We Who Dared to Say No to War: American Antiwar Writing from 1812 to Now Paperback – September 9, 2008

I have just finished reading, "We who dared to say no to war: American antiwar writing from 1812 to the present," edited by Murray Polner and Thomas Woods.

It was a breath of fresh air in our present climate of fetid war fever. Let me say that it is not the American history you find in taught in school.

The anti-war writings are not just from the usual run-of-the-mill pacifists like Howard Zinn and the Berrigan brothers, but include some of the most prominent figures in our history, including John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, Robert Follette, William Jennings Bryan, Robert Taft, Henry Wallace, Jane Addams, Helen Keller, Pat Buchanan, and Julia Ward Howe, who gave us both Mother's Day and the "Battle Hymn of the Republic," and Katherine Lee Bates who wrote "America the Beautiful."

The writings are surprisingly relevant to modern politics. Most interesting are the primary-source materials dealing with the War of 1812, which was an invasion of Canada. Webster and Adams both railed against this war as a violation of everything the Declaration of Independence stood for.

Many of the writers refer to the Americans' penchant for war and how easily politicians can stir them up. They not only make a strong moral case against war but refer to the commercial pressures behind the war. I did not know, for example, that northern manufacturers were eager for Lincoln to secure southern markets.

I noted that several presidents, like Lincoln, who stood out against the Mexican-American War, and Woodrow Wilson dropped their anti-war stance once elected to office. Sound familiar?

Especially relevant were the wars against Mexico and the Philippines. Modern anti-war activist often refer to those crimes.

The Libertarians have a very strong showing in this anti-war tradition. Paul Craig Roberts of the National Review writes: "Why did Bush destroy Iraq?" He writes: "Every reason we have been given for the Iraqi invasion has proved to be false....

"Despite all the hoopla about democracy and elections, no Iraqi government has been able to form and the country is on the brink of civil war. Some Middle East experts believe that violence will spread throughout the region.

"The brutal truth is that America's responsibility is extreme. We have destroyed a country and created political chaos for no reason whatsoever.

"Seldom in history has a government miscalculated as badly as Bush has in Iraq. More disturbingly, Bush shows no ability to recover from his mistake. All we get from him is pigheaded promises of victory that none of our military commanders believe."

Writer Harvey Wasserman, in an article entitled: "Four bloody lies of war from Havana 1898 to Bagdhad 2003," writes:

"A mirror image of the earlier war in the Philippines, Vietnam may rank as the greatest of all American catastrophes. It split and alienated a generation, poisoned American politics, spawned a toxic cadre of dirty tricksters, and marked the downturn of the American economy. The war destroyed Johnson's Great Society and has rendered every American tangibly poorer in more ways than can be counted."

"Nixon's 'dirty trickster' disciples Karl Rove and Dick Cheney have now poisoned the nation with yet another ghastly lie of war. Their hopeless Iraqi slaughter has become the modern definition of cynical deceit, human butchery, and economic ruin. Exactly what will happen to us and to the liars that have dragged us into this latest bloody quagmire remains to be seen.

"But history does not indicate a pretty outcome."

Libertarian Llewellyn Rockwell, Jr. writes in "The Glory of War:"

"The bloom on the rose of war eventually fades, leaving only the thorns." He says war give meaning to the lives of Americans, acting like a devil's sacrament. "It promised to bind us not with God but with the nation state. It grants not life but death. It provides not liberty but slavery. It lives not on truth but on lies, and these lives themselves are said to be worthy of defense. It exalts evil and puts down the good. It is promiscuous in encouraging an orgy of sin, not self-restraint and thought. It is irrational and bloody and vicious and appalling. And it claims to be the highest achievement of man.

"It is worse than mass insanity. It is mass wallowing in evil."

"And then it is over. People oddly forget what took place. The rose wilts and the thorns grow but people go on with their lives.... Maybe in a few years, once the war is out of the news forever and the country we smashed recovers some modicum of civilization, we can revisit the event and proclaim it glorious. But for now, let's just say it never happened."

I have found a new Bible. This book will save your soul.

Reading through this collection of anti-war writings was one of the most self-developing, introspective things I've done in awhile.
The book is also very entertaining; it is lively, gripping, and emotional. Some of the writers are very vivid with their dialect and I believe the writings bring a bold sense of individuality, urgency, and determination for what is "just", that I haven't felt in awhile.

Both authors present a wide assortment of writings from different political views: socialists, anarchists, libertarians, conservatives, leftists, Christians, poets, and musicians. With all one thing in common, contempt for mass slaughter, irresponsible nationalism, and government lies.

One can learn a great deal about history by foraging through this book. e.g. I learned about Madison's War of 1812, that Lincoln opposed the Mexican war, that Andrew Carnegie was an anti-imperialist and offered to buy the Philippines from the U.S., so the Filipinos could have their independence, saving many from death by war. There's a lot of history in here.

The writers and speakers presented in the book range from historians, congress(wo)men, critics, political pundits, mothers, foreign policy experts, etc. Helen Keller has an essay in this book.

A very compelling read.

This book is excellent. It cuts directly through mountains of false education and propaganda, and looks at the real interets of our people and our country, and should be a wake up call to every American to stop supporting the culture of death that totally unnecessary wars have inflicted on us. There have been times when we needed to fight, but relatively speaking they have been few, and far more often we have gone to war and slaughtered ourselves and others with no cause whatsoever. The culture of war and the culture of death have overtaking our country with great power and it is well past time to stop it. Mr. Power and Mr. Woods have done an outstanding job is bringing this truth to light.