There's nothing in that oath about warriors and warfighters, but there is a compelling call for all of us, as citizens, to be supporters and defenders of representative democracy, while promoting the general welfare (not warfare), and all the noble sentiments contained in that Constitution. If we're not seeking a better and more peaceful future, one in which freedom may expand and thrive, we're betraying our oath.
If so, we have met the enemy -- and he is us.
Ike told us in 1953 that constant warfare is no way of life at all, that it is (as he put it), humanity crucifying itself on a cross of iron. In 1961, he told us democracy was threatened by an emerging military-industrial complex and that we, as citizens, had to be both alert and knowledgeable enough to bring it to heel. Two years later, JFK told us that peace -- even at the height of the Cold War -- was possible, not just peace in our time, but peace for all time. However, it would, he assured us, require sacrifice, wisdom, and commitment.
How, in fact, can I improve on these words that JFK uttered in 1963, just a few months before he was assassinated?
"What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living"
I speak of peace because of the new face of war. Total war makes no sense in an age" when the deadly poisons produced by a nuclear exchange would be carried by wind and water and soil and seed to the far corners of the globe and to generations yet unborn" surely the acquisition of such idle [nuclear] stockpiles -- which can only destroy and never create -- is not the only, much less the most efficient, means of assuring peace.
I speak of peace, therefore, as the necessary rational end of rational men. I realize that the pursuit of peace is not as dramatic as the pursuit of war -- and frequently the words of the pursuer fall on deaf ears. But we have no more urgent task.
Are we ready to be urgently rational, America? Are we ready to be blessed as peacemakers? Or are we going to continue to suffer from what MLK described in 1967 as our very own "spiritual death" due to the embrace of militarism, war, empire, and racism?
Of course, MLK wasn't perfect, nor for that matter was JFK, who was far too enamored of the Green Berets and too wedded to a new strategy of "flexible response" to make a clean break in Vietnam before he was killed. Yet those men bravely and outspokenly promoted peace, something uncommonly rare in their time -- and even more so in ours.
More than 200 years ago, James Madison warned us that continual warfare is the single most corrosive force to the integrity of representative democracy. No other practice, no other societal force is more favorable to the rise of authoritarianism and the rule of tyrants than pernicious war. Wage war long and it's likely you can kiss your democracy, your rights, and just maybe your ass goodbye.
America, from visionaries and prophets like MLK, we have our marching orders. They are not to invest yet more in preparations for war, whether with China or any other country. Rather, they are to gather in the streets and otherwise raise our voices against the scourge of war. If we are ever to beat our swords into plowshares and our spears into pruning hooks and make war no more, something must be done.
Let's put an end to militarism in America. Let's be urgently rational. To cite John Lennon yet again: You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. Together, let's imagine and create a better world.
Copyright 2025 William J. Astore
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