United States, a revitalization greatly improved by Senator Jim Webb’s excellent rebuttal to the Presidents SOTU, confirms by avoidance the essential dedication of the United States and the world’s major economic powers, that is to war as a pillar of international policy, and for the United States and Europe, the fulcrum of their respective and collective economies.

The belief that war is essential to the national and international purposes of the United States was begotten in the 20th century and repeatedly confirmed by each succeeding president, congress and the corporately controlled media entities that determine the national dialogue. As a belief it is a lie and as a practice nothing more than institutionalizing violence and desecrating humanity’s true purpose, the protection of the Earth and the furtherance of life.

This degradation is promoted because it is vastly profitable to the corporate state. The U.S. has been in the grips of a permanent war economy since WWII, a devotion to war that has enriched the elite and destroyed US prominence in manufacturing and non-military technology. Because of the enormous profitability to corporate giants like GE (who owns and controls NBC), Raytheon, McDonald Douglas, Bechtel and their corporate functionaries in the White House and Congress, our national infrastructure has been hollowed out while we finance the weapons of war that are destroying Iraq as well as furthering an international arms trade in which the US is the largest weapons dealer both legally and covertly to every violent conflict on the face of the Earth.

This economic is the immoral underpinning of the Bush and all recent presidencies and the reality behind the patriotic contrivances of our supposed national debate. Controlling the dialogue is vital to the corporate, financial and political interests of the elite as can easily be seen in the non-reporting of the recent January 27 massive citizen march in our nation’s capital against the war in Iraq which did not even appear on the front page of the NYT, and was in most major US news outlets spun into a story about Jane Fonda, with a regurgitation of the myths about her that have been used to erase the memory of our nation’s rightful guilt and discarded obligations for the war against Vietnam. However, it’s not to this cauldron of misinformation that I’m writing, but to a new direction, an evolution in the collective consciousness of which we are each a part.

War serves no purpose. It is not an answer to any problem. By this I do not detract from the sovereign right of each individual and nation to defend itself, one's self or family or national boundaries. However, war as a practice is a regressive function and belongs on the dust heap of human error along with slavery, torture, the oppression of women, the abuse of children and the destruction of our environment.

The supposed voices of reason will howl their cynical critique at such a position, assuming that anyone who disavows war is naïve beyond rationality and lacking in credible opinion - the same ignorant abuse that opposed Galileo, the Declaration of Independence, Gandhi and Martin Luther King, and in fact every significant step forward in human evolution.

We can forward the evolution of human consciousness and we begin that movement individually. We can deny the validity of war and peace as it’s opposite. Peace and intelligent discourse are not the opposite of war but the birthright of humanity and the right expression of our individual and collective needs.

We can relinquish the fruitless debate on the history of war (remember “victors” write the history) and establish how we want to continue as a human race. We can make a vow that war is no longer an alternative and begin the dialogue required to evolve as a species.

War and violence are not the dualistic opposites of peace and prosperity; they are aberrant functions of a regressive and narcissistic psychology that are no longer worthy of our support or effort. We can beat our swords into the ploughshares of understanding and compassion, and we can begin that process today.

Here are some prominent ways in which peaceful and progressive initiatives being implemented right now: SEVA Foundation, Center for Biological Diversity, The Carter Center, Mercy Corps, The One Foundation, Amnesty International, Global Dialogue Center, Desmond Tutu Peace Foundation, The Campaign for Love and Forgiveness