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Photo: War Is A Crime.org |
War activists, like peace activists, push for an agenda. We don't
think of them as activists because they rotate in and out of government
positions, receive huge amounts of funding, have access to big media,
and get meetings with top officials just by asking -- without having to
generate a protest first.
They also display great contempt for the public and openly discuss
ways to manipulate people through fear and nationalism -- further
shifting their image
away from that of popular organizers. But war activists are not
journalists, not researchers, not academics. They don't inform or
educate. They advocate. They just advocate for something that most of
the time, and increasingly, nobody wants.
William Kristol and Robert Kagan and their organization, the Foreign
Policy Initiative, stand out as exemplary war activists. They've
modified their tone slightly since the days of the Project for the New
American Century, an earlier war activist organization. They talk less
about oil and more about human rights. But they insist on U.S.
domination of the world. They find any success by anyone else in the
world a threat to the United States. And they demand an ever larger and
more frequently used military, even if world domination can be achieved
without it. War, for these war activists, is an end in itself. As was
much more common in the 19th century, these agitators believe war
brings strength and glory, builds character, and makes a nation a Super
Power.
Kristol recently lamented U.S. public opposition to war. He does
have cause for concern. The U.S. public is sick of wars, outraged by
those in Iraq and Afghanistan, and insistent that new ones not be
begun. In September, missile strikes into Syria were successfully
opposed by public resistance. In February, a new bill to impose
sanctions on Iran and commit the United States to joining in any
Israeli-Iranian war was blocked by public pressure. The country and the
world are turning against the drone wars.
The next logical step after ending wars and preventing wars would be
to begin dismantling the infrastructure that generates pressure for
wars. This hasn't happened yet. During every NCAA basketball game the
announcers thank U.S. troops for watching from 175 nations. Weapons
sales are soaring. New nukes are being developed. NATO has expanded to
the edge of Russia. But the possibility of change is in the air. A
new peace activist group at WorldBeyondWar.org has begun pushing for war's abolition.
Here's Kristol panicking:
"A war-weary public can be awakened and rallied. Indeed,
events are right now doing the awakening. All that's needed is the
rallying. And the turnaround can be fast. Only 5 years after the end of
the Vietnam war, and 15 years after our involvement there began in a big
way, Ronald Reagan ran against both Democratic dovishness and
Republican détente. He proposed confronting the Soviet Union and
rebuilding our military. It was said that the country was too war-weary,
that it was too soon after Vietnam, for Reagan's stern and challenging
message. Yet Reagan won the election in 1980. And by 1990 an awakened
America had won the Cold War."
Here's Kagan, who has worked for Hillary Clinton and whose wife
Victoria Nuland has just been stirring up trouble in the Ukraine as
Assistant Secretary of State. This is from an article by Kagan much admired by President Barack Obama:
"As Yan Xuetong recently noted, 'military strength
underpins hegemony.' Here the United States remains unmatched. It is far
and away the most powerful nation the world has ever known, and there
has been no decline in America's relative military capacity -- at least
not yet."
This pair is something of a good-cop/bad-cop team. Kristol bashes
Obama for being a wimp and not fighting enough wars. Kagan reassures
Obama that he can be master of the universe if he'll only build up the
military a bit more and maybe fight a couple more wars here and there.
The response
from some Obama supporters has been to point out that their hero has
been fighting lots of wars and killing lots of people, thank you very
much. The response from some peace activists is to play to people's
selfishness with cries to bring the war dollars
home. But humanitarian warriors are right to care about the world,
even if they're only pretending or badly misguided about how to help.
It's OK to oppose wars both because they kill huge numbers of poor
people far from our shores and because we could have used the money for
schools and trains. But it's important to add that for a small fraction
of U.S. military spending we could ensure that the whole world had food
and clean water and medicine. We could be the most beloved nation. I
know that's not the status the war activists are after. In fact, when
people begin to grasp that possibility, war activism will be finished
for good.
Source: War Is A Crime.org
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