, moderated by Lisa Schirch.

Youtube.

Facebook.

The two speakers’ bios:

Pete Kilner is a writer and military ethicist who served more than 28 years in the Army as an infantryman and professor at the U.S. Military Academy. He deployed multiple times to Iraq and Afghanistan to conduct research on combat leadership. A graduate of West Point, he holds an MA in Philosophy from read more

On February 12, 2018, I debated Pete Kilner on the topic of “Is War Ever Justifiable?” (Location: Radford University; Moderator Glen Martin; videographer Zachary Lyman). Here is video:

Youtube.

Facebook.

The two speakers’ bios:

Pete Kilner is a writer and military ethicist who served more than 28 years in the Army as an infantryman and professor at the U.S. Military Academy. He deployed multiple times to Iraq and Afghanistan to conduct research on combat leadership. read more

 People have a wide range of reasons for opposing a military Trumparade through Washington. Here are nearly 20,000 people who say:

“We demand that the United States hold no militarism-glorifying parade displaying weaponry of war. Should such a thing be staged, we will visibly support peace on that day.”

But thousands of those petition signers have added further comments, and many others in my email box and social media have put their own twists on it. So, here’s my own personal angle:

The read more