War and Peace page
"Chickenhawk n.
A person enthusiastic about war, provided someone else fights
it."
Cheerleaders for war who "chickened-out"
Books
"America is today the
leader of a world-wide anti-revolutionary movement in the defense
of vested interests. She now stands for what Rome stood for. Rome
consistently supported the rich against the poor in all foreign
communities that fell under her sway; and, since the poor, so
far, have always and everywhere been far more numerous than the
rich, Rome's policy made for inequality, for injustice, and for
the least happiness of the greatest number."
Arnold Toynbee, historian, 1961
Report
"War, to the increasing
exclusion of everything else, is the only thing that America collectively
cares about anymore. We don't manufacture much of anything; just
war. We don't concern ourselves with education; just war. We don't
attend to the 40 million Americans without health coverage; just
war. We don't focus on the 30 million American children living
in poverty; just war. We don't support the arts; just war. Even
though a multitude of human needs were in existence prior to September
11, and have only increased since then, we continue to direct
our attention and our resources into what we do best: war. Just
war."
David Potorti, brother of WTC
victim
"War is the biggest business
in America."
Jim Garrison, New Orleans District
Attorney, prosecutor in the 1967 JFK assassination conspiracy
trial
" Can it be believed that
the democracy which overthrew the feudal system and vanquished
kings will retreat before tradesmen and capitalists."
Alex de Tocqueville
" Enemies are necessary
for the wheels of the U.S. military machine to turn. "
John Stockwell, former CIA official
and author
"This country, with its
institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they
shall grow weary of the existing Government, they can exercise
their constitutional right of amending it or their revolutionary
right to dismember or overthrow it."
Abraham Lincoln, 1861
"The stakes are too high
for government to be a spectator sport."
Barbara Jordan, former U.S. Congresswoman
"Although the privileged
of this world can accept the existence of poverty on a massive
scale and not be overawed by it, problems begin when the causes
of this poverty are pointed out to them. Once causes are determined,
then there is talk of 'social injustice,' and the privileged begin
to resist. This is especially true when to structural analysis
there is added a concrete historical perspective in which personal
responsibilities come to light. But it is the consientization
and resultant organization of poor sectors that rouse the greatest
fears and the strongest resistance."
Gustavo Gutierrez, A Theology
of Liberation
"To provide its happy
people with perpetual fun is now the deepest purpose of Western
civilization."
Jeremy Seabrook, Third World Network
" The U.S. President has
been largely refashioned as a high-level trade representative
for the transnationals."
The Nation magazine
"Those in power are blind devotees
to private enterprise. They accept that degree of socialism implicit
in the vast subsidies to the military-industrial-complex, but
not that type of socialism which maintains public projects for
the disemployed and the unemployed alike."
William O. Douglas, former U.S.
Supreme Court Justice, 1969
" With unfailing consistancy,
U.S. intervention has been on the side of the rich and powerful
of various nations at the expense of the poor and needy. Rather
than strengthening democracies, U.S. leaders have overthrown numerous
democratically elected governments or other populist regimes in
dozens of countries ... whenever these nations give evidence of
putting the interests of their people ahead of the interests of
multinational corporate interests. "
Michael Parenti, political scientist
and author
Articles
"... the establishment
can't admit [that] it is human rights violations that make ...
countries attractive to business -- so history has to be fudged,
including denial of our support of regimes of terror and the practices
that provide favorable climates of investment, and our destabilization
of democracies that [don't] meet [the] standard of service to
the transnational corporation..."
Edward S. Herman, political economist
and author
"The moment war is declared...
the mass of the people, through some spiritual alchemy, become
convinced that they have willed and executed the deed themselves.
They then, with the exception of a few malcontents, proceed to
allow themselves to be regimented, coerced, deranged in all the
environments of their lives, and turned into a solid manufactory
of destruction toward whatever other people may have, in the appointed
scheme of things, come within the range of the Government's disapprobation...
The State is the organization
of the herd to act offensively or defensively against another
herd similarly organized...
War is the health of the State.
It automatically sets in motion throughout society those irresistible
forces for uniformity, for passionate cooperation with the Government
in coercing into obedience the minority groups and individuals
which lack the larger herd sense...
But in general, the nation
in wartime attains a uniformity of feeling, a hierarchy of values
culminating at the undisputed apex of the State ideal, which could
not possibly be produced through any other agency than war. Loyalty-or
mystic devotion to the State-becomes the major imagined human
value...
In a nation at war, every citizen
identifies himself with the whole, and feels immensely strengthened
in that identification. The purpose and desire of the collective
community live in each person who throws himself wholeheartedly
into the cause of war..."
Randolph Bourne, "The State",
1918
U.S.Foreign
Policy and Pentagon
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