Odetta brings the haunting refrain of one of Bob Dylan's most radical songs about war, inequality and oppression: Things like that don't happen / No more, nowadays.
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Arlo Guthrie's now-classic song was released in 1967, but the story begins, as the song explains, two years earlier. And 50 years into the story, its themes are strangely and sadly still relevant. And the movement it appeals for is no less needed.
The chaos in the Middle-east which has led to hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing ISIL’s barbarous rule is the result of fifteen years of Western interventionism. How can France ever take a convincing stand against ISIL while claiming to be the main ally, and provider of fighter planes, to the Gulf monarchies. The real question, to which French diplomacy has so far given no convincing answer, is not how to win the war but how to put an end to it.
The recent U.S. deployment of special operations forces to Syria expands a global U.S. battlefield that is at a historic size. This year, special ops have been sent to a record 147 countries—75 percent of the nations on the planet. It’s a 145 percent increase from the days of George W. Bush. And it means that on any given day elite U.S. forces are on the ground in 70 to 90 countries.
Estimating civilian casualties of U.S. military operations is extremely difficult . . . “There was essentially no record kept in Afghanistan and Pakistan for a few years of any U.S.-caused civilian casualties, and most especially the killing of children" . . . “the harm to children in war is also indirect--morbidity and mortality due to the destruction of infrastructure which impairs delivery of medical care, makes drinking water unsafe, and makes food scarce.”
There are as many reasons to desert military service as there are deserters. All countries’ militaries like to snatch young men when they are uneducated, inexperienced, and unemployed. It takes a soldier far greater courage to throw down his weapon than to kill a stranger. There are deserters in every country that has an armed forces. Armies demand blind obedience and human beings crave liberty. Why do men desert? Certainly not from cowardice.
In a few words, it can be said that the book tells it like it is—it describes the vast governmental-industrial-legislative complex that controls our lives via war and violence. This is not conspiracy theory any longer—it is rooted in fact and record. The authors cite names, organizations, places, and dates that not only promote war, but also benefit from it financially.
Physicians for Social Responsibility recently calculated that since 2001 in Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. wars have killed at least 1.3 million and quite possibly more than 2 million civilians. Their report chides U.S. political elites for attributing on-going violence in Afghanistan and Iraq to various types of internecine conflicts as if the resurgence and brutality of such conflicts is unrelated to the destabilization caused by decades of military intervention.
American history is littered with examples of pointless wars fought for bad reasons, and with people who risked their careers and their freedom to oppose them. some wars aren't worth fighting. Some causes aren't worth sacrificing American lives for. Those who've fought to remind the government of those basic facts deserve our respect and our thanks.
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