Our warmakers believe they are exempt from normal moral rules. Because they are at war, they get to suspend all decency, all the norms that govern the conduct and interaction of human beings in all other circumstances. The anodyne term “collateral damage,” along with perfunctory and meaningless words of regret, are employed when innocent civilians, including children, are maimed and butchered. A private individual behaving this way would be called a sociopath. Give him a fancy title and a nice suit, and he becomes a statesman.

Let us pursue the subversive mission of applying the same moral rules against theft, kidnapping, and murder to our rulers that we apply to everyone else.

People over there are saying to the Pentagon and the CIA:

Go home. Leave us alone. Close your military bases. Cease your sanctions, embargoes, coups, invasions, occupations, regime-change operations, threats, kidnapping, incarceration, prison camps, torture, and support of our dictators. Just go home and deal with your own problems.

On the other hand, the U.S. national-security state says:

Not on your life. We are the U.S. national-security state. We are a force for good in the world. We are here to help you. We have the right to do so. We have the right to bring you democracy and freedom and order and stability. We have the right to support your dictators, oust your rulers and install new ones, sanction and embargo you, kidnap, incarcerate, and torture you, and assassinate you. We are here to stay. You are free to protest to your heart’s content. But the minute you try to force us to return home, we will bomb, shoot, arrest, incarcerate, torture, execute, or assassinate you and anyone standing near you.

With our rights to protest being eroded a bronze statue in Parliament Square would be a symbol the government couldn’t ignore. A hero for peace instead of war.

Such a policy transformation will require a massive popular campaign—a movement here and abroad to restore the international law that American activists (and a few past presidents) worked so hard to construct. There are no more serious assaults on the laws of war and human rights than those led by the president of the most powerful country on earth. If the United States can hunt down suspected militants and assassinate them from remote-controlled drones, other countries will perceive that they have the right to do so as well.?Immanuel Kant’s categorical imperative, a more sophisticated and secular rendering of the Golden Rule, should be posted in the oval office: “Act in such a way that the principle according to which the action is performed can be accepted as a universal law.”

I thought for a moment, trying to come up with a simple way to explain the peculiar politics of a fake democracy where two equally pro-capitalist, pro-imperialist parties vie with genuine bitterness for patronage spoils and legal bribes, all the while ignoring the real wishes and needs of the public, and then it hit me: it is really all about US militarism and the unwillingness of the either of the two political parties to admit honestly to the American people how much they are being gouged to allow the US government and its corporate owners to continue in their attempt to control the world.

Yet, the reality is that the troops are doing things to people overseas that are making people angry at the United States. Examples include the invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan and ever-increasing drone assassinations. As everyone knows, such actions have succeeded in killing and maiming hundreds of thousands of people, including women and children. On top of that has been the torture, the kidnappings, Gitmo, the support of brutal dictatorships and the Israeli government, the U.S. troops on Islamic holy lands, the illegal no-fly zone over Iraq, the sanctions that killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children, and the current sanctions on Iran. It's the troops who enforce many of those programs.

Most of the rest of the world isn’t fooled by American government accounting tricks. Being at the barrel end of the gun, people of other countries know how US military spending is a primary cause of war and terror in the world. But we Americans ourselves need to wake up to the massive damage that our military-obsessed political system is doing to our country, lest it ultimately destroys us. There is a clear reason that social programs in the US are threatened, that the economy is in a prolonged depression, that our education system is collapsing, and that our standing in the world has plummeted. It is our militarism, and the incredible amount of the national wealth that is being spent on it.

What’s not clear from the Times’ position, however, is whether the principles it enunciates apply only American soldiers or to soldiers in every country. Applying the standard set forth by the Times, would it be appropriate for Germans to use the word “heroes” to describe Germany’s fallen in the many wars in which Germany has been involved, including World War II? Could it be said that describing Nazi soldiers killed in World War II as “heroes” would not serve to justify World War II but instead serve simply as a mark of gratitude and respect for the sacrifice made by the German soldier who was killed and the family members left behind? Could it be said that this would just be a way to recognize that regardless of how the Nazi soldier died, he did so in service to his country? Could it be said that describing the Nazi soldier as a hero would not be a glorification of war but rather a solemn acknowledgement of sacrifice?

In other words, would the Times apply its principles regarding war, soldiers, heroism, and patriotism only to the United States or universally?

The atrocities, shocking as they are, pale next to the “big picture.” Hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, have died at American hands since 2001. The soldier lying dead beneath a cairn topped with rifle and helmet is no more dead, and no more or less personally outraged by it, than the baby murdered in his crib or the dead Taliban fighter urinated upon by troops not quite as at the end of their tethers as the killer staff sergeant.

When you recruit citizens of a country to kill their own people in the name of a widely hated puppet government, their enthusiasm is likely to be exiguous. But since the American Narrative insists that the US seeks only to end the dominion of Evil, opposition to America becomes inexplicable.

In war after war, those attacked fail to act as the US expects. The Iraqis should have welcomed the American soldiers who were bringing them democracy and defeating an evil dictator. This fits the Narrative. That people don't like being invaded, having their cities devastated, their fathers, husbands, sons, and brothers in the army killed—this does not fit the Narative of unalloyed American virtue. It merely determines events.

The factor I find most disturbing in the statists obscene efforts to sustain their formal instruments of repression and destruction, is their unapologetic use of the war system. In my childhood, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor served as a unifying purpose for a war of less than four years duration. Subsequent twentieth-century wars came to be seen as corporate-state undertakings having nothing to do with the "defense" of America. Current wars are conducted for purposes that have no more meaning than that the power structure wants to engage in them. That so many of the GOP sock-puppets are willing to echo John McCain’s earlier words to bomb Iran – and throw in Syria – shows us how utterly evil and psychotic the American state has become. That the institutional order has resorted to – and will continue to escalate – campaigns to destroy the opportunities for Ron Paul’s message to be heard, is illustrative of how depraved so much of this nation has become.

In a word, the road to Baghdad was paved with “lies”. I don’t just mean the fictions of “weapons of mass destruction” or of “Saddam’s connection with Al-Qaeda” that were used by the Bush administration to justify their case for war. In both instances, the White House and its minions throughout the government worked overtime, relying on embellishment, distortion and outright fabrication to make their arguments for war. What they did in manufacturing and marketing these lies was wrong, both morally and legally.

Let that sink in: the biggest — biggest — problem with Iran’s acquiring a nuclear weapon is that it might not use it. Got that? And why would that be bad? Because “naysayers” (that is, people against war) would be able to point to Iran’s responsible conduct as proof that Iran is not irresponsible. Imagine that!

The idea that nations have some sort of collective "national interest," or even a "manifest destiny," is not realistic in any coherent sense. There is no "national interest," because only individuals have real interests: the "national interest" is a floating abstraction, a ghost. American foreign policy is made by people: specific individuals who act in what they regard as their own interests. These individuals – our rulers – may differ greatly in terms of ideology, and personality, and yet they all have one motive in common, and that is the continuation and extension of their own power.

The ruling on the inadequacy of the investigations into killings makes clear that such investigations need to be conducted by people who are fully independent of those being investigated – in this case, the military chain of command. One of the alarming facts about the ever-increasing number of allegations of serious abuse by British forces in Iraq is how few were investigated, yet alone prosecuted, even when the evidence of wrongdoing was very strong. The court stressed, as even the government acknowledged in several of the cases, that the investigation system in which the military commanding officer had a large degree of control was not independent.

So it happens that opponents of US military intervention who were once labeled Nixon-hating “hippies” of the“far left,” and typified as pacifistic “peaceniks,” are now characterized as Obama-hating “far right” reactionaries. The epithets may change, but the issue isn’t going to go away – no matter how vicious the smear campaign gets. Because both the left and the right are fast waking up to the fact that they’re being taken for a ride by the War Party – which profits from empire while the rest of us pay.

That’s why Come Home America – a new left-right antiwar initiative – is vitally important. I urge my readers to sign up and get actively involved: this is the one antiwar organization I can unreservedly endorse. Chapters are springing up across the nation, and now is the time to get actively involved. Because there never was a better time for the nation to hear its message loud and clear: America, won’t you please come home?

When the West provides military training and weapons to regimes that actively suppress the freedom of millions of Muslims and engage in sectarian repression, it highlights the absurdity of the claim that Westerners are primarily hated for our freedom. Sure, there are people who harbor resentment for greater degrees of liberty than they are willing to tolerate – and not all of these people are native-born Westerners. But is it any wonder that people are attracted to violence or seek answers in repressive religion when Western governments help suppress peaceful options for reform?

It also reveals the arrogance of Westerners who proclaim that people from a certain area are “not ready for democracy.” This is like giving a person a swift kick to the knees then announcing that he isn’t ready to run.

Meanwhile, Gaddafi himself has said that he will stop at nothing to keep his power.

To him, it is a simple matter. Government rules. The people obey. Just because some sizable swath tries to overturn that system doesn't mean that the system must be upended. Isn't that the philosophy of all government in all times and all places? If it were not, the state would not need coercion, and it would not be a state. It would be a part of society, just another association that cumulates and represents the interests of a group, like the Rotary Club, chess club, or a house of worship. It is the power to legally beat, jail, and kill dissidents that makes the state what it is.

The guns and munitions that have long been accumulated under the claim that these were necessary to protect people - of course the people themselves were long ago disarmed by being denied the freedom to possess weapons of equal or greater power - every government will turn those very weapons on its people to slaughter them when they cease to obey.

When the governments of the main countries act purely in the reasonable interests of their peoples, foreign policies take on a caution and predictability that is most consistent with enabling a peaceful intercourse between nations. Wars come about most often not from national selfishness, but from impulsive and unpredictable acts in furtherance of some abstract principle. And I say again that such principles will generally be a cover for the enrichment of some shameful special interest.

There is a fundamental difference, then, between a man who takes sides in some foreign dispute and goes out to act on his decision, and a State that intervenes in foreign disputes. There is also a fundamental difference between a man who acts by himself and a man who calls for a State to act on his behalf.

Who would be the patriots in such a situation? The American cooperators would consider themselves the patriots, pointing to the good things the Chinese, North Koreans, Cubans, and Venezuelans would be doing in America — e.g., bringing order and stability to American society. The American insurgents would consider themselves the patriots, pointing out that America was no place for foreign occupiers.

Of course, it’s impossible to know whether Hamid Ahmad would be alive today if the U.S. government had not invaded and occupied Iraq. But one thing is for sure: he would not have been killed by his own son for having cooperated with the U.S. invasion and occupation of his country.

So, you who support the war, take credit for your crimes. Don't try to cover them up with euphemisms that make it sound as if I, or others like me, or the nation as a whole, did this. It was you, and the politicians you support, who did it. And it is you and those politicians who should apologize to the young widows, the grieving mothers and fathers, and the orphans that you created.