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writing for godot

How to end the Wars

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Written by Basil E. Dalack   
Wednesday, 27 May 2015 20:53

A PROPOSAL

I took the following passage, which appears to be historically correct, from the internet.

Before the Civil War there were two major political parties in the United States: the Democrats, who believed Americans should have the freedom of choice to own slaves; and the Whigs, who wanted to be the big tent party embracing free and slave states. The Whigs diminished in power and in Ripon, Wisconsin, an anti-slavery group met in February 1854 to discuss a new party. Later that year, on July 6, 1854, anti-slavery activists came from all over the North to a State Convention in Jackson, Michigan, where they named their new party the Republican Party. They demanded that the Fugitive Slave Law be repealed, and that polygamy, which was growing in western territories, be stopped. The chief plank in the Republican Party’s original National Platform, 1856, was “to prohibit…those twin relics of barbarism: polygamy and slavery.”

Why is this important?

Because it shows what needs to be done today.
Those of us who want an end to our endless wars, who urge the dissolution of the empire, and who pray for the resurrection of the Republic CANNOT do it in the existing “two party system”, which, as Ralph Nader has made aware, is in reality, a unitary party system, the War Party; we need to form a new party: The Peace Party, for want of a better term.

We need a NEW major political party. A “third” party, such as the existent Libertarian, a small cry in the wilderness, cannot do the job that needs to be done—a New major party—one that by strength of numbers demands attention-- must be created.

How--the same way that the pre-republicans did in 1854—call together like minded people—peace people—to meet and form a party. I can start the call by asking folks like Ralph Nader to call other like-minded civic leaders, such as Noam Chomsky, Seymour Hersh, Andrew Bacevitch, and they can name others to form a nucleus around which individuals who are now part of groups like Pax Christi, Veterans for Peace, Code Pink, the Libertarians, can gather at a time and place to be determined to start the Peace Process of forming a new party—the Peace Party.

A crucial matter to consider, a sine qua non, is that we must do it ourselves financially; we must not rely on the Adelsons and the Soroses and similar persons of super-affluence. As with Alcoholics Anonymous, we must be self-supporting through our own contributions, else we would be as for sale as the current war prostitutes on Capitol Hill.
Funds will be required for conducting the mechanical procedures each state or electoral district requires for the creation of a political party and for affording that party a place on each state or district’s ballots; and lawyers are required for meeting the requirements of those mechanical procedures. Ralph Nader would be an ideal leader to recruit, galvanize, and direct volunteer lawyers in each state.

Only members of the Peace Party would be allowed to contribute money to accomplish those purposes, and only members of the Peace Party would be asked to act as attorneys for the Party and its candidates, who of necessity, must be members of the Peace Party.

In order to become members of the Peace Party, all persons would take an oath of office, wherein they would swear allegiance to the Constitution of the United States and to the principles set forth in the platform of the Peace Party.

And the term “candidates” is used advisedly, because the Peace Party must not only have candidates for president and vice-president, it must also have a candidate for every political office that is to be filled by election in 2016—those in the national House and Senate and those in the legislatures of every state and of each state capitol in the Union as well; peace cannot be achieved by the White House alone.

A national Peace Party convention would name our presidential and vice-presidential candidates, and state Peace Party conventions would name our other candidates.
The principles for which the Peace Party would stand, and to which each member would adhere (prefaced by the actions of stopping all killing and withdrawing all American forces [including mercenaries] from the hundreds of enclaves they occupy around the world, immediately if not sooner) are simple; they are those that Major General Smedley Butler states in War Is A Racket:, and which implicitly incorporate George Washington’s directive to not seek out allies or adversaries, but to mind our own national business: “Our nation cannot start an offensive war if its ships can't go further than 200 miles from the coastline. Planes might be permitted to go as far as 500 miles from the coast for purposes of reconnaissance. And the army should never leave the territorial limits of our nation.”

There would be no political advertising by the candidates of the Peace Party; we would not bombard the airwaves with messages of how evil the candidates of the two war parties are; their presence as candidates would speak for itself. We have only one message to deliver—the Smedley Butler message in War Is A Racket:--no American troops (or mercenaries) to be sent outside the territorial limits of the United States, no naval forces deployed beyond a two hundred mile limit, and no air forces venturing beyond a 500 mile limit—in a nutshell—we become shoemakers who stick to our own last.

We can dissolve the Empire, Resurrect the Republic, and have Peace by forming a new party named Peace and electing our candidates to form a new government of the people.

What about a presidential candidate?

We cannot have recycled candidates, such as Norman Thomas and Harold Stassen were--candidates must be as new as the new party.

We need someone of unimpeachable honesty and integrity in the White House. The Berrigans would have been ideal were they alive.

There is a Berrigan-like person whom we may consider: Roy Bourgeois, a laicized priest who was imprisoned for three two year terms by order of a fascist federal judge for trying to close the Fort Benning, Georgia, School of the Americas that trained the Latin American military hit-men who murdered Latin American clergymen and nuns who were helping descaminados achieve freedom and dignity.
An outstanding choice for vice-president would be Barbara Lee of California, the ONLY representative who, in addition to voting against the Iraq War of Aggression, voted against the Afghanistan War of Aggression.

Noam Chomsky as Secretary of State, Ralph Nader as Secretary of the Treasury, and Ron Paul as Secretary of Defense would take care of vital cabinet posts. Bruce Fein was born to be attorney general. Pat Buchanan as Chief of Staff and Ashleigh Bamfield as press secretary would round out the picture.
Article by Basil E. Dalack
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