If we can end, let us say . . . slavery — the legal “ownership” of other human beings — can’t we also end other great social wrongs? Can’t we also end war?

As I ask this question, I am suddenly bludgeoned by an unexpected irony, since the United States ended slavery through a brutal war, with a death toll of perhaps three quarters of a million people.

But it was worth it, right?

Well, that’s what history tells us. It has essentially “made peace” with the war and now celebrates the moral objectives of the winning side, with all its carnage forever reduced to a statistical abstraction.

The topic of this column is the abolition of war — the urgent necessity of doing so — so, how odd it feels to begin by referencing a “good” war, which ended an enormous wrong . . . or at least forced the wrong to morph into a different, less legally blatant form of racism known as Jim Crow. (And when Jim Crow was defeated by the nonviolent civil rights movement a hundred years later, the nation’s racism morphed into such things as the “war on drugs” and an expanding prison-industrial complex.)

This summer, we’re turning up the heat to demand an end to the genocide in Gaza and to Free Palestine! It's time to educate, agitate, and mobilize our communities like never before. Inspired by the courageous campus encampments that have swept across colleges nationwide, CODEPINK is thrilled to announce the Gaza Summer School!

Join us for a transformative, summer-long online Zoom education series that will empower you to become a powerful advocate for Palestine. Through bi-weekly classes, you’ll gain in-depth knowledge and vital skills to make a real impact. Led by dynamic leaders, each session kicks off with a 30-minute deep dive into the history and current realities of Palestine, followed by a dynamic 30-minute skills training to arm you with the tools to drive change in your community.

Scott Ritter was pulled off a NY-to-Istanbul flight yesterday by US officials and his passport confiscated in a startling new development in the government’s open drive to censor and silence critics of the Administration’s foreign policies at a time when the United States is supplying billions of dollars in arms to foment wider war in Russia, accelerate the attacks on Gazans and set the stage for war with China over Taiwan.

A Marine veteran and true American patriot, Mr. Ritter is also a noted former Chief UN weapons inspector, author and journalist.  He was enroute to Russia to attend an international conference in St. Petersburg.  

Mr. Ritter first came to my attention when he testified at a Capitol hearing I sponsored to inquire into the Bush Administration’s plans to attack Iraq. Ritter warned in August of 2002 that a case had not been made for attacking Iraq.