Thinking About War

I've thought a lot about issues of war since I was a teen. I'm not a pacifist, but I do believe that this country has gotten into too many unnecessary wars. Like most people my age, my views on war were heavily influenced by the Vietnam War, seeing how it affected the older generation and the Vietnam veterans. During the 1980s, I was deeply against the Reagan administrations' arming of the Contras in El Salvador. During the buildup to George Bush's war against Sadam Hussein and Iraq, I was against the invasion because I thought the French arguments were basicly correct. Even though I like Obama, I'm very wary of his push to add more troops to Afganistan. I did a webcomic about my cat Jasper debating about war for Everyday citizen. You could look at it here.

I grew up a navy brat. I had a great time living in a navy community. The kids that I grew up playing with were very diverse and we knew everyone's parents. I had never encountered any racism and I felt safe in this community. My family had access to medical care and my mom shopped in the navy exchange and my parents never had to worry about the health care or other costs. I had never encountered racism or prejudice until my dad retired from the navy and we first lived with civilians. When I graduated high school, I knew many friends who enlisted in the military out of a profound love for their country. Because of these experiences, I have a generally good view of the military. I know enough about history though to know that the military has often been used for very dubious purposes. I think it's important that we question the government, to make sure our soldiers are not making sacrifices for an unjust cause. One of the big influences on my current thinking are the blogs of Jim Ramelis, one of the regular bloggers on Crossleft. He is a veteran who works with other veterans for peace issues. You could look at more of his blogs here.

A few days ago, one of my heroes, Howard Zinn, died. Zinn was a great anti-war critic. When Zinn was a young man he had been an enthusiastic enlistee in the fight against the Nazis in World War II. A change in Zinn's attitudes towards war occurred three weeks before the European war's end, when Zinn was assigned as a bombardier to use an early version on napalm to the French town of Royan, where a group of German soldiers were waiting for the war to end. The German soldiers were wiped out, but most of the French civilians died as well. After that, Zinn became fiercely anti-war. During the Vietnam War, Zinn was involved in teach ins and anti-war rallies, and he went with Daniel Berrigan to North Vietnam to free an imprisoned pilot. He continued his fight against war in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. Below is a speech that Zin did against the concept of a just war in Immanuel Presbyterian church in Los Angeles.

Dorothy Day was a radical Catholic Anarchist who founded the Catholic Worker newspaper and movement in the 1930s and was heavily involved in anti-war activities. Day's stands against war were very unpopular with the country at large and with her fellow leftists, who were not as pacifist as they would become during the Vietnam war. At a time when many of her leftist friends were going to Spain in 1936 to join the Abraham Lincoln Brigade and fight fascists, Day wouldn't take a position for the war. During World War II, Dorothy Day's stance against the war affected the subscription of her Catholic Worker newspaper: subscriptions plummeted from 100,000 years to around 50,000 readers. Day continued to work against the war and against nuclear proliferation from the 1950s to her death in 1980. Below is a youtube interview with Day.

Ted Rall is a famous political cartoonist who has created trenchant cartoons against the Iraq and Afganistan war since the early 2000s. In November 2001, The Village Voice and KFI Radio in Los Angeles sent Ted Rall to Afghanistan to cover the U.S. invasion, which was later made into a graphic novel and travelogue "To Afghanistan and Back.". His book earned accolades from the The Nation and The Washington Post, with The Nation calling it the best war reporting by an American in Afghanistan. I recently read in Facebook that Rall is trying to return to Afganistan to report on the newest American military efforts in that country. To learn more about it, you could look at his fundraising efforts in his website

Here is a Ted Rall animated political cartoon.