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80 pages

English

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This book presents what numerous reviewers have called the best existing argument for the abolition of war, demonstrating that war can be ended, war should be ended, war is not ending on its own, and that we must end war.

Sujets

Political Ideologies

Political Science

Patriotism

Nationalism

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Publié par	eBookIt.com
Date de parution	29 septembre 2013
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781456619909
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0450€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Advance Praise for War No More

“Do you think that humankind can ever eliminate war? David Swanson makes perhaps as good an argument as can be found. Think of the death penalty. Once considered critical to our security, the death penalty is now universally considered optional and widely considered archaic, counter-productive, and shameful. To an even greater extent, this has been the fate of slavery. Why should war not suffer the same destiny?” —William Blum, author

“David Swanson does it again. Yet another tour de force against war and for peace. This book is required reading for everyone in the peace movement. As Swanson argues, we must abolish war before war abolishes us. There will be no war criminals tribunal after World War III. Swanson’s book is a beacon of hope to a frightened, paralyzed humanity.” —Francis A. Boyle, professor

“ War No More reminds us that war abolition can be as successful as was slavery abolition—once we recognize that wars are made by societies that tolerate war, and that wars can be avoided by a cultural rejection of war. As long as Americans feel helpless about their ability to have an impact on the U.S. government, wars will continue, but Swanson’s book and his life are antidotes to American helplessness.” —Bruce E. Levine, author

“I am always impressed and inspired by David’s prolific energy and I admire his unwavering opposition to all war, not just the ones started or continued by Republicans. In War No More , David once again lays out an impeccable case for abolishing war as a tool of Empire.” —Cindy Sheehan, author and peace activist

“Living in the most militarized culture on earth, we can get trapped into thinking that our choices are limited to going to war or doing nothing. In War No More, Swanson completely destroys this deadly myth. He convincingly, passionately shows there are many options available to our enormously creative minds once we decide war is not an option of last resort—it is no option at all. —Mike Ferner, former president, Veterans For Peace

“The ideas in this book have truly opened up a new way for me to think about war; or, to be more specific, ending it.” —Sean McCord, playwright

“David Swanson writes like he talks; that is to say, in clear, sharp language that gets to the root of the issue, but in a very personal way...as if you are having a one-on-one conversation with him. As a natural follow-on to Swanson’s previous books about war, War Is A Lie, and When the World Outlawed War, he brings us to the logical next step: ending war. Swanson shows us that abolishing war is not unfathomable, but that it will take more than just a change in mindset; it will take real action and real work—a movement. Count me in.” —Leah Bolger, former president, Veterans For Peace

“Long ago, abolitionists caused huge discomfort. They still do. The work of David Swanson is in the vital spirit of William Lloyd Garrison, who had a clear answer when a friend urged him to keep more cool because he seemed on fire. ‘I have need to be all on fire,’ Garrison replied, ‘for there are mountains of ice around me to melt.’ Swanson’s new book War No More generates an abundance of heat and light. It will serve as a powerful blowtorch for efforts to abolish war.” —Norman Solomon, author

War No More
The Case for Abolition

by David Swanson

With a Foreword by Kathy Kelly

Charlottesville, VA
First edition—2013

Also by David Swanson
Tube World (2012)
The Military Industrial Complex at 50 (2011)
When The World Outlawed War (2011)
War Is A Lie (2010)
Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency
and Forming a More Perfect Union (2009)
The 35 Articles of Impeachment (Introduction, 2008)

davidswanson.org

• • •

©2013 David Swanson
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced
or transmitted in any form or by any means, including mechanical, electric, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Swanson, David, 1969 Dec. 1-

War No More: The Case for Abolition

Book design by David Swanson
Photo by Scott Strazzante, Chicago Tribune

First Edition / September 2013

Published in eBook format by eBookIt.com
http://www.eBookIt.com

ISBN-13: 978-1-4566-1990-9
We do not care-
That much is clear.
Not enough
Of us care
Anywhere.
We are not wise-
For that reason,
Mankind dies.
To think
Is much against
The will.
Better-
And easier-
To kill.

—Langston Hughes
FOREWORD
I lived in Iraq during the 2003 Shock and Awe bombing. On April 1st, about two weeks into the aerial bombardment, a medical doctor who was one of my fellow peace team members urged me to go with her to the Al Kindi Hospital in Baghdad, where she knew she could be of some help. With no medical training, I tried to be unobtrusive, as families raced into the hospital carrying wounded loved ones. At one point, a woman sitting next to me began to weep uncontrollably. “How I tell him?” she asked, in broken English. “What I say?” She was Jamela Abbas, the aunt of a young man, named Ali. Early in the morning on March 31st, U.S. war planes had fired on her family home, while she alone of all her family was outside. Jamela wept as she searched for words to tell Ali that surgeons had amputated both of his badly damaged arms, close to his shoulders. What’s more, she would have to tell him that she was now his sole surviving relative.

I soon heard how that conversation had gone. It was reported to me that when Ali, aged 12, learned that he had lost both of his arms, he responded by asking “Will I always be this way?”

Returning to the Al Fanar hotel, I hid in my room. Furious tears flowed. I remember pounding my pillow and asking “Will we always be this way?”

David Swanson reminds me to look to humanity’s incredible achievements in resisting war, in choosing the alternatives which we have yet to show our full power to realize.

A hundred years ago, Eugene Debs campaigned tirelessly in the U.S. to build a better society, where justice and equality would prevail and ordinary people would no longer be sent to fight wars on behalf of tyrannical elites. From 1900 to 1920 Debs ran for president in each of five elections. He waged his 1920 campaign from inside the Atlanta prison to which he’d been sentenced for sedition for having spoken vigorously against U.S. entry into World War I. Insisting that wars throughout history have always been fought for purposes of conquest and plunder, Debs had distinguished between the master class that declares wars and the subjugated who fight the battles. “The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose,” said Debs in the speech for which he was imprisoned, “while the subject class has had nothing to gain and all to lose—especially their lives.”

Debs hoped to create a mindset throughout the American electorate that withstood propaganda and rejected war. It was no easy process. As a labor historian writes, “With no radio and television spots, and with little sympathetic coverage of progressive, third party causes, there was no alternative but to travel incessantly, one city or whistle-stop at a time, in searing heat or numbing cold, before crowds large or small, in whatever hall, park or train station where a crowd could be assembled.”

He didn’t prevent U.S. entry into World War I, but Swanson tells us in his 2011 book, When the World Outlawed War, there came a point in U.S. history, in 1928, when wealthy elites decided that it was in their enlightened self-interest to negotiate the Kellogg-Briand Pact, intended to avert future wars, and to prevent future U.S. governments from seeking war. Swanson encourages us to study and build on moments in history when war was rejected, and to refuse to tell ourselves that warfare is inevitable.

Surely we must join Swanson in acknowledging the enormous challenges we face in campaigning to avoid war, or to abolish it. He writes: “In addition to being immersed in a false world view of war’s inevitability, people in the United States are up against corrupt elections, complicit media, shoddy education, slick propaganda, insidious entertainment, and a gargantuan permanent war machine falsely presented as a necessary economic program that cannot be dismantled.” Swanson refuses to be deterred by large challenges. An ethical life is an extraordinary challenge, and encompasses lesser challenges, such as democratizing our societies. Part of the challenge is to honestly acknowledge its difficulty: to clear-sightedly witness the forces that make war more likely in our time and place, but Swanson refuses to categorize these forces as insurmountable obstacles.

A few years ago, I heard once more about Jamela Abbas’ nephew, Ali. Now he was 16 years old, living in London where a BBC reporter had interviewed him. Ali had become an accomplished artist, using his toes to hold a paint brush. He had also learned to feed himself using his feet. “Ali,” asked the interviewer, “what would you like to be when you grow up?” In perfect English, Ali had answered, “I’m not sure. But I would like to work for peace.” David Swanson reminds us that we will not always be this way. We will transcend in ways that we cannot yet properly imagine, through the determination to rise above our incapacities and achieve our purposes on earth. Obviously Ali’s story is not a feel-good story. Humanity has lost so much to war and what so often seems its incapacity for peace is like the most grievous of disfigurements. We don’t know the ways we will discover in which to work to rise above these disfigurements. We learn from the past, we keep our eyes on our goal, we fully grieve our losses, and we expect to be surprised by the fruits of diligent labor and a passion to keep humanity alive, and to help it create again.

If David is right, if humanity survives, war itself will go the route of death-duels and infant