The Progressive Era - Antiwar

Blog Post #7 

 Antiwar Voices 

US troops have been fighting around the world for decades. A magazine article from Dissent Magazine stated that "Nearly 8,000 Americans have died in combat in Afghanistan and Iraq combined; tens of thousands have been badly and permanently injured. Troops are still risking their lives in Afghanistan to stop the Taliban from overrunning Kabul." We hear about all of these different wars, but we rarely hear the antiwar voices being mainstreamed. 

There is a website called "Antiwar" that acts as a publicity and discussion site to promote people to get involved in the retaliation against war. Although this website exists, it has been years since an actual act of protest was implemented. This protest occurred in February 2003, when the U.S. military went to war with Baghdad. In the streets of Washington, D.C., New York, and other cities, millions around the world protested together to protests the invasion. Since then, protests have been rare to none. 

Dissent magazine suggests that the most obvious reason for the absence of the antiwar movement is "the nature of the enemies the United States has been fighting since the fall of 2001". Antiwar activists have switched to focusing on how U.S. military actions kill civilians. An article that I read by Common Dreams, stated "There are so many problems at home to deal with. Why should we care what’s happening on the other side of the world when the police here at home are shooting unarmed black people when millions of young people can’t afford a college education or leave college burdened with enormous debts when millions of Americans can’t afford adequate health care when immigrants are being deported and locked in cages when there are mass shootings every few weeks when the planet is burning?" This really made me think. 

You would think that the world would be concerned and care more about the impact of war, but in reality, we are affected by militarism. People have been trying to find ways to get people - specifically young people, to become engaged in anti-war activism. The more information people know about the impacts and effects of militarism, the more they would want to work towards peace. Young people are mainly targeted because the movement may die out altogether. Wars seem like they will not die down, so the need for antiwar must go on.