s). I would defend my home and family from invader and harm should such a horrible thing ever happen and will teach my son to do likewise. I value human life and believe every person has worth. In ordinary circumstances, who would not feel similarly lest they were a control-freak or psychopath?

I must admit that I have no experience with war. I do not in any way wish to chastise or demean those who enlisted – most did out of true conviction. The article is an attempt to share what I understand about war economically, morally, and philosophically. I rely on the wisdom of those who have experienced the horrors of war and the warnings they have left us to heed (see here, as a stark example). We do these men a great disservice when we ignore what they told us about their experiences.

I ask that you get past the tough-guy machismo vomited by the corporate-promoted armchair chicken hawks. Understand that being an individual . . . a real man . . . a real woman . . . requires being able to think for yourself. A pawn eats the propaganda wholesale, goes out to the battlefield, and slaughters strangers. A true individual ignores insignias, ignores symbols, recognizes propaganda, sees reality for what it is, and faces it. If you are a critically thinking individual--a true INDIVIDUAL--not a pawn, then read and reflect on these ten reasons to oppose war. Whether you wear a uniform or a party dress, combat boots or flip flops, anyone who believes in the principle of human liberty, please take heed.

1) War brings out the worst in humanity. Not only must otherwise rational people make unfathomable decisions about loyalty, life, and death, but the bureaucracy that must be put in place to prepare one for this experience must be looked at with considerable jaundice.

2) War is the ultimate big government program. Bureaucratic decision making for every aspect of the endeavor with its full array of economic destruction – waste, misallocation, inefficiency, deteriorating quality . . . Spec requirements devoid of consideration for human needs driving the creation of every product, factory, building, and activity . . . . Masses of humans looked at as nothing more than resources to be exploited.

3) War sucks the wealth out of the economy. In ages past, kings, rulers, and emperors who went to war had a war chest (quite literally a chest containing real coin taken from the populace as taxes). If the war went on too long, the war chest became depleted and the noble king had no way to pay his forces - better find some local villages to plunder . . . . In modern times, many of us seem to harbor the belief that war "stimulates the economy." Ah, the magic of fiat money mixed with the fantasies of a Fabian Socialist . . . . I ask you, reader, how is it that war once depleted a King's war chest, yet in modern times allegedly creates prosperity? Dr. Ron Paul debunks the myth quite completely and eloquently, for those interested. No, WWII did NOT get us out of the Depression.

4) War foments hatred and creates the conditions for the next one - It makes us less safe. No better example exists in mainstream history than that of Germany in the 20th Century. Germany , subjected to great financial hardship by France and Britain after WWI, had little problem whipping their populace into anger at these nations in the years after the war. Wars ultimately solve nothing, except the "problem" of how to create the conditions for the next one. Now, in a 4GW world, traditional military tactics and occupation methods are doomed. War in this scenario creates the conditions that incubate atrocity--a hidden enemy stalking young soldiers--constant tension and frustration grow while morale wanes. Confusion, delusion, rage, and fear coalesce into a greatly increased probability of the shedding of innocent blood by once good people.

5) "Ninety-eight percent of the participants in war are casualties. The other two percent are psychopaths." Reflect on this statement. How can anyone witness the utter horror of war and not be affected? In what insanity do we as a people indulge when we send our children into this psychological hell called war?

6) With a few very notable exceptions, war never was nor is waged for the reasons disseminated to the public. You may dismiss such a statement as "conspiracy" (which is EXACTLY what it is describing), but the historical facts cannot be denied for those who simply do the research. Here are a few examples:

The American Civil War

Lie: The Civil War was fought by forward thinking Northerners led by a principled, heroic master statesman to free black people from the chattel slavery system of backward, evil Southerners;

Truth: The Civil War, more accurately referred to as The War to Prevent Southern Independence (it was not technically a civil war), was fought to ultimately unite the country under a single mercantilist/corporatist financial system making economic slaves out of the entire population. Lincoln, an ardent supporter of "Whig" style mercantilism and high tariffs, essentially threatened in his first inaugural address to send Federal troops to occupy the South if Southern states refused to collect his high import tariff. The South, highly dependent on foreign trade and cognizant of the blessings of free trade, refused and chose to secede. Some upper Southern states such as Virginia opted against secession until Lincoln sent soldiers south. For more information, see the writings of Thomas DiLorenzo, especially his poignant article about what Europe was saying about the war while it took place.

WWI

Lie: America needed to enter the war to make the world safe for democracy. Germany was raping and slaughtering women and children in neutral nations.

Truth: The Morgan and Rockefeller banking interests had designs on ushering in their New World Order. They used American financial and military power to prolong the war for the purposes of mass debt enslavement and the destruction of old cultural systems (see here and here, for instance). Through their inside man "Colonel House," a close confidant of Woodrow Wilson, Wilson was swayed into promoting American entrance into WWI to prevent Allied defeat and subsequent defaulting on their massive loans. Churchill, the lackey of the banking elite, masterminded the effort to get America into the war across the Atlantic - he orchestrated the conditions for the Lusitania sinking, among other despicable acts later. The big banks also had in mind the creation of a world government body (the ill-fated League of Nations ). See, as but a single example, here or The Illusion of Victory: America in World War I.

WWII

Lie: America was minding its own business when the Japanese attacked the U.S. without provocation, completely surprising the American government and military.

Truth: The US manipulated and provoked a Japanese attack to ensure a catalyzing event occurred that would ignite war fever in the US populace. WWII opened the floodgates for communism, a socio-political "experiment" devised and financed by British and American financial and cultural elite, to spread over half the world. This activity was done in the interest of their tried-and-true method of social change--the dialectic. Communism was designed to be the "antithesis" to the capitalist "thesis." As but one example where they noble myth of US involvement in WWII breaks down: FDR signed the death warrants of tens of thousands of Russian refuges and POWS in US captivity by sending them back to Stalin knowing what their fate would be (or for a more powerful discussion, see here). Though Hitler's horrifying activities against the Jews were finally ceased, the industrial engine behind Hitler's war machine, IG Farben, merely split into subsidiaries, many of which continue today with elite support. IG Farben was split after the company was indicted in the Nuremberg Trials. You might also like to know who was involved with supplying IG Farben and profiting from NAZI activities; OH YES!

Operation Iraqi Freedom

Lie: Saddam had weapons of mass destruction.

Gross Misconception (insinuated, but I don't believe the administration ever came out and actually said it): Saddam was responsible for the Sept 11, 2001 attacks.

Lie: Saddam acquired "yellow cake" from Nigeria.

Lie: Saddam had a fleet of drones that could drop chemical weapons on Americans.

Truth: Saddam was pricing his oil in euros, threatening the dollar. Saddam did not have an economy controlled by the international banking elite. The neoconservative Project for a New American Century as well as elitist goons like Zbigniew Brzezynsky identified Iraq as the staging ground for controlling the Middle East.

7) War is the tool that provides the world's psychopathic social engineers the quickest method of making changes in societies the people would otherwise never accept, including their agenda to destroy the family, control education for indoctrination purposes, all to herald in their utopia--a new world order. See Norman Dodd's jawdropping interview as but one example.

8) War robs humanity of human potential - future poets, artists, achievers, teachers snuffed out. Being a huge Tolkien fanatic, I often wonder how awful the world would be without Tolkien's magnificent stories. What if he, a veteran of the horrifying trench warfare of WWI, took a bullet, or had a visit from a mortar shell, or inhaled a little nerve gas. What a tragedy for the world, for the millions of people Tolkien has touched, had that happened. Is it such a stretch to wonder, what other Tolkiens, Bocelli's, Petrucci's, or Mises' has the world lost? A sobering, tragic thing to contemplate.

9) Massive brainwashing must take place in order to make people capable of killing. Alluded to earlier, war fosters and propels massive propaganda engines that never get dismantled (e.g., Tavistock Institute).

10) War diverts the expertise of millions of brilliant minds into the activities of destruction and killing, or at least into production activities that benefit no one but government bureaucracies. I see this firsthand being an engineer myself. So many of the great people I respect at my job I wish were doing things that added wealth, that added to humanity. It breaks my heart to think the product of so much creative genius benefits ultimately the destruction of life or wealth.

Spare me your misguided ideas about which tyranny I’d be living under if “we” didn’t send fighting men (and women) all over the world. Spare me your “love it or leave” nonsense about the “land of the free.” Spare me about how many jobs “we” would lose if “we” lost government contracts. And for the love of all that is humane, cast the phrase “war is good for business” out of your conscience.

I regret that this discussion delves into areas of history that many people will reject out of hand as conspiracy. It's an amazing study of psychology to consider why and how this rejection takes place. I would have myself not long ago. For those who still cling to some semblance of critical thinking, some flickering flame of individuality, I hope these ten reasons to oppose war gave you some insight into our human condition.