Peace is War

“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety”. Benjamin Franklin

I think I must have written this kind of article a dozen times over the course of 46 years. So much so that it has almost become a tradition every time we have a Republican president.  What makes this moment different  is it is just more obvious than ever before that the Orange Felon residing in the Oval office  has lied us into yet another avoidable war. This is tragically a very Orwellian moment when the man who thinks he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize starts a war of aggression– peace is war, up is down. And you don’t have to even ask why certain Middle Eastern factions hate both Israel and the USA at this point. The cycle of war just continues in the region as if the real goal is Armageddon. It made me wonder what this generation of veterans will think?

I sat with a group of veterans after the dedication of the Louis Dominguez veterans center last Saturday. As we sat around the table eating pasta, it occurred to me to ask those present, “How many of you guys think  this war with Iran is worth fighting?” None of them raised their hands and only one stayed silent when the discussion came back to the Vietnam war,  of which these guys were veterans.

“We shouldn’t have been there in the first place,” one vet pronounced. The others agreed. “And both Iraqi wars were a waste,” another one said between eating. They all shook their heads in agreement and continued eating.

In all my years, I have not met a single combat veteran from any war since World War II who believed the cause was worth the sacrifice.. In fact, when we look back at our history, there’s hardly been a decade without our nation going to war somewhere for some excuse. In my mind there are only four wars that we have fought that were actually necessary, and all of them because we were attacked.

The American Revolution is first and foremost because of the stupidity and tyranny of the British Crown and the War of 1812 because the Brits didn’t get the message the first time. Then the American Civil War started by renegade states that wanted to keep the institution of slavery. This war ended with the emancipation of the enslaved and the ratification of the 12th, 13th, and 14th Amendments to the US Constitution, guaranteeing citizenship to those very same people. The attempt to cure America’s “original sin”.  And  now being disputed on immigration.

And then there was World War II. We didn’t start it, but once again, our nation was called to end the tyranny of fascism. All the rest of our wars were about US colonization, corporate greed, and the proxy battles of the Cold War against communism. But what about Afghanistan, you say? Well the truth is that the attacks of 911 were crimes by a terrorist group and the planners of those crimes c

should have been brought to justice without going to war for 20 years at the cost of thousands of lives and billions of dollars and the erosion of our civil liberties (remember the Patriot Act?). In fact many years ago it was revealed that the Taliban was willing to give up Osama Bin Laden in the early days of that action but Bush wanted his war –one that could have been avoided had he only listened to the intel from the Clinton national security team.  

Here we go again, not unlike the wars in Vietnam or Iraq, where a president lies his way into another costly war while declining to fund essential services at home. Just one or two of those Tomahawk missiles could feed every hungry child in America. The entire cost of just a few days of this war could pay for the health care deficit or housing for the homeless. And all of this was done without a formal declaration of war from the US Congress that has the sole authority to declare war. 

What we have here is a bully tyrant– we’ve seen it at home in LA, Washington DC, Chicago, and Minnesota with the ICE raids. We’ve witnessed it with the concentration camps that now contain some 70,000 migrants illegally snatched off our streets without warrants. But why should we expect anything different from a twice impeached, three-time indicted false populist criminal who bullied his way into the White House not once but twice?

Should I expect moral conduct from a criminal who runs this nation like a mob boss? 

My friends and neighbors, this is the 250th year of our nation’s founding. I suggest we not only reclaim the symbols of our freedom from the corrupt neo-cons, but also make this July 4th the stage for the largest “No Kings” Day protest ever held. Then, in November 2026, we must work to vote out every member of Congress — representatives and senators — who supports this war.

If we haven’t learned anything from the last 70 years of war it should be that we can’t force any other nation to adopt democracy at the point of a gun, it can only come from their own desire to be politically free.