Where is the Anti-War Movement Now That We Need It?

With no skin in the game, no draft, as existed during much of the Vietnam war (proper name: the American War of Aggression in Indochina), and an intimidated academia unwilling and afraid of even considering organizing teach-ins, the mass media has no countervailing force for its nonstop lies.

Conspicuously absent from the political discourse are voices against war.

Every major political figure in the country supports dropping bombs on foreign soil and drone strikes against civilians. Bernie Sanders, the most progressive candidate, differs little from the raging lunacy of Ted Cruz in regard to military action against ISIS, and the use of drones to kill suspected enemies of the US.

The US has been at war for most of its history. Since World War II, we have sent Americans to die or to murder foreigners for all but a dozen years.

I was part of the anti-war movement in the 60s. I was in the streets against the Viet Nam war. I ran draft resisters to Canada, burned my draft card, was beaten by the LAPD, became a federal fugitive. My comrades in the streets are today nowhere to be found. Too many are worn out or sold out. Many are dead and gone.

We were revolutionaries when revolution was an impossibility. It may still be, but the odds are becoming favorable and the audience is becoming sympathetic. Over 80% of those under thirty reject capitalism! We have a chance!

But the need for anti-war voices and activists is profound. The military-industrial complex and its allies in Congress and the administration are playing the public like violins. The munitions manufacturers, the arms dealers, the aircraft companies, the bomb builders and the drone industry are raking in billions of dollars every year due to the fear and gullibility of the American public.

And American neocon foreign policy is designed to embroil the US in international conflicts, alliances, and tragedies as a matter of course.

Radical Muslims didn’t just one day decide to hate the US and attack Western interests. American foreign policy drove them to hate us.

A vibrant and dedicated anti-war movement is needed now! No one is fighting the military-industrial complex, no one is speaking for the dead Iraqis, Libyans, Syrians, Yemenis, and Afghanis we murder as a matter of course. No one is challenging the administration propaganda about international terrorists and our need to spend blood and lives against ISIS.

We need anti-war activists in the streets. We need activists fighting the establishment. We need activists working against the war-mongers.

We need to remember that war kills people. It kills animals. It destroys the environment.

I remember a poster I kept on my wall during Viet Nam. It was made by the group Another Mother for Peace. It said “War is not healthy for children and other living things.”