Voices from All Sides
We Who Dared to Say No to War:
American Antiwar Writing from 1812 to Now
Basic Books, 1008, 368 pages. $16.95
In this compilation, the two editors have crossed the left-right chasm in our political and cultural landscape to compile voices from 186 years of resistance to war. In their introduction, they write that this "cross-ideological book reviews how fascinatingly broad and diverse is the American antiwar tradition. We intend it as a surprising and welcome change from the misleading liberal-peace/conservative-war dichotomy that the media and even our educational establishment and popular culture have done so much to foster."
And it works. Abraham Lincoln and Dave Dellinger rub shoulders in this volume, and Helen Keller and Dwight Eisenhower see eye to eye. Representative Jeannette Rankin (R-Mont.) first cast her vote against war in 1917. Eight-four years later, Representative Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) drew on Rankin's courage as she spoke from the floor of Congress and cast the lone vote opposing the invasion of Afghanistan. Four days after September 11, 2001, Representative Lee warned that with the attack, "we run too great a risk that women, children and other noncombatants will be caught in the crossfire... and we must be careful not to embark on an open-ended war [with] neither an exit strategy nor a focused target."
More than seven years later, both presidential candidates promised a return to fighting the "good war in Afghanistan" and a "surge" in military operataions, and a recent U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights report (September 2008) finds that civilian casualties there have increased by nearly 40 percent since 2007. So far this year, the report estimates that nearly 1,500 civilians have been killed by either the Taliban or NATO forces.
Murray Polner, an editor and writer from Great Neck, N.Y., wrote (with Jim O'Grady) Disarmed and Dangerous: The Radical Life and Times of Daniel and Philip Berrigan. Polner writes for Fellowship magazine and The Nation, and represents the left side of the spectrum.
Thomas E. Woods, Jr. is a senior fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute, a libertarian research institution based in Alabama that espouses the benefits of market economies and private property while "opposing government intervention as economically and socially destructive." Woods has a PhD from Columbia and represents a conservative point of view, but one informed by his study of history and -- it seems -- by his humor. He is the author of the best-selling 33 Questions About American History You're Not Supposed to Ask and other books.
From the war of 1812 to the Mexican-American War, from the Civil War to the Spanish-American War, from the War to End All War to World War II, from Korea to Vietnam, Guatemala and now into Iraq and Afghanistan, Polner and Woods have pored through diaries, speeches, and newspapers and dug into old archives to bring together 70 impassioned, learned, and probing rejections of war as a means of solving problems, ending violence, and bringing peace and democracy.
Many of the entries read like they could have been uttered yesterday:: "Give me the money that'ss been spent in wars and I will... convert the whole earth into [a] continuous series of fruitful fields, verdant meadows... redolent with all that pleases the eye and regales the sense" (Alexander Campbell, 1848). It's yesterday's florid rhetoric, but the imagery and the sentiment ring true today.
Here's a more contemporary example: "We have foolishly assumed that war was too complicated to be trusted to the people's forum -- the Congress of the United States. The result has been the cruelest, the most barbaric, and the most stupid war in our national history" (George McGovern, 1970).
A few of those daring to say no to war today -- like Camilo Mejia, Ehren Watada, and Kelly Doherty -- are not included in the book. In order to get their volum published and in our hands, Polner and Woods had to stop somewhere. Camilo Mejia sought conscientious objector status after witnessing war cries in Iraq and was sentenced to a year in jail and handed a "bad conduct discharge." More than two years after refusing to deploy to Iraq because "I won't be part of a war that I believe is criminal," Ehren Watada remains in legal limbo having taken on the War Powers Act and the executive branch. After being honorably discharged from the National Guard, Kelly Dougherty gave full voice to concerns that had nagged her during her tour of duty: "The war in Iraq is not about protecting this country. The war is about aggression." She went on to help found Iraq Veterans Against the War (and was rewarded, along with three other women, WRL's Peace Award in 2006).
We Who Dared to Say No to War includes a few women's voices -- nine entries, by my count -- but they are mostly from the earlier sections of the volume. Other than that, my only criticism is that it should have been published as a three-ring binder, so that we can add new pages for Mejia, Watada, Dougherty, and all those new voices daring to say no to war each day, and so we can write our own entries as well.
