End The Wars

“There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.”

                                                                                                     ― Howard Zinn

 

Facts

  • Wars are a major cause of violence, poverty, and underdevelopment
  • Hundreds of thousands of people on all sides of the wars have died directly of the violence – the vast majority of them civilians in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq. Millions of people living in war zones have been displaced from their homes indefinitely, and many now live in grossly inadequate conditions.
  • Data on observed foreign interventions tells us that the U.S. has extensively intervened in civil wars
  • The U.S. military budget in 2019 exceeded the next 10 countries’ defense budgets combined and accounted for 38 percent of military spending worldwide
  • Taxpayers spent $13.34 trillion on the U.S. military from 2000 through fiscal year 2019 in inflation-adjusted 2020 dollars (yearly average comes to $826 billion). For comparison, the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) budget in fiscal 2020 was $9 billion
  • American defense firms are the indisputable leaders of the world’s $398 billion arms sales industry
  • Foreign policy coverage in the U.S. tends to be "(1) ethnocentric (e.g., employing racial stereotypes of enemies), (2) elite-driven, (3) uncritical (especially in the run-up to and early stages of war), and (4) episodic (usually covering other countries when senior White House officials travel to or otherwise prioritize them).

 

Antiwar Organizations and Media

"As historians, political communication scholars, and others have shown across virtually all US wars—media coverage follows a familiar pattern that is invariably uncritical of official claims and arguments (especially those emanating from the White House) in the run up to and early stages of war (see for instance, Campbell [2000] and Nasaw [2000] regarding the Spanish-American War; Fussell [1989] and Pyle [1979] regarding WWII; Bennett [1990] on Nicaragua; Dickson [1995] about the invasion of Panama; Hallin [1991], Kellner [1992], Mermin [1999], and Newhagen [1994], regarding the Persian Gulf War; and Aday et al. [2005], Katovsky and Carlson [2003], and others regarding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan)."

― The US Media, Foreign Policy, and Public Support for War by Sean Aday

Polls

Statistics

Academic Papers & Reports

"Among veterans, 64% say the war in Iraq was not worth fighting considering the costs versus the benefits to the United States, while 33% say it was. The general public’s views are nearly identical: 62% of Americans overall say the Iraq War wasn’t worth it and 32% say it was."

― Majorities of U.S. veterans, public say the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were not worth fighting (Pew Research Center, 2019)

Articles

 

Videos

 

Martin Luther King Jr. "Beyond Vietnam" April 4, 1967 - A Time to Break Silence

"I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today—my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent."

 

Howard Zinn at MIT 2005 - The Myth of American Exceptionalism

 

Chomsky: Like Obama, Trump Is Radically Increasing the Danger of Nuclear War

 

Veterans for Peace White House Civil Disobedience to End War

 

US Veterans throwing their service medals

 

Muhammad Ali - On Vietnam, hardships, & The True Opposer & Enemy of Justice