We need more vocal critics of war. But, more importantly, we need more vocal critics of every war: past, present, and future. Far too often anti-war activists stop short of fully embracing their title by revealing themselves to only be “anti certain wars.”

David Michael Green, a professor of political science at Hofstra University, did just that in a recent article for AlterNet, titled “America Loves Peace? Odd, Since We’re Always At War.”

The article begins with a wonderfully concise–yet no less powerful–run-down of US military interventions since WWII:

… the United States has messed around, in ways big and small, in Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Afghanistan, Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador, Lebanon, Grenada, Iraq, Panama, Colombia, Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Haiti, Afghanistan again, and Iraq again. No country in the world can begin to match this record in the last half-century. And I’m not even listing here the covert operations (almost everywhere), including the ones that toppled democratically elected governments (Iran, Guatemala, Chile, etc.), the long-term occupations of Latin American countries by the U.S. military, the gunboat diplomacy of the American Navy around the world, the aiding and abetting of other killers (Saddam invading Iran, for example, apartheid South Africa or the Israeli occupation of Palestine), the militarization of the oceans and of space, or the myriad other ways in which the United States leads the planet in aggressive tendencies.

Despite his admirable attack on our long history of militarism–a history, I might add, that in total includes 300 troop deployments in little more than 225 years–Professor Green still doesn’t take the ultimate plunge of being fully antiwar, in every sense of the word.

I don’t want to give the wrong impression. Much as I’d like to be, I’m not a pacifist, because I realize that there are genuinely bad actors out there who can’t be tamed by a Dick Cheney charm offensive, or beaten into submission by a Condoleeza Rice piano sonata. I’m glad the U.S. military was there to stomp Hitler. Maybe even Korea, Bosnia and Kosovo could be justified as a response to aggression, though here it gets murkier.

Beyond the philosophical arguments of such revered nonviolent figures as Jesus (”those who live by the sword will perish by the sword”), Gandhi (”an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind”) and MLK (”Returning violence for violence multiplies violence”), are many pragmatic reasons that war and violence have always failed.

To begin, one could say that Hitler would never have risen to power if not for the Treaty of Versailles (the peace treaty that ended the so-called “war to end all wars”) which completely annihilated German identity. In the face of this oppression–not to mention heavy investment in the ’20s and ’30s from Western powers afraid of a Marxist revolution–the German people were were ushered into the vile and vengeful arms of the Nazi Party.

Some still prefer to argue that this was inevitable because it still validates the notion of WWII as a “just war.” But how can a war be just when it invariably costs the lives of thousands, if not millions, of civilians? Should we really be proud of our actions during WWII, when they also include the dropping of two atomic bombs that killed nearly 200,000 civilians? The United States is still the only country to use nuclear weapons.

The other wars that Professor Green mentioned as justifiable are equally flawed. Korea could very well be described as a preview of Vietnam–with its use of napalm and the indiscriminate bombings of villages, resulting in more than 2 million, mostly civilian, deaths. And–talk about previews–as I discussed last week, Kosovo was essentially the trial run for Iraq, mirroring its lies, the provocation of sectarian violence, and the establishment of permanent bases.

My argument against all war is not new, but it has been articulated by far superior writers. So, I will conclude with a quote by historian Howard Zinn:

I believe that the progressive supporters of the war have confused a “just cause” with a “just war.” There are unjust causes, such as the attempt of the United States to establish its power in Vietnam, or to dominate Panama or Grenada, or to subvert the government of Nicaragua. And a cause may be just–getting North Korea to withdraw from South Korea, getting Saddam Hussein to withdraw from Kuwait, or ending terrorism–but it does not follow that going to war on behalf of that cause, with the inevitable mayhem that follows, is just.