The U.S. is spectacular at talking about peace. Barack Obama talked so beautifully about peace, in 2009, in the early months of his presidency, he quickly won the Nobel Peace Prize. Then he went on to relentlessly bomb seven countries and drone assassinate hundreds of people, many of them innocent civilians, send arms to Al Qaeda and other terrorists groups, destroy Libya and turn it into a dysfunctional nation, assist Saudi Arabia in decimating Yemen, sponsor a coup in Ukraine which set the stage for the current war. We’re supposed to view that as peace?
Since 1992, the U.S. has fought six wars of choice, initiating conflict in Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and most recently Ukraine. WARS OF CHOICE!
Afghanistan and Iraq: Mind you, both of these wars were completely unnecessary. There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. And the Taliban offered to turn over to us Osama bin Laden, who was on a dialysis machine in Kandahar, if we didn’t bomb them. So we bombed them!
According to the Brown University Watson Institute’s Costs of War Project: “Through Fiscal Year 2022, the United States federal government has spent and obligated $8 trillion dollars on the post-9/11 wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and elsewhere.”
When we weren’t directly fighting wars, we were supporting conflicts with weapons, military logistics and intelligence. As we did in Somalia. As we did in Yemen. As we are now doing in Gaza. As of February 2025, over $22 billion has been sent to Israeli just since October 7, 2023, to facilitate the genocide of the Palestinian people, making us complicit in one of the worst war crimes in modern history.
But the tragedy of these wars cannot just be measured in dollars. Again, according to the Watson Institute Costs of War Project . . .
- At least 929,000 people have died due to direct war violence, including armed forces on all sides of the conflicts, contractors, civilians, journalists, and humanitarian workers.
- Many times more have died indirectly in these wars, due to ripple effects like malnutrition, damaged infrastructure, and environmental degradation.
- 38 million people have been displaced by the post-9/11 wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and the Philippines.
- Over 7,050 young American men and women in or approaching the prime of their lives have died so far in these wars.
For what?
Now as America stirs up even more trouble across the globe, insulting and intimidating two major nuclear powers — Russia and China — bringing the world closer to another major world war, potentially even total annihilation in a nuclear holocaust, we must keep reminding ourselves how pointless and self-destructive all of this is, by asking over and over . . .
For what?
What is the point of all of this chaos, death, and destruction?America’s obsession with war is bankrupting us as a society — financially, politically, morally, spiritually.
Ultimately it could destroy us.
We each must do whatever we can to end this madness.
Please join us and let’s work together for a more peaceful world.
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