Tag: War is not the Answer

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Living in Society

Armistice Day 2024

Flags at Oakland Cemetery in 2012.

Remarks as prepared for the Armistice Day observance in Iowa City on Nov. 11, 2024.

Thank you for joining us during this observance of Armistice Day. My name is Paul Deaton. I was a founding member of the Iowa Chapters of Veterans for Peace. When we organized the chapter, we had veterans from every armed conflict going back to World War II. Some of our members have died, and I ask for a moment of silence in their honor.

I intend to keep my remarks brief. Some of you who know me may realize how difficult that will be for me. Nonetheless, let’s get started.

In World War I we find the beginnings of the misinformation and disinformation that became so prevalent in our society. There are 5 things I would like to say about that.

Point 1: There were conspiracy theories about the war.

Was World War I a hoax? No, yet conspiracy theories were prevalent. During the War, the American home front was awash with them alleging internal German enemies were intentionally spreading disease among both human and animal populations, most egregiously during the 1918 influenza pandemic. While false, these stories nevertheless revealed Americas’ shifting relationships to the environment, warfare, and the federal state. They channeled immediate fears over what type of war, and what type of enemy, the nation faced, as well as deeper, Progressive-era anxieties related to the dramatic expansions of government and scientific expertise in American life. It underlines how the war permitted individuals to discuss, denounce, and contest state and scientific authority at this moment in the early twentieth century. In my view many of the conspiracy theories we hear today have their roots in this.

Point 2: Allied Propaganda

Propaganda was used by both the allies and the Germans during the World War.

Allied governments launched propaganda efforts in the days after the invasion, pushing out terrifying, often untrue tales, published in newspapers, fliers, and pamphlets. There were stories of bayoneted babies, mass rape of girls, and old men who obediently turned over useless rifles, and were shot on the spot by heartless “barbarians.” No doubt the intent was to stoke the fire of support for the war.

Point 3: German propaganda.

For the Germans, the goal of propaganda was to make the war seem less devastating than it was. More soldiers were needed at the front, so government officials downplayed the number of casualties to recruit them. The truth about the scale of casualties – an estimated 40 million civilian and military personnel dead and wounded – could only be kept secret using propaganda. The total number of deaths includes more than 9 million military personnel. The civilian death toll was between 6 and 13 million. Disease, including the influenza pandemic, took about a third of these lives. World War I ranks among the deadliest conflicts in human history. Suppression of this fact was a goal of German propaganda.

Point 4: The Armistice.

I visited the Glade of the Armistice while I lived in Europe. It’s in the French Forest of Compiegne where the Germans and Allied Supreme Commander signed the Armistice we commemorate today. They used a rail car for the ceremony. Years later, in 1940, Hitler used the same rail car to accept the French surrender. Hitler had obvious propaganda reasons for doing so. I saw a similar rail car in France while I was there, although not the same one used in 1918. The original disappeared after the Nazis took possession of it. I remember how quiet it was in the forest that day. It was a day filled with meaning.

Point 5: Living History

Veterans of World War One are deceased. The veteran I knew was my Grandfather who never spoke to me of the war. We were more concerned with his black lung disease contracted during decades of coal mining in Illinois. Family lore is Grandfather arrived in France shortly before the Armistice and did not see conflict. He was there six months waiting to return to Illinois. If you have a memory of the war and its veterans like mine, today is a day to remember.

As living memory fades let us hope and pray that the World War I dead shall not have died in vain.

In conclusion, I’d like to read a poem used by the allies to recruit soldiers. The idea was for new people to take up arms to replace the fallen. You may know this one. In Flanders Fields is by Canadian physician John McCrae, published December 8, 1915.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
    That mark our place; and in the sky
    The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
    Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
        In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
    The torch; be yours to hold it high.
    If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
        In Flanders fields.
Categories
Sustainability

Time to Take a Step Back from the Brink

Actor Slim Pickens as Major T.J. “King” Kong in Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Photo Credit – Getty Images

Iowans are legitimately worried about the risk of detonation of nuclear armaments as a result of increased tensions in the world. The war in Ukraine is perceived by some as a proxy war between the United States and Russia. While it’s true our two countries have the majority of nuclear weapons that exist in the world, both Putin and Biden have said they seek to avoid a nuclear exchange. The assertions about a proxy war do not seem accurate.

Dr. Robert Dodge, posted the following article at Common Dreams on Friday. It explains how I feel: We need to take a step back from the brink.

Ukraine, Existential Threats, and Moving Back From the Brink
We can no longer continue to wage war over finite resources and survive in a nuclear-armed world.

First published on Common Dreams by Dr. Robert Dodge.

This spring, as those before, beckons a season of renewal and opportunity for the future. We have just witnessed the major religions of the world celebrate Easter, Passover, and Ramadan and in the words of Ambassador El Yazidi of the Coordinating Council of Muslims in Germany, “We are all siblings in humanity and must work together for good.”

This is also a time when the world celebrates Earth Day with a heightened awareness of the fragility of our world and the intersectionality of mankind’s actions on the survival of our planet. Yet our world is in peril with many intersecting crises from the continued global pandemic, now in its third year, to climate crises that continue to inflict progressive epic storms and devastation. Add to that the two-month-old Russian war on Ukraine with threats and nuclear posturing by the superpowers bringing us closer to nuclear war by intent, miscalculation or cyber-attack portending the greatest threat of a global near-death event since the end of the last Cold War.

Against this backdrop, it is also tax season in the United States when the nation funds its priorities as we look to the future. In the words of Rev. Jim Wallis, founder of Sojourners magazine, “Budgets are moral documents.” And so what are those priorities and how do nuclear weapons factor in?

The 2022 fiscal year budget, the first by President Joe Biden, will see the U.S. rob our communities of precious resources spending nearly $77 billion on all nuclear weapons programs, exceeding the expenditures of the last budget from the Trump administration. In total, the U.S. will have spent approximately $219 billion on all nuclear weapons programs in the last 3 fiscal years while fighting a global pandemic. To see the costs to your community, see the annual Nuclear Weapons Community Costs Project just released by Physicians for Social Responsibility Los Angeles.

Current global nuclear arsenals contain about 12,700 nuclear warheads, with the United States and Russia having near 90% of those. The use of even a tiny fraction of these weapons threatens life as we know it. A regional nuclear war using 100 Hiroshima size weapons (less than half of one percent of the global nuclear arsenals) over cities in India and Pakistan—South Asia’s nuclear powers who have had a tumultuous relationship for decades—could cause a global famine threatening 2 billion people due to the devastating nuclear winter and climate change that would follow. A larger nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia targeting the major cities in each nation could possibly lead to the extinction of the human race.

This is not a situation that has to be. The existence of nuclear weapons and the continued dependence on fossil fuels with the destruction of our environment result from our way of thinking and behavior. We cannot continue to wage war over finite resources and survive in a nuclear-armed world. We must end our dependence on fossil fuels that threaten destruction of our life sustaining ecosystems. Instead, we must recognize our interdependence as one human family. Nuclear weapons have been made by man and can only be eliminated by man. Ending the subsidy and our dependence on fossil fuels while transitioning to sustainable renewable resources is also in reach given the political will.

The United States can and must lead on these issues. There is a rapidly growing national intersectional movement in the U.S. called Back from the Brink. It is a coalition of individuals, organizations, and elected officials working together toward a world free of nuclear weapons and advocating for common sense nuclear weapons policies to secure a safer, more just future. Endorsed by over 400 organizations, 326 U.S. elected officials, 58 municipalities and 6 state legislative bodies, it calls on the United States to lead a global effort to prevent nuclear war by:

  • Actively pursuing a verifiable agreement among nuclear-armed states to eliminate their nuclear arsenals.
  • Renouncing the option of using nuclear weapons first.
  • Ending the sole, unchecked authority of any U.S. President to launch a nuclear attack.
  • Taking U.S. nuclear weapons off hair-trigger alert.
  • Cancelling the plan to replace the entire U.S. nuclear arsenal with enhanced weapons.

All are invited to endorse and join this movement. We have a way out. There is hope for the future and that of our children’s children. At this moment in history we must understand the threat and opportunity before us. Let this be a time when we choose hope for all of humanity.

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
Robert Dodge

Robert Dodge, a frequent Common Dreams contributor, writes as a family physician practicing in Ventura, California. He is the Co-Chair of the Security Committee of National Physicians for Social Responsibility and also serves as the President of Physicians for Social Responsibility Los Angeles.

Categories
Living in Society

War is Never the Answer

Kathy Kelly in Iowa City, Iowa on June 14, 2013.

Veterans for Peace and PEACE Iowa, along with the University of Iowa Lecture Series, present Kathy Kelly speaking on “Why War is Never the Answer.”

The event is scheduled for 5 p.m. on Tuesday, April 19, 2022 in the Old Capitol Senate Chamber on the University of Iowa Pentacrest.

Kathy Kelly is an American peace activist, pacifist and author, one of the founding members of Voices in the Wilderness. Until the campaign closed in 2020, Kelly was a co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence. As part of peace team work in several countries, she has traveled to Iraq twenty-six times, notably remaining in combat zones during the early days of both US–Iraq wars.

Tickets are free to the public; first come, first seated. We hope too see you all there! For more details go to lectures.uiowa.edu.