Tuesday, November 11, 2003

Honoring the Veterans of Nonviolence

“Eleven thousand dollars — eleven thousand dollars — eleven thousand dollars — eleven thousand dollars.”
— Colman McCarthy, referring to how much the U.S. government spends on its military every second

Newspaperman Colman McCarthy’s columns appeared on the Washington Post’s op-ed pages for nearly 30 years. In 1997, the newspaper stopped publishing his column as part of its strategy to further shrink the boundaries of acceptable political discourse in official Washington. Today, none of the Post’s stable of regular columnists is opposed to an interventionist U.S. foreign policy.

The foreign policy discussions on the pages of the Post’s op-ed section all occur within the framework of the United States being entitled to maintain an aggressive global military posture. Among the Post’s regular writers, diversity of opinion regarding U.S. military intervention around the world is manifested only in nuance, not by any discernable policy or structural differences in outlook.

Since leaving the Post, McCarthy has had even more time to devote to his Washington-based nonprofit Center for Teaching Peace. He teaches regular classes in peace studies at two public high schools and three universities in the Washington area.

On this Veteran’s Day, Press Action honors McCarthy and all the other advocates for nonviolent conflict resolution, past and present.

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