“We have been taught to ring our bells and illuminate our windows and let off fireworks as manifestation of our joy, when we have heard of great ruin and devastation, and misery, and death, inflicted by our troops upon a people who never injured us, who never fired a shot on our soil, and who were utterly incapable of acting on the offensive against us.”
– We Who Dared to Say No to War
In 2021, one of America’s longest wars finally came to a pitiful end. With the death of 2,400 U.S. soldiers and 170,000 Afghani citizens, our nearly 20-year revenge against Afghanistan was complete. The murder of nearly 3,000 innocent Americans killed in the September 11 attack; avenged, I guess, off the backs of other innocent men, women, and children in another land.
Since our founding, America has enjoyed less than 20 years without war. That means, for over ninety percent of our existence, we have been at war, as the fallout from one war all too often leads to another. Every president has presided over a war, whether declaring a new conflict or maintaining the old. Most of the hundreds of battles we’ve started were to gain territories, redress a grievance, or simply for plunder, and not the only reason that matters, self-defense. To garner support, politicians and bureaucrats have used the same formula. Identify a boogeyman, then lie and misrepresent the facts. One of the most well-known cons was the weapons of mass destruction sham that sold the American people on the war in Iraq.
Instead, our founders tried to warn us about foreign entanglements, calling for political isolation, and strict neutrality towards other nations. Having just fought a war for their independence, the wounds were still fresh. In 1795, James Madison wrote: "Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes, and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few."
In fact, the Founders guarded liberty so jealously that they structured the Constitution to limit any declaration of war to Congress only, and no other. Exceedingly concerned about unchecked power, they wanted any consideration of war to be debated in the legislative chamber, requiring a majority vote. They certainly did not want war powers in the hands of just one executive, the President. Unfortunately, their attempts to restrict such authorization didn’t last long. Presidents began their unconstitutional interference within decades of the founding. And that disastrous precedent has continued ever since.
Each president varied in their foreign policy positions as it relates to war. Woodrow Wilson saw war as a means of making the world safe for democracy, the Truman Doctrine called for ambitious intervention, while George W. Bush saw war as a way of ending tyranny. Some adopted nation-building as benevolent attempts to spread freedom abroad, while others could barely hide their misplaced goals for conquest, colonial expansion, exploitation, and the looting of resources. These provocations have cost the US over 666,000 military deaths, 673,000 civilian deaths, and nearly 1.5 million wounded Americans. At best, war has brought us destabilization, debt, and imperialism. At worst, murder on a massive scale, unimaginable destruction, and emotional devastation.
The American military currently charges the public purse nearly a trillion dollars a year. President Eisenhower, who popularized the term, Military-Industrial Complex, warned of never-ending power when the military conspires with its commercial suppliers. One of America’s most deadly government programs, war is also referred to as the worst form of crony capitalism. Currently maintaining 750 military bases worldwide in 81 countries, we’ve often questioned why our enemies hate us. Perhaps, it has something to do with so many of our boots on their ground.
In Murray Polner’s and Thomas E. Woods, Jr.’s 2008 book, “We Who Dared to Say No to War”, Polner and Woods compiled a list of prominent antiwar speeches, essays, and other musings about the state of American warfare. Beginning with the War of 1812 and continuing to the War on Terror, each section provides a brief history and overview of how conflicts were sold to the public. While the Civil War professed to save the Union, WWI to make the world safe for democracy, and WWII to undo Fascism, all wars had their dissenters. Putting ideological differences aside, patriots from all stripes unite to condemn these unconstitutional acts. From Daniel Webster’s early opposition to the draft; to a Kentucky mother’s disdain of the mockery of our founding principles; to a vice-president who reminded us of foreigners’ pleas for plows and not tanks, each passionately renounced the coming atrocities. And thus, collectively forewarned how America was becoming a source of evil in the world.
The US Constitution was established to protect the rights of individual citizens. Yet every war has denied these same rights to those we have targeted. As President Biden ponders our next foreign policy action, perhaps in Taiwan, we ought to heed the cries of the peacemakers who came before. And ask ourselves, my country, right or wrong? Then shame on us, we who fail to say no to war.
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