• Changing Minds, One at a Time (March): "What does it take to bring a turnaround in social consciousness - from being a racist to being in favor of racial equality, from being in favor of Bush's tax program to being against it, from being in favor of the war in Iraq to being against it? We desperately want an answer, because we know that the future of the human race depends on a radical change in social consciousness." [read more...]
  
  
• Harness That Anger (January): "In the days after the election, it seemed that all my friends were either depressed or angry, frustrated or indignant, or simply disgusted. Neighbors who had never said more than hi to me stopped me on the street and delivered passionate little speeches that made me think they had just listened to a re-broadcast of H. G. Wells's The War of the Worlds, in which powerful creatures arrive on Earth to take it over." [read more...]

2004

• Our War on Terrorism (November): "I am calling it 'our' war on terrorism because I want to distinguish it from Bush's war on terrorism, and from Sharon's, and from Putin's. What their wars have in common is that they are based on an enormous deception: persuading the people of their countries that you can deal with terrorism by war. These rulers say you can end our fear of terrorism--of sudden, deadly, vicious attacks, a fear new to Americans--by drawing an enormous circle around an area of the world where terrorists come from (Afghanistan, Palestine, Chechnya) or can be claimed to be connected with (Iraq), and by sending in tanks and planes to bomb and terrorize whoever lives within that circle." [read more...]
  
  
• Dissent at the War Memorial (August): "As I write this, the sounds of the World War II Memorial celebration in Washington, D.C., are still in my head. I was invited by the Smithsonian Institution to be on one of the panels, and the person who called to invite me said that the theme would be 'War Stories.' I told him that I would come, but not to tell "war stories," rather to talk about World War II and its meaning for us today. Fine, he said." [read more...]
  
  
• What Do We Do Now? (June): "It seems very hard for some people--especially those in high places, but also those striving for high places--to grasp a simple truth: The United States does not belong in Iraq. It is not our country. Our presence is causing death, suffering, destruction, and so large sections of the population are rising against us. Our military is then reacting with indiscriminate force, bombing and shooting and rounding up people simply on "suspicion.'" [read more...]
  
  
• Opposing the War Party (May): "The Progressive has been a thorn in the side of the establishment for almost a hundred years. Its life span covers two world wars and six smaller wars. It saw the fake prosperity of the Twenties and the tumult of the Thirties. Its voice remained alive through the Cold War and the hysteria over communism." [read more...]
  
  
• The Logic of Withdrawal (January): "In the spring of 1967, my book Vietnam: The Logic of Withdrawal was published by Beacon Press. It was the first book on the war to call for immediate withdrawal, no conditions. Many liberals were saying: 'Yes, we should leave Vietnam, but President Johnson can't just do it; it would be very hard to explain to the American people.' My response, in the last chapter of my book, was to write a speech for Lyndon Johnson, explaining to the American people why he was ordering the immediate evacuation of American armed forces from Vietnam. No, Johnson did not make that speech, and the war went on. But I am undaunted, and willing to make my second attempt at speech writing. This time, I am writing a speech for whichever candidate emerges as Democratic Party nominee for President. My supposition is that the nation is ready for an all-out challenge to the Bush Administration, for its war policy and its assault on the well-being of the American people." [read more...]

2003

• An Occupied Country (October): "It has become clear, very quickly, that Iraq is not a liberated country, but an occupied country. We became familiar with the term 'occupied country' during World War II. We talked of German-occupied France, German-occupied Europe. And after the war we spoke of Soviet-occupied Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Eastern Europe. It was the Nazis, the Soviets, who occupied other countries." [read more...]
  
  
• Humpty Dumpty Will Fall (August): "The 'victory' over an already devastated and disarmed Iraq led Bush, Rumsfeld, and their teammates into a locker-room frenzy of exultation and self-congratulation. I half expected to see Bush joyfully pouring beer on Rumsfeld's head and Ashcroft snapping a towel at Ari Fleischer's derrière." [read more...]
  
  
• Dying for the Government (June): "Our government has declared a military victory in Iraq. As a patriot, I will not celebrate. I will mourn the dead--the American GIs, and also the Iraqi dead, of whom there have been many, many more." [read more...]
  
  
• A Holy Outlaw (February): "The long funeral procession for Phil Berrigan moved slowly through the streets of the poor black parish in Baltimore where he had begun his priesthood. Some parents held young children by the hand, as they walked behind the flatbed truck that carried Phil's coffin, which had been made by his son, Jerry, and was decorated with flowers and peace symbols". [read more...]

2002

• Our Job Is a Simple One: Stop Them (December): "Democracy flies out the window as soon as war comes along. So when officials in Washington talk about democracy, either here or abroad, as they take this country to war, they don't mean it. They don't want democracy; they want to run things themselves. They want to decide whether we go to war. They want to decide the lives and deaths of people in this country, and they certainly want to decide the lives and deaths of people in Iraq and all over the Middle East." [read more...]
  
  
• What War Looks Like (October): "In all the solemn statements by self-important politicians and newspaper columnists about a coming war against Iraq, and even in the troubled comments by some who are opposed to the war, there is something missing. The talk is about strategy and tactics, geopolitics and personalities. It is about air war and ground war, weapons of mass destruction, arms inspections, alliances, oil, and 'regime change.'" [read more...]
  
  
• A Break-in for Peace (July): "In the film Ocean's 11, eleven skillful crooks embark on an ingenious plan, meticulously worked out, to break into an impossibly secure vault and make off with more than $100 million in Las Vegas casino loot. Hardly a crime of passion, despite the faint electrical charge surrounding Julia Roberts and George Clooney. No, money was the motive, with as little moral fervor attending the crime as went into the making of the movie, which had the same motive." [read more...]
  
  
• Operation Enduring War (March): "We are 'winning the war on terror.' I learn this from George Bush's State of the Union Address. 'Our progress,' he said, 'is a tribute to the might of the United States military.' My hometown newspaper, The Boston Globe, is congratulatory: 'On the war front, the Administration has much to take pride in.'" [read more...]

2001

• A Just Cause, Not a Just War (December): "I believe two moral judgments can be made about the present 'war': The September 11 attack constitutes a crime against humanity and cannot be justified, and the bombing of Afghanistan is also a crime, which cannot be justified." [read more...]
  
  
• The Greatest Generation? (October): "They tell me I am a member of the greatest generation. That's because I saw combat duty as a bombardier in World War II, and we (I almost said 'I') won the war against fascism. I am told this by Tom Brokaw, who wrote a book called The Greatest Generation, which is all about us. He is an anchorman for a big television network, meaning that he is anchored to orthodoxy, and there is no greater orthodoxy than to ascribe greatness to military valor." [read more...]
  
  
• Violence Doesn't Work (September): "The images on television have been heartbreaking. People on fire leaping to their deaths from a hundred stories up. People in panic and fear racing from the scene in clouds of dust and smoke. We knew that there must be thousands of human beings buried alive, but soon dead under a mountain of debris. We can only imagine the terror among the passengers of the hijacked planes as they contemplated the crash, the fire, the end. Those scenes horrified and sickened me. Then our political leaders came on television, and I was horrified and sickened again. They spoke of retaliation, of vengeance, of punishment." [read more...]
  
  
• Artists of Resistance (July): "Whenever I become discouraged (which is on alternate Tuesdays, between three and four) I lift my spirits by remembering: The artists are on our side! I mean those poets and painters, singers and musicians, novelists and playwrights who speak to the world in a way that is impervious to assault because they wage the battle for justice in a sphere which is unreachable by the dullness of ordinary political discourse." [read more...]
  
  

2000

• The Bombs of August (August): "Near the end of the novel The English Patient there is a passage in which Kip, the Sikh defuser of mines, begins to speak bitterly to the burned, near-death patient about British and American imperialism: 'You and then the Americans converted us. . . . You had wars like cricket. How did you fool us into this? Here, listen to what you people have done.' He puts earphones on the blackened head. The radio is telling about the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki." [read more...]
  
  
• Unsung Heroes (June): A high school student recently confronted me: "I read in your book A People's History of the United States about the massacres of Indians, the long history of racism, the persistence of poverty in the richest country in the world, the senseless wars. How can I keep from being thoroughly alienated and depressed?" [read more...]
  
  
• A Flash of the Possible (January): "In the year 1919, when the city of Seattle was brought to a halt by a general strike--beginning with 35,000 shipyard workers demanding a wage increase--the mayor reflected on its significance: 'True there were no flashing guns, no bombs, no killings. Revolution . . . doesn't need violence. The general strike, as practiced in Seattle, is of itself the weapon of revolution, all the more dangerous because quiet. To succeed, it must suspend everything, stop the entire life stream of a community...That is to say, it puts the government out of operation. And that is all there is to revolt--no matter how achieved.'" [read more...]

1999

• Their Atrocities - and ours (July): "There was a headline recently in my hometown newspaper, the Boston Globe: Pentagon Defends Airstrike on Village. U.S. Says Kosovars Were 'Human Shields.' That brought back the ugliest of memories. It recalled My Lai and other Vietnam massacres, justified by such comments as 'the Vietnamese babies are concealing hand grenades.' Here's the logic: Milosevic has committed atrocities; therefore, it is OK for us to commit atrocities. He is terrorizing the Albanians in Kosovo; therefore, we can terrorize the Serbs in Yugoslavia." [read more...]
  
  
• A Diplomatic Solution (May): "A friend wrote to ask my opinion on Kosovo. He said many people were turning to him for answers, and he didn't know what to say, so he was turning to me (knowing, I guess, that I always have something to say, right or wrong)." [read more...]

1998

• Private Ryan Saves War (October): "Like so many World War II veterans (I could see them all around me in the theater audience), I was drawn to see Saving Private Ryan. I had volunteered for the Air Force at the age of twenty. After training as a bombardier, I went overseas with my crew to fly some of the last bombing missions of the European war." [read more...]