Banning War

Image credit American Battle Monuments Commission, Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery and Memorial, France...where our dead from WWI rest, content in the success of their mission in "the war to end all wars"....

Via Corrente, I was fascinated to read about a 1929 law--a treaty, actually, that has the full force of law and remains in effect today:

A Forgotten Law We Need

In January 1929 the U.S. Senate ratified by a vote of 85 to 1 a treaty that is still on the books, still upheld by most of the world, still listed on the U.S. State Department's website - a treaty that under Article VI of the U.S. Constitution is the "supreme law of the land."

This treaty, the Kellogg-Briand Pact, bans all war.  Bad wars and "good wars," aggressive wars and "humanitarian wars" - they are all illegal, having been legally abolished like dueling, blood feuds, and slavery before them.

David Swanson has written a book about this effort, and you can read more about it here. 

Before you  dismiss out of hand this notion of "let's just not do war anymore," think about it.  Think seriously about it.  Then think about your children, your grandchildren, all of your loved ones...then think some more.

I'd argue the point that all of our wars reflect the fact that somebody f**ked up.  Remember what Atrios said, quoted here:

But what I've learned over the increasingly many years of my life is that the existence of just about any war in which the US is involved means that the Very Serious People, with all the power they have, fucked up completely. Even if that war is, in some sense, "necessary," it still means that the people who run this place screwed up and at the very least should resign in shame before sending people off to kill and be killed. But they don't. They go on Meet the Press to talk about how awesome they are.

Tomorrow's post: Clarence Jordan's not-so-tongue-in-cheek essay about why it would make a lot of sense to draft 65-year-olds rather than young people.