The Irish Anti-War Movement (IAWM) announced today that the Irish Neutrality League (INL) was formally launched, coinciding with the United Nations International Day of Peace, Wednesday 21st September.

By David Swanson

For decades, the U.S. public seemed largely indifferent to most of the horrible suffering of war. The corporate media outlets mostly avoided it, made war look like a video game, occasionally mentioned suffering U.S. troops, and once in a blue moon touched on the deaths of a handful of local civilians as if their killing were some sort of aberration.

By David Swanson
Many discussions of lies that launch wars quickly come around to the question "Well then why did they want the war?" There is usually more than one single motive involved, but the motives are not terribly hard to find. Unlike many soldiers who have been lied to, most of the key war deciders, the masters of war who determine whether or not wars happen, do not in any sense have noble motives for what they do. Though noble motives can be found in the reasoning of some of those involved, even in some of those at the highest levels of decision making, it is very doubtful that such noble intentions alone would ever generate wars.

By David Swanson
The similarities between mass incarceration and mass murder have been haunting me for a while, and I now find myself inspired by Maya Schenwar's excellent new book *Locked Down, Locked Out: Why Prison Doesn't Work and How We Can Do Better.* This is one of three books everyone should read right away. The others are *The New Jim Crow* and *Burning Down the House*, the former with a focus on racism in incarceration, the latter with a focus on the incarceration of youth. Schenwar's is an overview of incarceration in all its absurd and unfathomable evil—as well as being a spotlight leading away from this brutal institution.

By David Swanson
Congress has fled town to avoid voting for or against a new war. Many of the big donors to Congressional campaigns would want Yes votes. Many voters would want No votes, if not immediately, then as soon as the panic induced by the beheading videos wears off, which could be within the next month.

By Chris Hedges
The intoxication of war, fueled by the euphoric nationalism that swept through the country like a plague following the attacks of 9/11, is a spent force in the United States.

By David Swanson
Remarks at the biennial general meeting of the War and Law League in San Francisco on Armistice Day 2012
I'll try briefly to make five points. First, there are clear laws on the books that make U.S. wars unlawful, along with U.S. threats of war and U.S. propaganda for war. The laws are either forgotten, ignored, evaded, or cleverly reinterpreted to reverse their meaning. But they could be enforced someday.

By David Swanson
Remarks to the Marin Peace & Justice Coalition, Social Justice Center of Marin, and Community Media Center of Marin, Armistice Day 2012
Most members of our species that have lived on this earth have never known war. Most societies that have developed war have later abandoned it. While there's always war somewhere, there are always many somewheres without war. War deprivation, the prolonged absence of war, has never given a single person post traumatic stress disorder. Most nations that participate in wars do so under duress as members of coalitions of the willing but not the eager. Most nations that engage in wars refuse to use particularly awful weapons and tactics. Most incidents that are used to spark wars are identical to other incidents not used to spark wars. War making does not increase with population density, resource scarcity, testosterone, or the election of Republicans. War making is, like all forms of violence, on the decline globally, even as the Greatest Purveyor of Violence in the World develops a permanent war economy and gives war powers to temporary despots or 4-year kings.

By David Swanson
While I'm working on a campaign to abolish war it's helpful and appreciated that a columnist for one of the most effective war promoting institutions in the world, the New York Times on Sunday mused aloud about why in the world wars are still waged.

By Ann Wright
Seven months ago, in December, 2011, 24-year-old Brian Arredondo hanged himself in a shed in his mother's backyard. Brian was the brother of US Marine Corps Lance Corporal Alexander Arredondo, who was killed in Iraq in 2004. For seven years Brian had had difficulties dealing with the death of his brother.

By David Swanson
Memorial Day is nice, I suppose. Veterans Day is all right. Patriots Day can be fun. Yellow Ribbon Day's not bad. But you will be pleased to hear that on Thursday the U.S. House of Representatives unanimously voted, in pure bipartisan harmony, to add the following gem to the big war-funding, war-expanding, bill that now goes to the Senate: "The President shall designate a day entitled a National Day of Honor to celebrate members of the Armed Forces who are returning from deployment in support of Iraq, Afghanistan, and other combat areas."

Liveblogging the Vote on Eternal Worldwide War
By David Swanson
On Thursday, the U.S. House of Representatives backed eternal worldwide war and imprisonment powers for all future presidents, but blocked any ground troops in Libya (except for the ones already there, since the measure included no consequences for its violation). The House also unanimously created a new national holiday to celebrate the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars. It defunded the US Institute for Peace (saving the cost of 5 hours in Afghanistan). And it required that all suspected foreign terrorists be tried by the military and not in courts (unless bullets are put in their heads first). All in a good day's work. Here's the play-by-play: What each of the 152 amendments does: here. 

By David Swanson
"Ban the bombers are afraid of a fight
"Peace hurts business and that ain't right
"How do I know? I read it in the Daily News"
—Tom Paxton
PBS (the P stands for "Pure" I think) is concerned that if the U.S. government stops funding the war in Afghanistan, the U.S. economy will crash: "An executive at a small defense contractor recently joked to me, 'Afghanistan is our business plan.' I asked him what he would do if the war ended. He stared at me for a moment and said, 'Well, then I hope we invade Libya.'"

By David Swanson
If you hate taxes but dutifully cheer for wars, it's lucky you also oppose school funding sufficient to produce historical literacy. Taxes are a byproduct of wars. Were it not for wars and war propaganda, this country would have never begun paying taxes. If we were to end wars, and only if we were to end wars, we could consider ending taxes too.

By David Swanson
In this age of supposedly fighting against rulers and on behalf of oppressed peoples, the Vietnam War offers an interesting case in which the U.S. policy was to avoid overthrowing the enemy government but to work hard to kill its people. To overthrow the government in Hanoi, it was feared, would draw China or Russia into the war, something the United States hoped to avoid. But destroying the nation ruled by Hanoi was expected to cause it to submit to U.S. rule.

By David Swanson
One of the oldest excuses for war is that the enemy is irredeemably evil. He worships the wrong god, has the wrong skin and language, commits atrocities, and cannot be reasoned with. The long-standing tradition of making war on foreigners and converting those not killed to the proper religion "for their own good" is similar to the current practice of killing hated foreigners for the stated reason that their governments ignore women's rights. From among the rights of women encompassed by such an approach, one is missing: the right to life, as women's groups in Afghanistan have tried to explain to those who use their plight to justify the war. The believed evil of our opponents allows us to avoid counting the non-American women or men or children killed. Western media reinforce our skewed perspective with endless images of women in burqas, but they never risk offending us with pictures of women and children killed by our troops and air strikes.

"Remember Obama ran as an Iraq war opponent? As president, he has ruinously escalated foreign military commitments"
By David Swanson
"So tonight, I am proposing that starting this year, we freeze annual domestic spending for the next five years." Thus spoke President Barack Obama in his state of the union speech on Tuesday. "Domestic" spending means non-war and non-military spending. Over half of our public spending in the United States goes to wars and the military. Even the president's own deficit commission recommended cutting $100bn from military spending.

by: David Swanson, t r u t h o u t | Book Excerpt
We talk of sending soldiers off to fight on battlefields. The word 'battlefield' appears in millions, possibly billions, of news stories about our wars. And the term conveys to many of us a location in which soldiers fight other soldiers. We don't think of certain things being found in a battlefield.

By David Swanson
Remarks in London, England, July 2, 2014.
In eight days, on 10 July Mary Ann Grady-Flores, a grandmother from Ithaca, NY, is scheduled to be sentenced to up to one year in prison. Her crime is violating an order of protection, which is a legal tool to protect a particular person from the violence of another particular person. In this case, the commander of Hancock Air Base has been legally protected from dedicated nonviolent protesters, despite the protection of commanding his own military base, and despite the protesters having no idea who the guy is. That's how badly the people in charge of the flying killer robots we call drones want to avoid any questioning of their activity entering the minds of the drone pilots.