War makes it legal to kill people on the industrial scale. Success is uncertain, and killing both “combatants” (formerly soldiers) and “non-combatants” (formerly civilians) is acceptable - under certain circumstances. International law(1) and ethical ideals forbid "pre-emptive" war against people who might attack in the future – but allows people under attack to defend themselves with defensive and aggressive deadly force. Therefore, pre-emptive war appears to facilitate, if not guarantee, the outcome it supposedly prevents.

Even if your cause is just and your contribution small, the violent death or maiming of each child, mother, father, brother, sister or friend increases the probability that one or more survivors will develop the lifelong desire to kill or maim you, your child, mother, father, brother, sister or friend – perhaps even “all of the above.” The victimization of children and the obliteration of families appear especially likely to create the desire for vengeance at any cost. It appears that war fuels a positive feedback loop of violence by fostering hatred, misunderstanding, murder, terror, vengeance and a need for retribution. Those who profit from war rarely appear to participate in its more violent aspects – other than supplying the implements.

War is cruel, expensive, irrational and unfair, often creating significant morbidity and mortality among combatants and civilians alike. Abstract concepts such as borders, honor, nationalism, and loyalty coupled with attempts to “ensure that no one has died in vain” often guarantee that wars continue to kill long after the outcome is inevitable. Ironically, although war requires that participants surrender prohibitions against killing, taking by force and other moral ideals, religious beliefs often play crucial roles in the cause, furtherance, justification and rationalization of war. While “just” wars winning human freedom are not unprecedented, criminal war (to obtain strategic resources) and profligate war (such as the Korean War), appear more common.

Although advocates cite technological advancements as positive outcomes, war usually prompts the development and use of the most destructive, horrendous and terrifying technologies imaginable, and the development of environmentally sound or socially beneficial technologies usually appear only incidentally. Armed conflict usually creates anarchistic “war zones,” devoid of neutral law enforcement and conducive to most any immoral or unethical act imaginable. Furthermore, the urgency and secrecy of war conceals not only tactics and strategy, but also potential corruption, incompetence, profiteering and duplicity. Dwight D. Eisenhower recognized war’s unique contribution to society, “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”(2)

War seeks to provide security through the desperate, intentional and wholesale demolition of human beings, environments and infrastructure, even though history suggests that only assistance, cooperation, friendship, mutual respect and trust can win peace and security. In the process, war destroys not only people and their security, but also due process of law, civil rights, human freedom and social infrastructure.

Pre-emptive war is a failed military strategy previously employed by some of the most infamous criminal regimes in world history. Until We the People forbid it, we will continue to suffer from its negative effects on human beings and experience severe threats to civil liberties, human rights and economic, personal and national security.

1. Statemaster-Encyclopedia, "Crime Against Humanity,"

, accessed May 11, 2009.

2. Eisenhower, Dwight D., Chance for Peace Address, Washington, DC, April 16, 1953.