We still have wars, of course. But we also have murder and theft and coveting, and yet we manage to remember Moses as having started something useful. The vision that the Outlawrists had has never yet been fully implemented. That's our job. Coming out of the experience of World War I, the Outlawrists opposed alliances that would use war to punish war. They would have opposed the idea of NATO, even as originally conceived, with everything they had.
NATO used to claim a defensive purpose, but that purpose was to make war in defense of its members. NATO has militarized the nations of Europe against the will of their people. NATO maintains hundreds of nuclear weapons in non-nuclear European nations, in blatant violation of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. NATO threatens Russia with missile base construction on its borders, wasting billions provoking a war with so-called missile defense systems that do not work and are designed as part of an aggressive attack.
NATO does not bomb all nations abusing human rights; nor does NATO's bombing alleviate human suffering. The pro-Western oil dictators in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain are not targets. In fact, they were special guests of the Queen of England yesterday along with the dictators from Abu Dhabi, Brunei, Kuwait, Qatar, and Swaziland. Former dictators Ben Ali in Tunisia and Mubarak in Egypt were not targets. NATO's real motivations include a desire to control the global flow of oil, to support dictators who've supported U.S./NATO wars and prisons and torture operations, to back Israel's expansionist agenda, and to surround and threaten the nation of Iran.
But the problem is deeper. The Nation magazine editorialized this week: "In theory, a NATO that pooled Europe's and America's political and military resources and acted only on UN Security Council authorization could be a useful part of the world's security architecture." No it could not. Security architecture is something we used to call standing armies. Murder has not become more acceptable. Mass murder by undemocratic institutions unaccountable to us has not become more acceptable. Obama's new Atrocity Prevention Board has in mind one tool for preventing atrocities, and that tool is atrocities. On Thursday night at a debate in Chicago the moderator announced that NATO is an anti-violence organization. The Outlawrists sought precisely to outgrow the idea that anti-violence organizations would employ violence.
France was a partner with the United States in creating the Kellogg-Briand Pact. France has now joined Canada and Australia in announcing a withdrawal from Afghanistan, backing off however to now claim it will leave only the non-combat combatants. We should celebrate even that incomplete withdrawal tomorrow. We should also celebrate that day, August 27, 1928, in Paris when the nations of the world said they'd never fight again. We need peace holidays as well as war ones. We need Mothers Day, MLK Day, and the International Day of Peace. We should have a Kellogg-Briand Day too.
The majority of Americans want the wars ended and the military spending cut. And the more they learn, the more they agree. The message of peace is one that you can expect people to agree with even if they don't at first. The surveys done by Steven Kull and others establish this expectation. So, never believe your television. Never doubt the popular demand for peace. Never stop spreading the word. Never accept that mass murder has been civilized. Know your own strength.
"And these words shall then become," wrote Percy Bysshe Shelley ,
"Like Oppression's thundered doom
"Ringing through each heart and brain,
"Heard again - again - again -
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