Most Americans see the establishment center as an empty, decaying void that commands neither their confidence nor their love. It is the establishment center that has led us into the stupidest and cruelest war in all history. That war is a moral and political disaster — a terrible cancer eating away the soul of the nation. … It was not the American worker who designed the Vietnam war or our military machine. It was the establishment wise men, the academicians of the center.
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— George McGovern on war and the politics that produce war, from a campaign speech in April 1972.
(via Reason)
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Peace is not the absence of trouble, difficulty, and torment but calm in the midst of them.
We’ve never had sustained combat for a full decade, and we’ve never fought a war in which such a small share of the population has carried the fight.
Today, many of us believe that human beings are naturally violent, so war is inevitable. Look at who benefits from that myth. If human beings are naturally violent, politicians can’t be held responsible for making war; they’re just trying to protect us from the violent people all over the planet. Weapons makers can’t be held responsible; they’re just trying to help us defend ourselves. But in truth humans aren’t naturally violent, so we’re all responsible. War is a choice. General Omar Bradley, a veteran of World War II, said, ‘Wars can be prevented just as surely as they are provoked, and we who fail to prevent them share in guilt for the dead.’
