If you’re in the United States Armed Forces, the time to seek Conscientious Objector status to the “Iran War” is now. Don’t delay. Don’t overthink. Don’t give in to excuses. Don’t engage in wishful thinking. Don’t succumb to pressure. Get out now. If ever you’ve sought to show valor on the battlefield, here is your chance. You’re on the battlefield. It’s called life. You have only one weapon at your disposal. It’s called integrity. Use either one to preserve the other, and flee this war as fast as you fucking can. Continue reading
Tag Archives: war
We’re Going to Need a Bigger Anti-War Movement
The US-Israeli war on Iran is two weeks old, and getting worse every day. So far, the anti-war movement’s response has been salutary, but muted. A lot of astute commentators deserve credit for saying a lot of the right things, but as far as visible public outcry is concerned, we’ve fallen short.
I split my time between Princeton and West Orange, New Jersey. We had a smallish anti-war rally in Princeton on the first day of the war, sponsored by the local Coalition for Peace Action and Indivisible; 180 people showed up in Hinds Plaza, and we got some modest but positive local news coverage across the following week. There was a small follow-up rally a few days later at Princeton’s War Memorial, and then some canvassing with Adam Hamaway, a local anti-war candidate for Congress. A vigil and a demonstration are scheduled for next week at the University, organized by some of the student groups there. A respectable but hardly overwhelming display. Continue reading
Defeat Will Do
Twelve days into the war with Iran, The New York Times is gradually coming to acknowledge that the war has not been a one-way affair. For twelve days, the Times has covered the war as though the US and Israel have had free rein to attack Iran, but as though Iran itself had been a passive recipient of the shock and awe campaign inflicted on it. Now all of a sudden, we get four major articles within 24 hours telling us otherwise:
- “How Trump and His Advisers Miscalculated Iran’s Response to the War”;
- “At Least 17 US Sites Damaged in War with Iran, Analysis Shows”;
- “Iranian Military Shows It Knows How to Adapt, US Officials Say”;
- “At least 3 ships are struck in and around the Strait of Hormuz, and Iran claims responsibility for one”;
Better late than never, but still pretty late to be telling your audience that the other side had not only managed to retaliate over the last two weeks, but had inflicted a fair bit of unexpected damage, and promises more. Continue reading
Target Practice
If you’ve been following the news about the Iranian girls’ school that was hit by an American missile, you may have noticed that the very news stories that indict the US quietly provide a bit of exoneration for the US as well. The school, we’re told, was right next to a military installation. Clearly (the story goes), the installation was the intended target of the strike. If so, perhaps there is a story to be told about how the US was trying to hit the military installation but accidentally hit the school (twice). Which doesn’t make it so bad. It was an accident! Not our fault! Why would the Revolutionary Guards put a military installation next to a school? How can we be blamed for killing a bunch of schoolgirls if they do? You can see the position of the school relative to the base in this screen shot below from The New York Times. Continue reading
War Is Peace
We’re reportedly about to go to war with Iran. I just checked a minute ago: The lead story at The New York Times is the Supreme Court’s tariff decision; likewise The Washington Post and MS NOW. At CNN, the lead story is Trump’s trade war. At Fox, it’s a toss up between the trade war and a debit card scandal in California. And so on. Literally business as usual. The pattern is clear enough: as we prepare for war, the thing to do is to turn inward and turn away from it in a spirit of make-believe. Tariffs matter more than war. Trump matters more than war. Debit cards matter more than war. At this point, anything matters more than war. War is imminent, hence unreal.
War, in short, has become normalized in the familiar imperial way, by equating peace with perpetual warfare confined to the periphery of empire, and to the peripheries of consciousness. It’s out there, hence not here, hence nowhere. Continue reading
If You Want Blood
Do yourself a favor. Go back and re-read the Declaration of Independence, but do it this way: skip the beginning and the end, and read the bill of particulars in the middle. It’s too long to quote here. You really just have to read it for yourself. Once you do, you’ll see that details aside, we’re living in the very world that the Declaration describes, excoriates, and uses as the basis of its declaration of war. Virtually everything in it is something that our present government is doing to us. Like the people of British North America ca. 1776, we are a people under military occupation. Continue reading
“When the World Breaks”
Veterans Day at Peddie
Peddie is a well-known elite prep school in New Jersey, located in Hightstown, a small town just east of Princeton. According to Niche, it’s ranked #2 out of 126 in a listing of the Best Private High Schools in New Jersey, and #2 of 112 of the Best College Prep Private Schools in New Jersey. It also ranks first out of 139 of the Most Diverse Private High Schools in New Jersey. I’m at least vaguely familiar with the place, having been there a few times, having interviewed Peddie students applying for admissions to Princeton, and having grown up myself (for better or worse) in the elite Jersey prep school milieu. In short, within its rarefied circles, Peddie is a trend-setter. Continue reading
Policy of Truth 