Loftwings and Demons

It's impossible to ignore the ecocide of war and be an environmentalist. To ignore the billions in weapons the US sends to Israel, to ignore US foreign policy around the globe. It's a completely broken understanding of the world that believes that global consequences begin and end from inside the borders of the US. To do this is simply another form of climate change denialism.

I'm kind of getting a weird feeling about the stuff circulating Tumblr saying 'don't worry, there won't be a World War III' and assuring people of this by saying no one's going to attack American soil and there won't be a draft.

Here's the thing. Americans getting it in their head that they're going to be nuked or bombed or whatever and freaking out about that doesn't have any historical basis, and I would agree is exasperating to see. But...there were no major attacks on US soil during World War I or World War II either. Major in terms of civilian casualties that is--I don't think it makes any sense to equate Pearl Harbor with the destruction and death other countries saw. And those other countries saw--so much destruction and death. That's why it was a World War. Not because Americans were being bombed in their country.

I also thought the draft was abolished after the Vietnam War anyway (EDIT: the draft stopped being employed, but it was not abolished in the sense of there being any law to prevent it from being employed again--see eg. https://www.politico.com/story/2012/01/us-military-draft-ends-jan-27-1973-072085). Not that that's stopped people from signing up to 'protect Americans' or 'bring democracy' or whatever other lies and propaganda people uncritically accept from the military apparatus or the media. But how many people in other countries have to die, how many cities demolished, and how many countries have to be involved, before something is considered a World War? Is it only a World War if first world countries are being bombed? Is that something likely to happen in a post-nuclear world?

The US has been at war constantly with multiple countries around the world for so long now that there are adults who were born into this world of near-constant war. The US is at war with the world. Can it not be that this already *is* World War III and, I say this as an American, we're the bad guys?

There is no such thing as a good war.  I'm not a pacifist because I don't view the violence of an aggressor as morally equivalent to the violence enacted to defend against them, but no one really wins in a war.  Wars are never glorious, but always brutal and destructive.