For a fraction of what the U.S. spends on militarism, we could end starvation and various diseases on earth, we could have top-quality education from pre-school through college, sustainable energy, sustainable agriculture, trains that get you across the country faster than Fox News switches its position on Julian Assange -- I won't list healthcare because the U.S. already spends far more than it needs to on that, it's just wasted on insurance companies --but we could have the best of everything, we could actually make the whole world great, not again but for the first time. The only difficulty would be what to do with all the remaining money and with the attitudes of materialism that assume we need to do something with it.
So if you want free college instead of student debt, if you want to avoid nuclear apocalypse, if you want the right to a jury trial, if you'd like to visit other countries and be loved rather than resented, then you do have an interest -- you have lots of interests -- in ending war. Ending war should be the top priority of many movements, and it should be an integral part of movements to protect war refugees, to reduce the racism that is fueled by war and which fuels war, and to halt the militarization of police. Instead we have a lot of coalitions of all things progressive except peace.
Our job of making those coalitions broader, of suggesting that Libyan lives and Yemeni lives and Filipino lives matter, is perhaps advanced by painting a picture of where we might get. The vision that we at World Beyond War have published as A Global Security System: An Alternative to War is not one only of resistance. Once you're willing to take on the trillion-dollar illness that many have adjusted to, all sorts of opportunities open up for the rule of law, for aid, for diplomacy, for restorative justice, for cooperation, for conflict resolution, and of course for what to do with some of that trillion dollars a year.
People sometimes get outraged at the hoarding of wealth by billionaires, and I really wish more people would. But their pile of gold is nothing compared to what gets dumped into war year after year after year: about $2 trillion globally, about $1 trillion in the U.S. alone, several trillion dollars in destruction by war, and additional trillions in lost opportunities from not putting those funds to better use. If anyone ever tells you there's not enough money for something, they're either mistaken or lying, but that's certainly the fakest of fake news.
Of course, the main problem is that most people in the United States who don't want as much war as possible don't want to abolish all war either. They want to do away with the bad wars but keep the good wars, a standard not typically applied to other horrors such as rape, child abuse, racism, slavery, or various past horrors once treated as natural and inevitable, such as dueling or trial by ordeal or lynching. There are not actually any good wars, which is why my books focus on World War II, the Civil War, and others masquerading as good wars. And I will make a firm prediction that I won't get past 3 questions from you guys without one of them being about World War II. But you don't have to agree with ending all war to agree with taking positive steps that will eventually eliminate war. You can believe in militarized defense and abolish weapons that have no defensive purpose, scale the U.S. military back to something resembling the size of other countries'. That would launch a reverse arms race. Further demilitarization would follow more easily.
This past year I wrote a book called War Is Never Just refuting the claims of just war theory. Just War Theory's criteria for a just war fall into three categories: the impossible, the immeasurable, and the amoral. Its a medieval doctrine that the Catholic Church is rejecting but U.S. universities have entrenched more deeply than evolution or climate science.
But there is evil in the world! someone will say. We must use the most evil acts possible that spread unending cycles of evil in order to address the evil in the world. I suspect I could find well over 100 million Christians in the United States who do not hate the men who crucified Jesus, but who do hate and would be highly offended at the idea of forgiving Adolf Hitler or ISIS. When John Kerry says that Bashar al Assad is Hitler, does that help you feel forgiving toward Assad? When Hillary Clinton says that Vladimir Putin is Hitler, does that help you relate to Putin as a human being? When ISIS cuts a white English-speaking man's throat with a knife, does your culture expect of you forgiveness or vengeance?
What good would forgiveness do? Well, I don't know. I'm not a Christian. You guys are. But I suspect it might allow clear thinking. People keep retiring from the U.S. military and blurting out that the wars are counterproductive. Every war produces more terrorist groups. Every attack on them spreads their violent ideology farther. At some point, the choices of doing what makes matters worse and doing nothing start to seem like they might not be the only two choices. Disarmament, targeted sanctions, halting support, using diplomacy, and providing aid begin to come into focus as options that were there all along.
Toward developing this vision, World Beyond War is building a nonviolent global movement focused on education and activism. The sign up sheets I have here are the same as what's at WorldBeyondWar.org, a statement signed by people in 147 countries and counting. You can form a World Beyond War chapter. We have materials for events on the website: books, films, powerpoints, speakers, activities. We have a campaign focused on divestment of public dollars. Does Arlington have government pension funds invested in weapons dealers? It's possible to find out and to change it. Teachers' retirement shouldn't depend on a boom in the war business. We have another campaign focused on closing bases, working with groups around the world resisting foreign, meaning U.S., bases in their areas. The mayor of the town in Okinawa where the U.S. wants a new base will be speaking in DC this Tuesday night -- talk to me afterwards if you want to go. And we have another campaign focused on advancing the rule of law. You can help us with these or give us other ideas. Our website argues the case against war, and you can use it to educate others.
Our website WorldBeyondWar.org also has a calendar of upcoming events around the world, but being here I would start by joining with Code Pink and interrupting some Congressional hearings with some words of truth. In March a meeting is opening at the UN in New York on a new treaty to ban nuclear weapons. From the end of March through the first week of April, we're encouraging people to hold events everywhere. April 4 is 50 years since Dr. King's speech against war, and April 6 is 100 years since the U.S. got into a war that it claimed would end all wars. Toward the end of April there will be coalition protests in DC that will need peace added to them. In June the United National Antiwar Coalition will have its conference in Richmond, Va.
I recommend organizing locally here and globally through World Beyond War. Every town needs peace holidays and monuments and events to counter the war ones. Every locality needs commitments to sanctuary, to safe cities, to refusal to cooperate in official bigotry -- including in attacks on people who live far away from the United States. Those people are part of us too. They're our neighbors' families now blocked from visiting. They're witnesses to war who can teach us not to make more of them. They're our allies who can move the United Nations and the warmaking and weapons buying nations of the world.
Shelley said
'And these words shall then become
Like Oppression's thundered doom
Ringing through each heart and brain,
Heard again - again - again -
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