There are many causes I would die for. There is not a single cause I would kill for …

I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent …

Victory attained by violence is tantamount to a defeat, for it is momentary. — Mohandas Ghandi

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. — Dwight Eisenhower

War does not end strife - it sows it. War does not end hatred - it feeds it. For those who argue war is a necessary evil, I say you are half right. War is evil (where strife, there every evil work: Bible, James 3:16). But it is not necessary. War cannot be a necessary evil, because non-violence is a necessary good. The two cannot co-exist. — Congressman John Lewis

Why, of course, the people don't want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship. — Hermann Göring

A pre-emptive war in 'defense' of freedom would surely destroy freedom, because one simply cannot engage in barbarous action without becoming a barbarian, because one cannot defend human values by calculated and unprovoked violence without doing mortal damage to the values one is trying to defend. — J. William Fulbright

Waging war to produce peace is a fantastic and ultimate contradiction in terms. At its most essential and spiritual levels, victory does not exist. It is at best a fleeting illusion.

The author Chalmers Johnson (Blowback, The Sorrows of Empire), among many others, has more than convincingly shown how war only seeds more war by, at least, creating resentment and the roots of revenge; by dividing peoples and nations arbitrarily with imposed new borders; by seeing and implementing short-term "strategic solutions" that ignore and/or create longer-term disastrous consequences.

Much of humanity shrugs, claiming that war is inevitable and "a fact of human nature." I absolutely reject that belief. It is not so "black and white". I do believe that humans do carry a tendency to resort to violence, but at the same time ontologically wish and hope for peace. In this context, it is possible to nurture the spirit of peace and starve the appetite for war. Where I am called "naive" in believing this, I wear the appellation proudly as a badge of honor. I say that those who promote war as a solution for anything are ignorant morons.

I submit that "victory" in war is always at the cost of thousands, perhaps millions, of souls, the elimination of nations and cultures, the laying waste of the earth, the expenditure of wealth and resources that could otherwise be used to construct and defend peace, elevating the lives and security of all peoples. Peace without war is by contrast cheap, in some cases free. It is certain that the maintenance of peace is always less costly than the waging of war.

Göring's quote, above, is perfectly true. War and the conditions of war are manufactured by the few, who imagine that they have something to gain for themselves (power and riches). These few generally do not reveal the true motivation for war, but sell war to the many by lies, deceit, and fear. The few rarely actually fight. The waging of war is the task of the many.

On February 6, 2007 Congressman Dennis Kucinich introduced in the US House H.R. 808 [PDF], which would establish a cabinet-level US Department of Peace and Nonviolence.

In the "Findings" section of the legislation, we find:

… (7) During the course of the 20th century, more than 100,000,000 people perished in wars, and now, at the dawn of the 21st century, violence seems to be an overarching theme in the world, encompassing personal, group, national, and international conflict, extending to the production of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons of mass destruction which have been developed for use on land, air, sea, and in space.
(8) Such conflict is often taken as a reflection of the human condition without questioning whether the structures of thought, word, and deed which the people of the United States have inherited are any longer sufficient for the maintenance, growth, and survival of the United States and the world.

Here, from the Congressional Register, are some of the remarks by these members in support of the bill:

Congresswoman Barbara Lee:

We are now spending $8 billion each month on the occupation of Iraq. Imagine if a small portion of that money was invested, instead, in conflict resolution, diplomacy, weapons reduction, and human rights. As the drum beats of war against Iran are now heard, imagine if the debate included not only the Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense, but a Secretary of Peace. Guaranteed the military option would be taken off the table and our world would not be led again into another useless, senseless war.

Imagine if we were to direct a small portion of the $583 billion Pentagon budget to promoting nonviolence here at home by investing in efforts to stop domestic violence, gun violence, child abuse, gang violence, violence in schools, hate crimes, racial violence, religious intolerance and the mistreatment of the elderly.

Congressman John Conyers:

My first campaign for Congress, following the teaching of Dr. King, was based on "jobs, peace and justice." That remains my priority agenda. So I am proud to be an original cosponsor of H.R. 808 , Representative Kuchinich's bill to establish a US Department of Peace and Non-Violence. At a time when the world is awash in war, he and Marianne Williamson, founder of the Peace Alliance, offer this modern vision of healing and preventing violence.

It could not be more timely. According to all reports, the Bush administration is debating whether to attack Iran or to find peaceful ways to deal with its nuclear program and its intervention in Iraq. The prospect of President Bush starting a "pre-emptive war" with Iran, on top of the tragedy in Iraq, is frightening. If that is not a compelling argument for creating a Peace Department, then I do not know what is.

We attacked Iraq because President Bush would not pursue peace and let U.N. inspectors complete their work. Instead, he distorted intelligence and failed to foresee the terrible consequences of that war. We must not repeat those mistakes in Iran, or anywhere else.

Last night, I spoke to an overflowing crowd that supports this measure and I told them what I tell my colleagues now. The best way to stop the war in Iraq is for the Congress to end our fighting there as soon as possible, and the best way to prevent wars with Iran and other adversarial nations is to establish a Department of Peace. We need a Cabinet Secretary focused like a laser on how to keep peace with Iran and President Bush has already spent some $2 trillion on the war in Iraq. Just think what we could have done with $2 trillion spent on health care and education. That is another strong reason for the Department of Peace. A small fraction of that amount could also have funded a robust, proactive Department of Peace to analyze looming conflicts and to advise the President on how to diffuse them without war.

H.R. 808 has 51 cosponsors: Conyers, John, Jr. [MI14] Cummings, Elijah E. [MD7] Davis, Danny K. [IL7] Davis, Susan A. [CA53] DeFazio, Peter A. [OR4] Ellison, Keith [MN5] Farr, Sam [CA17] Filner, Bob [CA51] Green, Al [TX9] Grijalva, Raul M. [AZ7] Hirono, Mazie K. [HI2] Holt, Rush D. [NJ12] Honda, Michael M. [CA15] Jackson, Jesse L., Jr. [IL2] JacksonLee, Sheila [TX18] Johnson, Eddie Bernice [TX30] Jones, Stephanie Tubbs [OH11] Kaptur, Marcy [OH9] Kilpatrick, Carolyn C. [MI13] Lee, Barbara [CA9] Lewis, John [GA5] Maloney, Carolyn B. [NY14] McDermott, Jim [WA7] McGovern, James P. [MA3] Meeks, Gregory W. [NY6] Miller, George [CA7] Moore, Gwen [WI4] Moran, James P. [VA8] Nadler, Jerrold [NY8] Norton, Eleanor Holmes [DC] Payne, Donald M. [NJ10] Rangel, Charles B. [NY15] Rothman, Steven R. [NJ9] Ryan, Tim [OH17] Schakowsky, Janice D. [IL9] Scott, Robert C. [VA3] Serrano, Jose E. [NY16] Sherman, Brad [CA27] Tauscher, Ellen O. [CA10] Towns, Edolphus [NY10] Waters, Maxine [CA35] Watson, Diane E. [CA33] Woolsey, Lynn C. [CA6] Wu, David [OR1] Wynn, Albert Russell [MD4].

In addition, The Peace Alliance Campaign to Establish a US Department of Peace has been recently formed.

This is heartening. But even if the Department comes into existence, its task is enormous. In spite of over two hundred years of propaganda to the contrary, we have not been either a peaceful people or nation. We conquered this land by violent genocide and imperialist wars against other nations who held portions of the continent we sought to control. Since the dawn of the 20^th century, and especially since WWII, we have overtly and covertly expanded "national interests" abroad and charged our military with with defending those "interests". We now have approximately 800 military bases in other countries.

We are really no more than a country of symbols. From Betsy Ross and the Stars and Stripes, George Washington owning up to chopping down the cherry tree and crossing the Delaware, and The Minutemen and Paul Revere, to Old Ironsides and Bunker Hill, to Lincoln as the "Great Emancipator", to Teddy Roosevelt and his Great White Fleet, to the dough boy "making the world safe for democracy", to "American Gothic" and "Uncle Sam", to the Statue of Liberty, the Washington Memorial, the White House, and the Lincoln Memorial, to Iwo Jima and D Day, and now to the Chevy Corvette, Father Knows Best, McDonalds, Mickey Mouse, Microsoft Windows, and all that comes out of Hollywood and Las Vegas, we have shrouded our national aggressiveness and hubris in a PowerPoint/sound-bite myth. "We're the greatest", we say. We could also point to the mushroom cloud as a symbol of our strength. These symbols of American might and righteous good will have been eagerly consumed by the American people, but only by part of the peoples of the rest of the world.

Our unsuccessful adventurism from the 1950s through the 1970s in Southeast Asia all but ripped apart this curtain. Many of us realized that our benevolent symbols were balanced by symbols of a powerful reality, such as beatings of civil rights demonstrators and burnings of churches, lynchings, My Lai, wide-spread poverty and hunger, urban race riots, rivers on fire spewing toxic death, CIA-funded death squads.

Many of us began to see that our military actions were taken up in service to capitalism, rather than freedom and democracy; profit, rather than peace. We devised some our own symbols: the Peace Sign, the Yellow Submarine, psychedelia, flowers, the MLK March on Washington, paisley shirts and long hair.

Reactionary conservatism was vicious and late capitalism was voracious, however. What the ruling class could not co-opt by turning resistance into fashion, entertainment, or recreation, it tried to crush. "Laugh-In", "All in the Family", "Apocalypse Now", and "**Mash** did raise consciousness, yes, but at the same time just mollified the masses' cries for change. Commercialization of the anti-establishment, anti-war culture killed it. That movement was one of collectivism, cooperation, compassion, and non-violence. What's left of it has been discredited, assimilated, assassinated, or marginalized.

However, before it unraveled, the movement revealed that our education system had been transformed in the 1950s and 1960s from an institutional system of true learning, investigation, and creativity to a system of training camps for soldiers of the advance of worldwide capitalism. It revealed that our ruling class and the burgeoning military-industrial-academic (MIA) complex has, more often as not, supported the bad guy with money, weapons, and technology, while directly or covertly undermining popular revolutions and democratic-socialist regimes.

These are cold, hard facts. They are indisputable matters of record. But many Americans, out of fear, ignorance, laziness, or comfort with what has become the status quo, allow themselves to ignore the truth of history and are addicted to the mainstream media version of who we are.

Modern war is rarely about ideology. Even though often characterized as "wars of culture" or values or freedom/democracy, they are wars about resources, hegemony, and power. And about wealth and its distribution. As Mick Youlter, writing ";; … And by the way, It was about Oil" at OpEd News points out:

The Bush Administration has long claimed that the war in Iraq is not about oil …

Our first hint came on the eve of the Iraq War, when Bush spoke directly to the Iraqi people. Bush didn't say, "Don't harm the troops." He warned them, "…your fate will depend on your action. Do not destroy oil wells." …

"US-UK forces invaded Iraq on March 20, 2003, seizing the major oilfields and refineries almost immediately. When coalition forces later entered Baghdad, they set a protective cordon around the Oil Ministry, while leaving all other institutions unguarded, allowing looting and burning of other government ministries, hospitals and cultural institutions." — James A. Paul, Global Policy Forum, November 2003 …

"Half of the oil the US consumes is produced domestically. Of the remaining half, the bulk, 80 percent, comes from two neighbors, Canada and Mexico. …Only a small fraction comes from the Middle East, and most of that, from Saudi Arabia." — Stephen Gowans, uruknet.info, 3/14/06

More than two thousand years ago, the Greek Philosopher Socrates said, "All wars are fought for money"; and the war on Iraq War is no different. It is all about the money. Americans are fighting and dying and we are mortgaging our grandchildren's futures—so Big Oil can seize control of Iraq's oil and increase their bottom line.

"Oil giant Exxon Mobil Corp. on Thursday posted the largest annual profit by a U.S. company - $39.5 billion …The 2006 profit topped Exxon Mobil's own previous record of $36.13 billion set in 2005." —AP, 2/1/07

That is $4.5 million profit for every hour of the year—but that is not enough. They want Iraq's oil too …

So yes, it's about oil. But it's also about much more.

The current US government envisions Iraq and Afghanistan as the first tiles in a neo-dominoes game of conquering and/or destroying all states which resist its agenda of total world domination. Most important to them is the eventual dismantling of our own nation. This country, in fact all countries, is an obstacle to world-wide corporatism. At the heart of neoconservatism is the notion that nationalism is contrary to the goals of international finance.

A "must read" is Who Rules America?" by James Petras at Dissident Voice (published at Third World Traveler. Excerpts:

Neither the Democratic Party majority in Congress, nor the Republican-controlled Executive offer any proposals to challenge the financial ruling class's dominance nor are there any proposals to reverse its most retrograde policies causing the growing inequalities, wage stagnation and the increasing rigidity of the class structure. The reason has been reported in the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times: An overwhelming chunk of the funds that Democrats raise nationally for election campaigns comes either from Wall Street financiers or Silicon Valley software entrepreneurs. (FT November 3, 2006 p. 13). The Democratic congressional electoral campaign was tightly controlled by two of Wall Street's favorite Democrats, Senator Charles 'Israel First' Schumer and Congressman Rahm Immanuel, who selectively funded candidates who were pro-war, pro-Wall Street and unconditionally pro-Israel. Democrats slated to head strategic Congressional committees like Zion-Lib Barney Frank have already announced they have 'good working relations' with Wall Street.

The Financial Ruling Class Also Governs

Ruling classes rule the economy, are at the top of the social structure and establish the parameters and rules within which the politicians operate. More often than not few actually engage directly in congressional politics, preferring to build economic empires while channeling money toward candidates prepared to do their bidding. Only when an apparent division occurs, especially within the Executive, between the interests of the ruling class and the policies of the regime will elite members of the ruling class intervene directly or take a senior executive position to 'rectify' policy.

Ruling Class Political Power: Paulson Takes Over Treasury

Several sharp divergences occurred during the Bush regime between finance capital and policymakers. These policies prejudiced or threatened to seriously damage important sectors of the financial ruling class. Theses include: 1) the aggressive militarist and protectionist policies pursued by senior Pentagon officials and 'Zion-con' Senators toward China; 2) the political veto by Congress of the sale of US port management to a Gulf State-owned company and of a US oil company to China; 3) the failure of the Bush regime to secure the privatization of social security and to weaken the regulatory measures introduced in the aftermath of the massive corporate (Enron and World Com) and Wall Street swindles, and 4) the need to put a check on the uncontrolled growth of fiscal deficits resulting from the Middle East wars, the ballooning trade deficits and the weakening dollar.

The headlines of the financial press (FT December 4, 2006 p.3) spell out finance capital's direct intervention into key White House policy making:

"Goldman Sachs Top Alumni Wield Clout in White House" and "Former Bank Executives Hold Unprecedented Power within a US Administration."

US financial and manufacturing ruling classes have long influenced, advised and formulated policy for US Presidents. But given the stakes, the risks and the opportunities facing the financial ruling class, it has moved directly into key government posts. What is especially unprecedented is the dominant presence of members from one investment bank — Goldman Sachs. In late November 2006, Goldman Sachs (GS) senior executive William Dudley took over the Federal Reserve Bank of New York markets group. Hank Paulson, ex-CEO of GS is Treasury Secretary — explicitly anointed by President Bush as undisputed czar of all economic policies. Reuben Jeffrey, a former GS managing partner is the chief regulator of commodity futures and options trading, Joshua Bolten, White House Chief of Staff (he decides who Bush sees, when and for how long — in other words arranges Bush's agenda) served as GS executive director. Robert Steel, former GS vice chairman, advises Paulson on domestic finance. Randall Fort, ex-GS director of global security, advises Secretary of State Rice. The ex-GS officials also dominate Bush's working group on financial markets and financial crisis management. The investment bankers wielding state power will control the Bush regime's biggest housing giants (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac), tax policy, energy markets — all issues that directly affect the investment banks. In other words, the financial banks will be 'regulated' by their own executives. The degree of finance capital's stranglehold on political power is evidenced by the total lack of criticism by either party. As one financial newspaper noted: "Neither Mr. Bush nor Goldman have been criticized by Democrats for holding too many powerful jobs in part because the investment bank (GS) also has deep ties to Democrats. Goldman represented the biggest single donor base to the Democrats ahead of this (2006) year's mid-term election." (FT December 4, 2006) …

The paradox is that some of the most wealthy and powerful beneficiaries of the ascendancy of finance capital are precisely the same class of people who are financing their own self-destruction. While cheap finance fueling multi-billion dollar mergers, acquisitions, commissions and executive payoffs, heightened militarism operates on a budget plagued by tax reductions, exemptions and evasions for the financial ruling class and ever greater squeezing of the overburdened wage and salary classes. Something has to break the cohabitation between ruling class financiers and political militarists. They are running in opposite directions. One is investing capital abroad and the other spending borrowed funds at home. For the moment there are no signs of any serious clashes at the top, and in the middle and working classes there are no signs of any political break with the two Wall Street parties or any challenge to the militarist-Zionist stranglehold on Congress. Likely it will take a catastrophe, like a White House-backed Israeli nuclear attack on Iran to detonate the kind of crisis which will provoke a deep and widespread popular backlash of all things military, financial and made in Israel.

In this context, it becomes clearer that international finance has decided that the Bush government can't get the job done and is hedging its bets by funding the Democratic Party. It also explains why the DP leadership will resist any movement to impeach Bush and Cheney, roll back the Patriot Act, abolish tax cuts for the rich, and begin to dismantle the MIA complex. The Democrats will rework some of the cosmetics, mollify the middle class with education, senior social support and health schemes, and move away from the disaster in Iraq. The next ten years of Democratic Party leadership will not see the government breaking away from the interests of global capital. It would take a popular tsunami to accomplish that. Unfortunately, we are most likely to be drowned ourselves.

(Part 3 of this series will explore more deeply how powerful and entrenched the US military-industrial-academic leviathan has taken hold in our economy and social structure, while now becoming more and more ineffective in improving national security.) Part 1 is here