New Clear Vision

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…)

How Much Is an Earth, and Do You Have One in Extra Large?

by David Swanson

Overcoming Our Fears of, and Averting War with, Iran

by Winslow Myers

U.S. behavior long ago provided one causal context for our unease about the presumed nuclear aspirations of the Islamic Republic of Iran: the U.S. and Britain messed with Iran’s last authentically democratic election in 1953, fearing communist influence and the nationalization of oil.

Fast forward past the hostage crisis of 1979-81 to the present. The dynamic remains pretty much as it was sixty years ago: strategic jockeying for oil and natural gas, raw exercise of military competitiveness, and now the understandable impulse to acquire nuclear weapons on the part of nations fearing superpower dominance. Iranian leaders were quick to note that Saddam and Khaddafy were vulnerable because the U.S. and friends didn’t have to be concerned about nuclear retaliation (though Messrs. Bush and Blair were all too happy to use Saddam’s presumed nukes as a convenient casus belli). (more…)

Art Prayers for the New Year

by Ellen Greenblum

It’s New Year’s Eve and some of us may be feeling hopeful and some of us may be feeling hopeless after yet another year filled with local and global violence and tragedies. The Occupy movement reminded us that we still know how to gather up and say “No,” but it also reminded us that we may be hauled off to jail for standing up for love and justice. And it’s difficult for a mother or father or employee to publicly fight for basic human rights when we have family members depending on us for a plate of spaghetti and a good night story with a happy ending.

Where do we begin when we find ourselves haunted in the wee hours of the night by thoughts creeping into our psyches when we’re most vulnerable? What if we’ll fail in our role as a human being in the face of everything we strongly believe in about working toward a just and peaceful world? (more…)

Amid War, Following Yonder Star Toward Peace

by Kathy Kelly

Beneath our flat, here in Kabul, wedding guests crowded into a restaurant and celebrated throughout the night. Guests sounded joyful and the music, mostly disco, thumped loudly. When the regular call to prayer sounded out at 5:20 a.m., the sounds seemed to collide in an odd cacophony, making all music indistinguishable. I smiled, remembering the prayer call’s durable exhortation to live in peace, heard worldwide for centuries, and went back to sleep.

Through most of my life, I’ve found it easy to resonate with the ringing and beautiful Christmas narrative found in the Gospel of Luke, but less so with that jangling discord with which westerners are so familiar — the annual collision between (on the one hand) the orgy of gift-purchasing and gift-consumption surrounding the holiday and the the sweeter, simpler proclamations of peace on earth heralded by the newborn’s arrival. (more…)

Exploring the Prospects for Peace on Earth

by David Swanson

This time of year is ideal for reflecting on the miracle of Christmas 1914, that famous temporary truce and friendship between opposing sides in the midst of a war. Here was a new type of slaughter confronted with a new type of humanism, the leading edges of two opposing trends.

An op-ed in the New York Times last week by Steven Pinker and Joshua Goldstein argues that peace, rather than war, was the dominant development, and that over the millennia, centuries, decades, and right up to this moment, “War Really Is Going Out of Style.”

Of course, war can potentially be eliminated, and that is already a very valuable point to be making. War isn’t in our genes. We aren’t doomed to always have it with us. Even more valuable would be a successful argument that all types of violence have been decreasing, including war. (more…)

War Is Over (Sort of), if We Want It…

by Robert C. Koehler

The war is over, sort of, but the Big Lie marches on: that democracy is flowering in Iraq, that America is stronger and more secure than ever, that doing what’s right is the prime motivator of all our military action.

And the troops will be home for Christmas. Hurrah! Hurrah!

(The men will cheer, the boys will shout, and we’ll all feel gay, except maybe Rick Perry.)

“The war in Iraq will soon belong to history,” President Obama told the troops at Fort Bragg last week. “Your service belongs to the ages. Never forget that you are part of an unbroken line of heroes spanning two centuries — from the colonists who overthrew an empire, to your grandparents and parents who faced down fascism and communism, to you — men and women who fought for the same principles in Fallujah and Kandahar, and delivered justice to those who attacked us on 9/11.” (more…)