David Swanson - War Is A Lie

Advance Praise for War Is A Lie

David Swanson despises war and lying, and unmasks them both with rare intelligence. I learn something new on every page. Jeff Cohen, founder of FAIR and author of Cable News Confidential.

While Americans elect leaders whom they trust are honest, truthful and really care about the kids they send to kill for our country, War Is A Lie reveals decade after decade the sordid side of our history that our elected officials lie us into war with stunning and embarrassing regularity and are little concerned about the harm to innocent civilians, much less to members of our own military. Colonel (retired) Ann Wright, author of Dissent: Voices of Conscience.

This book is every Americans best defense against the greatest danger we face as human beings: the threat of war. Swanson reveals how American leaders (from both major political parties) have confused the public to create the illusion of consent for endless destruction and slaughter. Behind the fear-mongering, flag-waving and lies of George W. Bush and the blandishments of Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama lies the ugly reality that our leaders have been seduced by political ambition, delusions of military superiority, and the promise of secrecy and impunity to commit otherwise unthinkable crimes. Nicolas J. S. Davies, Author of Blood On Our Hands: the American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq.

War Is A Lie is an important and compelling book that arrives at a time when America is engaged in its longest running war to date. Swanson offers an incisive examination of the rationalizations, justifications, and outright lies that have led the United States, and other nations, into battle. And he shows the personal cost to the current generation of combatants returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Cynthia Wachtell, author of War No More: The Antiwar Impulse in American Literature 1861-1914.

David Swanson has taken the mantle of AJ Muste, who had the guts and the audacity to declare World War II to have been unnecessary and wrong. Swanson takes Mustes argument further to make the audacious claim that all wars are not just unnecessary, but a crime. He is correct, of course. Just as no good outcome (whether the ouster of a tyrant or the freeing of captive nations) can compensate for the death of millions of innocents, which of course is the argument made in defense of calling World War II a good war, no good (whether the ousting of a tyrant or the claimed improvement in the rights of oppressed women) can compensate for the death of hundreds of thousands of innocents in Iraq or of tens of thousands of innocents in Afghanistan. This is a book that every American should read, especially those who think the United States is the good guy.Dave Lindorff, journalist, author of The Case for Impeachment, and founder of the online newspaper ThisCantBeHappening!

Praise for Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union

Daybreak offers a powerful and compelling picture of what real change in America could look like. The world needs more true advocates of democracy like David Swanson. Thom Hartmann, nationally syndicated radio host and author of The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight.

David Swansons masterful exposure of the emergence of a monarchlike president coupled with an effete, irresponsible, and constitutionally ignorant Congress is well worth the price of admission. An aroused public with a litmus test of honoring the Constitution is urgently needed to prevent the Republic from capsizing. Bruce Fein, former Associate Deputy Attorney General, author of American Empire: Before the Fall.

Daybreak is far more uplifting and inspiring than virtually any other book in its genre, as it devotes itself to laying out a detailed plan for how American citizens through the activism to which he has devoted himself can bring about a rejuvenation of our political values. Glenn Greenwald, blogger at Salon.com and author of Great American Hypocrites.

First edition2010
Also by David Swanson
Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union (2009) The 35 Articles of Impeachment (Introduction, 2008)

2010 David Swanson
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including mechanical, electric, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

permission of the publisher.
War Is A Lie
Index by Jim OBrien
Book design by Michael Gerber
Printed in the USA
First Edition / November 2010
ISBN: 978-0-9830830-0-9 www.davidswanson.org N

ot a single thing that we commonly believe about wars that helps keep them around is true. Wars cannot be good or glorious. Nor can they be justified as a means of achieving peace or anything else of value. The reasons given for wars, before, during, and after them (often three very different sets of reasons for the same war) are all false. It is common to imagine that, because wed never go to war without a good reason, having gone to war, we simply must have a good reason. This needs to be reversed. Because there can be no good reason for war, having gone to war, we are participating in a lie.

A very intelligent friend recently told me that prior to 2003 no American president had ever lied about reasons for war. Another, only slightly better informed, told me that the United States had not had any problems with war lies or undesirable wars between 1975 and 2003. I hope that this book will help set the record straight. A war based on lies is just a long-winded way of saying a war. The lies are part of the standard package.

Lies have preceded and accompanied wars for millennia, but in the past century war has become far more deadly. Its victims are now primarily non-participants, often almost exclusively on one side of the war. Even the participants from the dominant side can be drawn from a population coerced into fighting and isolated from those making the decisions about or benefitting from the war. Participants who survive war are far more likely now to have been trained and conditioned to do things they cannot live with having done. In short, war ever more closely resembles mass murder, a resemblance put into our legal system by the banning of war in the Kellogg-Briand Peace Pact in 1928, the United Nations Charter in 1945, and the International Criminal Courts decision to prosecute crimes of aggression in 2010. Arguments that might have sufficed to justify wars in the past might not do so now. War lies are now far more dangerous things. But, as we will see, wars were never justifiable.

A defensive war remains legal, even if not necessarily moral. But any defensive war is also a war of illegal aggression from the other side. All sides in all wars, even wars with two clear aggressors, always claim to be acting defensively. Some actually are. When a powerful military attacks a weak and impoverished nation halfway around the globe, those who fight back may tell lies about the aggressors, about their own prospects for victory, about atrocities they commit, about rewards for martyrs in paradise, etc., but they do not have to lie the war into existence; it has come to them. The lies that create wars, and the lies that allow war to remain one of our tools of public policy, must be addressed before any others.

This book focuses, not exclusively but heavily, on the United States wars, because the United States is my country and because it is the leading war maker in the world right now. Many people in our country are inclined to a healthy skepticism or even fanatical certainty of disbelief when it comes to statements our government makes about anything other than wars. On taxes, Social Security, healthcare, or schools it simply goes without saying: elected officials are a pack of liars.

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