Day by day it becomes more obvious that the ascension of Barack Obama to the Presidency will bring no fundamental change to the nature of American foreign policy. His war-mongering against Iran and his promise to expand the ongoing war in Afghanistan, along with the appointments of left-neocon Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State and life-long servants of the American Empire, Robert Gates and General James Jones, as Defense Secretary and National Security Advisor respectively, show us that Obama will continue the "bi-partisan" foreign policy that Washington has been imposing on us and much of the world for so long. As depressing as this situation may seem, those of us who are "peacemongers"(as the great libertarian F.A. "Baldy" Harper called us) can take solace in the fact that opposing wars is actually a large part of the American political and religious tradition. Nothing illustrates this better than the new book edited by Murray Polner and Thomas E. Woods, Jr., We Who Dared to Say No to War: American Antiwar Writing from 1812 to Now (Basic Books, 2008). It is an incredibly enlightening and enjoyable collection of speeches and essays from writers all across the political spectrum and covers every major war and foreign policy undertaking in U.S. history. The editors themselves are of different political ideologies, with Polner coming from a leftist perspective and Woods being an Austro-Libertarian.
This book uncovers so many previously hidden literary gems, even veterans of the antiwar movement will find pieces here that they never knew existed.
From the section on the War of 1812, a war that was essentially launched so that the US could grab Canada, we have "The Draft Is Unconstitutional" by Daniel Webster speaking as a Congressman from Massachusetts, in which he proclaims about his constituents that "(b)oth they and myself live under a constitution which teaches us that 'the doctrine of nonresistance against arbitrary power and oppression is absurd, slavish, and destructive of the good and happiness of mankind'." What a great line to throw in the face of a warmongering, statist patriot who has bought into the myth that being a good American means doing as you are told!
The section on the Mexican War has a speech against the war by none other than Dishonest Abe himself. Lincoln delivered it as a Congressman in the House of Representatives on January 12, 1848. The title itself is a perfect description of the pro-war, pro-imperialism position: "The Half Insane Mumblings of a Fever Dream." In this great speech, he challenges the President at the time, Polk, to point to the direct place on American soil where the first blood of the war had been shed! He said this because he had strong suspicions that the President would not be able to do so because the American troops who were attacked by Mexico were actually in disputed territory, not in the US proper. It turned out he was right.
The Civil War section of the book starts off with "The War Method of Peace" by the anarchist and abolitionist Ezra Heywood, who was one of a minority of abolitionists who opposed the war on moral grounds, believing that mass murder was not justified to end slavery. He argued for allowing the South to secede and "erecting the North into a nationality on the basis of 'No union with slaveholders'." He also pointed out to Christians that they were not following Christ's example by waging war. The other highlights of this section are "War or Constitution," the famous speech delivered by Ohio Congressman Clement L. Vallandigham that led to him being arrested and deported from the Union, and "Gross, Shameless, Transparent Cheats" by the great anarchist writer Lysander Spooner. The following quotation from the Spooner essay is worth the price of the book alone:
"Their pretenses that they have 'Saved the Country,' and 'Preserved our Glorious Union,' are frauds like all the rest of their pretenses. By them they mean simply that they have subjugated, and maintained their power over, an unwilling people. This they call 'Saving the Country' ....All these cries of having 'abolished slavery', of having 'saved the country', of having 'preserved the union', of establishing 'a government of consent', and of 'maintaining the national honor', are all gross, shameless, transparent cheats – so transparent that they ought to deceive no one..."
"The Pesky Anti-Imperialist" by Wendell Phillips Garrison, in the section on the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars, will warm the cockles of any anti-imperialist's heart with it's playful, mischievous tone. Garrison points out that the imperialists keep announcing every few years that their opponents are dead and gone, but gosh darn it, they seem to keep coming back to life!
From the World War I era we have the speech given by Socialist leader Eugene V. Debs that resulted in the despicable despot, President Woodrow Wilson, locking him in a government cage for years, despite the fact that Debs was in poor health. It was President Warren Harding, who Woods and Polner state is hated by most mainstream historians, in contrast to Wilson who is seen as a Saint, that eventually let Debs out of prison.
The highlight of the World War II section of the book, in my view, is an essay published in the Saturday Evening Post of October 7, 1939, "I think I'll Sit This One Out," by Milton S. Mayer. Mayer makes a most eloquent case against American entry into the war when he states "(f)ascism is animalism.... It is not Hitler I must fight but Fascism.... War is at once the essence and the apotheosis, the beginning and the triumph, of Fascism, and when I go to war I join 'Hitler's' popular front against the man in men. I cannot fight animals their way without turning animal myself."
The chapter on the Cold War should be required reading for all conservatives, as it contains a critique of the Cold War mentality by none other that Russell Kirk, one the founders of the modern conservative movement. Also in this section is the speech by Senator Robert Taft, who used to be a standard-bearer for the conservatives in the 1940s and early '50s, entitled "The President Has No Right to Involve the United Sates in a Foreign War." This speech was given during the Korean War on the Senate floor on March 29, 1951. It directly contradicts the modern conservative view that we need "energy in the executive" and that the president can basically do whatever he wants when it comes to foreign affairs.
From the Vietnam War era we find great pieces such as "Let's Mind Our Own Business" by General David Shroup and "This Chamber Reeks of Blood," a speech given by Senator George McGovern on the Senate floor on September 1, 1970.
Some highlights of the section covering the War on Terror and the Iraq War are the very brave speech given by Representative Barbara Lee on September 15, 2001 entitled "Against War with Afghanistan" and the heartbreaking piece by Andrew Bacevich, who lost his son in the Iraq War, "I Lost My Son to a War I Oppose; We Were Both Doing Our Duty."
The final section of the book is entitled "Americans Confront War" and contains essays that deal with the issue of war generally. The section treats us to a wonderful collection of essays from writers of different political persuasions. Here we find works by President John Quincy Adams, leftist historian Howard Zinn, radical libertarian Lew Rockwell and Julia Ward Howe, a 19th-century peace activist and feminist. The book's Appendix is especially delightful to those of us who love movies as it is a list of important antiwar films compiled by libertarian writer and law professor Butler Shaffer.
As Christmas Day celebrates the birth of the figure known throughout the centuries as the Prince of Peace, I can think of no more appropriate book to give as a Christmas gift, to yourself and to others, than We Who Dared to Say No To War. If you were ever looking for a book that contained all the best arguments against the major wars in American history, this is it.
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