New Clear Vision

We Lose Every War We Fight…

by Robert C. Koehler

What goes around comes around . . . and around, and around.

Last month, the day after I left Santa Rosa, Calif., a 13-year-old boy carrying a toy replica of an AK-47 was shot and killed on the outskirts of that town by a Sonoma County deputy sheriff with a reputation for being trigger-happy. The officer had ordered the boy to drop the “gun,” then in a matter of two or three seconds opened fire, giving him no chance to comply.

This is not an isolated incident, which is why it’s yet one more tragedy I can’t get out of my mind — one more logical consequence of the simplistic militarism and mission creep that’s eating us alive. This is gun culture running unchecked from boyhood to manhood, permeating national policy both geopolitically and domestically. This is the trivialization of peace. It results in the ongoing murder of the innocent, both at home and abroad, at the hands of government as well as criminals and terrorists. (more…)

Eliminating Nuclear Weapons as Important as Eliminating Chemical Ones

by Lawrence S. Wittner

The apparent employment of chemical weapons in Syria should remind us that, while weapons of mass destruction exist, there is a serious danger that they will be used.

That danger is highlighted by an article in the September/October 2013 issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Written by two leading nuclear weapons specialists, Hans Kristensen and Robert Norris of the Federation of American Scientists, the article provides important information about nuclear weapons that should alarm everyone concerned about the future of the planet.

At present, the article reports, more than 17,000 nuclear warheads remain in the possession of nine nations (the United States, Russia, Britain, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea). Over 90 percent of that inventory consists of U.S. and Russian warheads. (more…)

Historical Activism Provides a Good Place to Start

by David Swanson

Erin Niemela’s recent proposal that we amend the Constitution to ban war is provocative and persuasive.  Count me in.  But I have a related idea that I think should be tried first.

While banning war is just what the world ordered, it has about it something of the whole Bush-Cheney ordeal during which we spent years trying to persuade Congress to ban torture.  By no means do I want to be counted among those opposed to banning torture.  But it is relevant, I want to suggest, that torture had already been banned.  Torture had been banned by treaty and been made a felony, under two different statutes, before George W. Bush was made president.  In fact, the preexisting ban on torture was stronger and more comprehensive than any of the loophole-ridden efforts to re-criminalize it.  Had the debate over “banning torture” been entirely replaced with a stronger demand to prosecute torture, we might be better off today.
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Americans Are Less Nationalistic than Flag-Waving Politicians Think

by Lawrence Wittner

Are American politicians out of sync with the public when it comes to foreign policy?  There is considerable reason to believe so.

Throughout the scramble for the GOP presidential nomination, the major candidates have certainly been rabidly nationalistic.  In a major foreign policy address on October 7, 2011, Mitt Romney proclaimed that “the twenty-first century can and must be an American Century.”  Championing a vast military buildup, he argued that, to secure this “American Century,” the United States should have “the strongest military in the world.”  By contrast, he assailed the “shameful” role of the United Nations and other international institutions and declared that he did not see any reason to obey them — or the international law they represented — when it did not suit the U.S. government. (more…)