Good to see the anti-war movement still alive

[LiberaBlueDem]

After all we have been through the anti-war feelings are still strong in the USA.

After Iraq and Afghanistan and the debacles those actions proved to be, Americans are still mostly anti-war. Hang in there folks, war is never the answer.

[EX500rider]

1. Actually war is sometimes the answer...

...as it was in WWII and the Civil War, etc

[LiberaBlueDem]

2. That is old history

We live now in a new age.

After those wars we made laws to criminalize some warriors actions.

[Irish_Dem]

4. The new age looks quite a bit like pre WWII.

The world autocrats are trying to take down democracy.

[Coventina]

5. Um, someone needs to inform Putin, Hamas, etc. of this "new age" because they are very much

using the old playbook.

[LiberaBlueDem]

6. And the USA in Iraq, yes?

[Coventina]

9. oh yes, absolutely 100% n/t

[Sky Jewels]

42. Don't forget Netanyahu.

[EX500rider]

15. "We live now in a new age." Not sure everyone got the message

List of ongoing armed conflicts:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ongoing_armed_conflicts

[yardwork]

25. Where is this new age of which you speak?

I'd like to go there. To me it looks like the same old same old.

For Ukrainians, it's war or death. International law hasn't prevented one Russian atrocity.

[brush]

51. And there was no way to destroy humankind in those wars...except towards the end of WWll.

[Irish_Dem]

3. Yes what choice did we have after Pearl Harbor?

And watching Europe being burned down.

[All Mixed Up]

8. Here's a better question: what if there was no Pearl Harbor?

Would the US have dragged its feet even more?

FDR knew exactly what was coming. But America was largely anti-war back then, and very much isolationist. It's a wonder he was able to even get the Lend-Lease Act through. Pearl Harbor might have been the worst best thing in the history of mankind.

[Polybius]

23. I'm not so sure about the latter

Letting them go would have saved 600,000+ lives, and we'd be living in a nice, liberal country today. Without the South, the only two choices would be liberals vs. progressives.

[yardwork]

26. And that slavery problem would have worked itself out sooner or later, eh?

[JustAnotherGen]

28. I'd probably

Be wearing a gunny sack and soldering against my will in the Modern Day CSA.

[Polybius]

36. Eventually, yes

Probably by 1900.

[Sky Jewels]

43. Too bad for all those poor chumps who would have continued to be enslaved for decades, huh?

Oh well, I guess they would have gotten a lot of fresh air and exercise ...

[Polybius]

46. And too bad for the 600,000+ dead n/t

[JustAnotherGen]

57. Just the Americans

Could give a good god damn about the CSA. They were evil and had an evil cause. Every single elected CSA official and military officers should have been hung. But Johnson was weak personified.

[Polybius]

58. Ok then n/t

[JustAnotherGen]

27. Some of us

Would still be enslaved in the South.

The North would have been unable to fight and win Economically/Industrially - with having enslaved Labor in the South to compete with.

[yardwork]

32. One of my favorite stories is the Mask of the Red Death.

Published in 1842 by Edgar Allen Poe, he knew exactly what he was talking about.

[JustAnotherGen]

35. On point

[Polybius]

37. Slavery would be long over

Do you think it would still be around?

[JustAnotherGen]

41. Absolutely!

Let's not gild the lily.


https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/25/upshot/measuring-donald-trumps-supporters-for-intolerance.html

According to P.P.P., 70 percent of Mr. Trump’s voters in South Carolina wish the Confederate battle flag were still flying on their statehouse grounds. (It was removed last summer less than a month after a mass shooting at a black church in Charleston.) The polling firm says that 38 percent of them wish the South had won the Civil War. Only a quarter of Mr. Rubio’s supporters share that wish, and even fewer of Mr. Kasich’s and Mr. Carson’s do.

Nationally, further analyses of the YouGov data show a similar trend: Nearly 20 percent of Mr. Trump’s voters disagreed with Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, which freed slaves in the Southern states during the Civil War. Only 5 percent of Mr. Rubio’s voters share this view.

Unchecked - white Americans will inflict terrible cruelty upon non-white Americans.

Slavery, Jim Crow, Concentration Camps of Japanese Americans, the slaughter of Indigenous Americans and continued disregard for their lives, the separation of Central American and Mexican children at our borders from their parents and the loss of those brown children . . . Every President before 1865 oversaw an enslaved population.

Unchecked - it would have been enshrined by the Jeff Davises of the CSA.

I've experienced America differently than you, as have my ancestors - which fall in both the enslaved and indigenous groups.

There is really interesting data around Genetic/Inherited Trauma. My response is a case in point.

[NickB79]

44. Absolutely

Let's not forget that the Confederate States of America enshrined slavery and the supremacy of white men over Black men in their Constitution. They were in it for the long haul, and only another war would have dismantled slavery if the South had gained independence.

Going off on an alternate history sci-fi tangent: If the South managed to hang onto slavery until the 1930's, and the Nazi Party also came to power in the 1930's like it did in our timeline, I firmly believe the Confederacy and Nazi Germany would have allied and brought down the United States. The Axis powers would have won. Man in the High Castle/Wolfenstein kind of stuff.

[EX500rider]

40. I am not sure African-Americans would have preferred that outcome

[EX500rider]

45. "two choices would be liberals vs. progressives"Not sure why you think that, not just Southern States voted for Trump:

[brush]

53. I dunno. Germany was close to developing an A-bomb. And the Soviets would have too.

[All Mixed Up]

7. A lot of the anti-war movement in the US has shifted to pro-Russia.

I know many anti-war liberals I advocated with during the Bush regime who are absolutely opposed to helping Ukraine.

I think Dennis Kucinich is one - he's spoken at rallies where they've encouraged the US to stop supporting Ukraine.

Same with Code Pink, who blame NATO for Russia's aggression.

[LiberaBlueDem]

10. Helping Ukraine is wise

If we let Russia invade and conquer there will be a wider war. Helping Ukraine to stay free is anti-war

[All Mixed Up]

11. Agreed.

[sarisataka]

21. That flies in the face

Of the statement "war is never the answer"

[LeftInTX]

18. They're only anti-war when it helps Putin. They support Russia's takeover of Ukraine.

They want Ukraine to give up.

[BannonsLiver]

19. We have one poster here

Who ironically has the word War in their handle who believes Ukraine should surrender to Russia because “it’s not a winnable” war. They should just hand over their guns and hope for the best from Putin.

[All Mixed Up]

20. So easy to say when you're posting from the comfort of your own home.

These same people were calling for Ukraine to give up days into the conflict when everyone thought Ukraine would be done with within weeks lol

[BannonsLiver]

22. Deep cover trolls

[yardwork]

29. The second half of that poster's name is a clue.

It's easy to be a keyboard warrior, or anti-warrior, as the case may be.

[brush]

54. That's so naive. Putin won't be satisfied with just Ukraine.

He just got "re-elected" and thinks he has a mandate to look west.

[Crunchy Frog]

24. That's what I see on Xitter.

Pro-Putin, pro-russian, accounts use anti-war rhetoric to promote their support for russian aggression. It's kind of made me allergic to the term.

Also, lots of people and groups that I thought I fundamentally agreed with during the Iraq invasion have turned out to be supporters of Putin's aggression while calling themselves "anti-war".

[yardwork]

33. I've noticed that.

Putin did a clever job of infiltrating Occupy and other social justice groups, equating his dictatorship with anti-capitalism. To one extent or another a lot of people got drawn into this.

Sometimes the enemy of our enemy is not our friend. Neither Russia nor China are anti-capitalist. Nor are they bastions of social justice. There were always a handful of people who believed this but the internet vastly expanded the scope of this disinformation.

[betsuni]

47. Yes, very successful.

[H2O Man]

12. Recommended.

No matter if one agrees or disagrees with what you've said -- entirely or in part --this makes for an interesting conversation.

Not believing war is not ever the answer is most difficult, at least in my mind, when another nation/state/tribe thinks that war is not only okay, but necessary in order to remove you.

Lately, I've been re-reading Thomas Merton's classic, "Gandhi on Non-Violence" for the 1,000th time. I note that along with his beautul message on living peacefully, there are several quotes stating that violence is better than cowardice. It obviously took great strength to become Mahatma, despite having some human flaws.

I'd love to participate in discussions on this and related topics.

[LiberaBlueDem]

13. Yeah, Man

Gandhi was something else.

Ukraine is at war because Russia stepped over the line with great violence. Ukraine had no choice but to react the way it has and the US had no choice but to help.

In this age of communications and travels war can certainly be diplomatized out of the equation. Indeed, diplomacy is the answer to the anti-war question. This is the New Age which we have to adhere too, being that resources for war could be far better used. The world has 8 billion people now and resources are thin.

Plus we have the capablity to destroy the whole world in less than 10 minutes either without reason or just a huge mistake, take your pick.

[TheKentuckian]

34. There is no "new age" and pretending such will not manifest it

Evolution is what you seek and that takes real time and doesn't have a end point nor is it easily directed.

What you look at as some eternity ago is virtually in same evolutionary moment. You are talking the scale of less than a human lifetime.

[Hekate]

14. What you are describing is isolationism, which has not worked for America in 100 years...

Ever since Trump came on the scene in 2016 I have felt our increasing slide toward fascism and isolationism.

Trump and his followers have zero sense of what democracy is supposed to be, but they have the requisite belligerence to round up those who oppose them (or even just exist) and to either expel them or imprison them en masse. He seriously wanted and still wants to declare martial law and have armed troops shoot protestors with live ammunition.

So much for a nation at peace with itself and others.

Beyond that, isolationism quickly breaks down when we are attacked from outside. The fall of the Twin Towers on 9-11 unleashed a frenzy of American jingoism that extended far beyond the people who actually did the deeds on that day. It also gave us the USA PATRIOT ACT, which came off somebody’s shelf practically overnight, all 350 pages of it, and was overwhelmingly passed by Congress before anyone had a chance to read it.

Meanwhile, in other geopolitical news, Putin’s plans for Europe and America are something no intelligent nation or person can ignore. He is the author of Brexit and continues to work to destroy the EU, which in my opinion has been the best thing for peace that Europe managed to do for itself in 1,000 years, and I mean that. Being isolationist and pretending that means “peace” will not protect us even in the short term.

Carry on.

[BannonsLiver]

16. +1

Isolationism was a complete disaster post WW1. And yet there are a lot of folks on both sides of the aisle advocating for just that.

[betsuni]

48. I see, increasingly, the Vietnam and Iraq wars mentioned in discussions of Israel/Palestine.

As if we're supposed to connect them as the same American Imperialism Very Bad things. The way the Bush administration said weapons of mass destruction in one sentence and Iraq in the next so people connected the two.

[sarisataka]

17. I recall a quote

That I have unfortunately been unable to relocate the source-

"War is inevitable when one side desires it"

One can be completely opposed to ear yet find themselves with the only options are capitulation or war...

[Hekate]

50. Yes. This is why some wars are unavoidable.

[cbabe]

30. When told of the Chinese atrocities in Tibet, even

the Dalai Lama remarked he would be tempted to pick up a gun.

[Hekate]

49. Oddly, when told of the Chinese atrocities in Tibet in years past I've encountered some DUers who repeat Chi. propaganda

…against Tibetan Buddhism and culture quite vigorously. I don’t know if those folks are still here, or if they’ll pop up again if Tibet or the Dalai Lama are on the front page some day.

Pure pacifism is hard to find. The practice of ahimsa, doing no harm, does not require an individual to allow themselves to be killed if they can avoid it.

[cbabe]

55. I had a Chinese immigrant 8th grade student who

ran out of the room screaming when shown a photo of the Dalai Lama.

Lies and propaganda work.

[MichMan]

31. The anti war movement led to LBJ deciding not to run for re election thus paving the way for Nixon

[GreenWave]

38. What do we want?

A:
When do we want it?
A:

Chicago, Richard J. Daley mayor, back in the day.

[LiberaBlueDem]

39. War is a losing proposition

Wars started in the last century have seen the sarters of wars become losers.

Japan, Gemany, Russia have all started wars and ended up as losers. Even the USA has lost in Iraq and Afghanistan after starting wars there.

The civil war in the US was started by the south and they are losers.

Then there are those who fought for freedom because a war was started on them. Freedom fighters always win.

[RandySF]

52. I hope the answer isn't handing Ukraine over to the Russians.

[Ping Tung]

56. It's sad that humanity still needs an anti-war movement.

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.

Isaac Asimov

[LiberaBlueDem]

59. Anyone know of an attacking state that won their war?

I can't think of one, not one