All right, Hi, this is William Ramsey. Welcome to William Ramsey Investigates on today's show. Have a very special guest. His name is Michael D. Knox. He just published a book January twenty twenty one. The title of the book is Ending US Wars by Honoring Americans who worked for Peace. I think it's a very important book, very timely book,
considering recent events in Afghanistan. And we're going to talk about the culture that leads to all of these foreign wars and the US wars that have been going on. I think the United States has only had twenty two years of peace since its foundation, so we're going to talk about what leads to that. But doctor Knox can talk more about that. So Michael Knox, are you there.
Yes, I am. Thank you William for having me.
Yes, well, thanks for gewing to the interview. For people who may not have heard your background or this project that you have for a national monument and the US Peace Registery. Can you talk about your background and what led you to write the book Ending US Wars?
Well, I'm by training a clinical psychologist. I worked as a professor until I retired in twenty eleven, and in two thousand and five, I took my son James to Washington and we visited the National Mall and saw a lot of the National monuments, which I'd seen many times, but I was conducting a tour basically as a tour guide,
and bade me question things a little deeper. And I began to realize that I was saying war monument after war monument after war monument, and even individuals who were depicted in statuary, often they were carrying a sword or a spear, or a bow and arrow, or a pistol or some weapon. And we could find nothing on the mall or any public property that related to peace and
to the courageous Americans who have worked for peace. And so I started thinking in two thousand and five about the need for a US Peace Memorial and created the US Peace Memorial Foundation. And basically our nation began in war.
We have a long history of waging war, from the native peoples that we decimated, the American army, US army decimated, you know, to recent bombings of poor people living in underdeveloped Middle East Africa end of World War two, killing millions of people, maiming tens of millions more, disrupting disrupting and destroying education, healthcare, housing businesses. Since nineteen forty six, no other country has killed and injured more people living
outside of its borders. And I don't think many Americans realize how much of a war culture that we have. Since nine to eleven, our military and SAIA have bombed and killed and wounded people and made refugees of people in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Iraq, Somaya, Libya, Yemen, Syria, and basically as we're seeing now with the end or the supposed end of the war in Afghanistan creates tremendous numbers of refugees. All of these bombings do, and this is a crisis that the world is going to be facing
for many, many years. I personally don't think the war in Afghanistan is over. I think that it's just public relations. In reality, will continue to bomb, but we'll just fly a little bit farther. We'll fly the airplanes and the drones a little farther, just like we do did last week when we bombed Yemen and Somalia. We don't have bases there, we don't need bases there. We will continue to kill there. So with this long history and culture
of war. I started thinking about what reinforces that, basically from my background as a psychologist, and I think citizens and politicians feel compelled to honor soldiers and they feel much less likely to criticize war if they hold soldiers up as heroes. That's one reason we have all of these monuments to soldiers, even Confederate soldiers, all around the country. And it's part of the culture of war and sustaining
it and reinforcing it. So I think we need to ask ourselves, why aren't we recognizing teachers and healthcare providers and parents and parents and volunteers and farmers and salespeople and government employees, everyone who's part of the fabric of our community. But instead of doing that, you know, we often you know, in any event you attend, any place you go. I recently went to SeaWorld and Bush Gardens. They have military displays there. Even before the killer Whale demonstrations,
they had a big tribute to the military. And our schools have military recruiters in them. You sports events often they will have halftime shows dedicated to the military. And this is all part of reinforcing the culture of war, making sure that people never criticize war, because to criticize war or militarization is really to criticize our soldiers and our veterans, and nobody would ever want to do that.
So it's all patriotic too, right, So it's supposedly unpatriotic to criticize this one element of our own government. But this war culture has has shifted certainly since nine to eleven. I think it's very timely, but it shifted so much of our resources to these medalings all the way around the world, like we're really a global empire. It's it's kind of a Pax Americana, like packs Romana, but we just continue our bombing. It's not it's kind of like
a perpetual war. I've had other guests on about that. And can you talk kind of about the financial costs of these wars that are ongoing all around the world.
Well, you know, we're hearing more and more about that. In fact, last week the Pentagon budget Budget's interesting that President Biden's budget just like President Trump's budget for the military. When Congress reacted to that budget. In both cases, including the last week after the supposed end of the war in Afghanistan, the Congress of Democrats and Republicans joined together to put more money into the Pentagon, more than the
either president had asked for. I think this year it was twenty three million dollars and I mean billion dollars more than had been requested. So we're talking about trillions
of dollars. Although the military budget may be in the range of seven hundred and fifty billion, the CIA actually is responsible for about fifty percent of the drone attacks in our war and a huge unknowable budget, So I would say the cost is about a trillion dollars a year, certainly more than if you add everything else up that might be important, healthcare and dedication and everything else as an add up to what we spend on wars.
It really is incredible how much we spend on wars. I mean, and I do think Orwell was right. This work culture solidifies the social structure of any government, so you always got to keep the people poor, people poor, and I think that's really what the budget does. And I think that both parties are shamelessly involved in wasting all this money. It's really incredible how tolerant Americans really are. I guess you have to propaganize them about war on
terror to justify these gargantuan expenditures. But yeah, it's all part of it.
It is propaganda, and you don't have to look very deep. You don't even have to be very intelligent or to read much in the way of the news media to realize that things like, you know, the invasion of Iraq for weapons of mass destruction, it was clearly not a legitimate reason for invading another country. If you want to see the country with the most weapons of mass destruction in the world, in fact, more weapons than the next ten nations combined, it's the United States of America. We
have more nuclear weapons. We've used the nuclear weapons we use, and chemical weapons. We have biological weapons that were developing all the time. May remember after nine to eleven the anthrax scare, all of that anthrax was chasing traced back through DNA to the US Army.
Yeah, it was for tetri right, like the biological weapons facility. Yeah, super weaponized, you know, super weaponized the anthrax.
And in terms of Afghanistan, you don't need to be very intelligent to realize what was going on there. Sixteen or seventeen of the criminals involved in nine to eleven, we're traveling on Saudi passports. There were Saudi citizens been. Lawden's money came from Saudia Arabia. They were given basically shelter in Florida for many, many months. They were trained. The only two skills they needed to have they didn't
learn in Afghanistan, they learned in Florida. They learned how to fly an airplane into a building in Florida, and they learned how to use a cell phone, a skill which they didn't have before they arrived here, so they could communicate with each other. So obviously we weren't going to bomb Florida. And Afghanistan had absolutely nothing to do with nine to eleven.
Either did Iraq, but they certainly wanted to be Thie nine eleven two Iraq.
I mean, this is going back exactly. Yeah, And if you think about I mean, I was around during the various wars of Vietnam and Iraq, and I mean Vietnam and Cambodia and Laoist. I still to this day cannot understand the rationale for why we had to kill names of people in Asia and Southeast Asia. I just I don't understand it. And I'm afraid that now that we claim we've ended the Afghanistan war, that we will starting war with the China and or maybe North Korea again,
or Iran which hasn't invaded any other countries. China hasn't invaded any other countries. But we're determined to put the world at risk. And Biden's budget asked actually asked for another thirty billion dollars to develop new nuclear weapons. If you can imagine that, you know, I did want to talk you know about my book Ending US Wars by honoring Americans work for peace, because I think that's the
way to change our peace culture. We need to encourage your audience to go to US Peace for more about our website, look at the information about what we're doing by honoring people. We have a US Peace Registry where we document the specific work that hundreds of people and Americans and organizations have done for peace and end war. We're trying to create role models. We've got the military role models. They're in all the movies, they're in this you know, they come to the schools and impress the
young children. But we need peace role models, and so we have documented the work of hundreds of people that we honor in the US Peace Registry, which is part of my book Ending US Wars, and we give an annual US Peace Prize to a person from within within the US Peace Registry, a personal organization that's that's done the most that we feel for peace. Many of those people have military backgrounds. In fact, Veterans for Peace is one of the organizations that was awarded the US Peace Prize,
and we've done that. This is our thirteenth year of giving the US Peace Prize, and most Americans aren't even aware of that. They look to the Nobel Peace Prize. Well, we don't need to look to the Norwegian Parliament to make decisions about who's worthy of a peace prize, people like Kissinger and Obama when we have our own US Peace Prize, which is supported by the US Peace Memorial Foundation.
And so we have the US Peace Registry, the US Peace Prize, and then we're raising funds to build a national monument in Washington, DC that will help to change our culture because people will then understand that it's socially acceptable to speak out against war. They see a national monument, they see quotations from famous Americans, many US presidents and cultural icons, people like Margaret Meade and Martin Luther King Junior,
and you know Muhammad Ali. You know quotes from Einstein who said, I believe that the killing of human beings in a war is no better than common murder. There are strong statements from people that everyone will have read about, people like Helen Keller, but be shocked by their strong anti war statements, and.
You never hear that on the corporate media, so you know, never, yeah no.
And President Kennedy, who of course has many faults, but one thing that he said early in his career was that war will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the
warrior does today. So basically that that is it could be the basis for our argument here that an anti war activist, once their reputation and prestige is elevated to where it needs to be so that they are honored by our culture, that their prestige is the same as the soldier, then we can we can look for legitimate arguments where the causes of peace can be argued at the same time that the causes of war or the voices of war are being heard.
Right, and I mean it's it is remarkable. We have so many people that are Americans that have you know, made statements or done things against war, but their history of that is really kind of drowned out by so many people warmongers and things like that.
It was, and that's why this mindment, which will actually have electronically available the listings of we have currently nine hundred specific anti war behaviors people have engaged in hundreds of people. Those will all be documented at the monument, so these people, these living people, are honored, and then it will be covered with quotations from famous Americans where everyone will know the name of the Americans that be
shocked by the strong anti war quote. And that can change our culture so that people realize, well, it must be socially acceptable to speak out against war. And if we can encourage people to start honoring everyone who makes a contribution to our country, not just the soldiers, then I think we can take a big step towards questioning our military budget and questioning why we're invading country after country.
These countries have not invaded us, No country has invaded us in my lifetime, and yet we've killed millions of people around the world.
Right, and if the thing is that Americans are in a fishbole. They don't realize the opinion of our country from smaller country around the world. They don't understand that we have this fiction of Russia being a threat, but it's a non existent threat. But there are other countries who view America as the biggest bully of its era. Really, it's like there's a potential that they could get in they did. Look at Libya. Serious, you know, we've been in so many countries. Yeah, it's just incredible.
Exactly, and maybe these wars so we have to have to wonder. I mean, obviously we lost the war in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, the war in Iraq. You know, we're out of there, barely got out Afghanistan. I guess we're out of that. We're just gonna bomb from a distance. Now. Libya was another one. You know that Obama engaged in basically a shock in awe of Libya, but it wasn't even covered by the media. They bombed Tripoli, they bombed they just like bush bomb Baghdad. They bombed where the
people live, residents. They killed, killed old people and the children and them and noncombatants. These are just residential areas on military bases. The idea was to bring Libya to its to its knees or you know, with the might of the US government. And hopefully we'll never attempt something like that with Russia or or China. That will be
the end of the world. In my opinion, It'll be in America to wake up and realize and our citizens to stop electing these warmonners Republicans and Democrats who take bribes from the war industry. We politely call them campaign contributions, but they are no less than bribes to be sure that these politicians continue to funnel money into the military industrial complex.
Right, it's the original warning of Eisenhower. Right, So all that came.
Exactly exactly, but yeah, it certainly did. I hope your listeners will consider looking at the US piece for Morail Foundation and the US castore dot org, our website, consider reading my book online or however he wished to a lot of it's on the website.
Wars Ending US wars. So you have the national Monument, You've got the US Peace Registry, you've given. Can you talk about some of the people that you've honored from your group with.
Yeah, well, as there have been twelve recipients so far. Last year it was Christine On for bold activism to end the Korean War, Hewlett's wounds and promote women's rules in peace building. She's the head of a group called Women Across the DMZ and very active in getting North and South Korea normalizing relations, ending the US war there.
In twenty nineteen, it was a John Lubaraka. He's the national organizer of lack Alliance for Peace and he was given the award for bold anti war actions and writings and speeches and his leadership just providing inspiring voice against militarism. And in previous years we've had people like David Swanson, the founder one of the founders of Well Beyond War and Anne Wright who is a former Army colonel and diplomat who resigned because of the US war in the
Middle East and write Veterans for Peace. Code Pink is another recipient. That's Women for Peace. Nom Chomsky, who most people know is written for nearly six decades brilliant anti war analysis. Bradley Manning now Chelsea Manning, you know who revealed the US war crimes. Basically, I don't know. You can still see some of those videos of US war crimes online where basically we just killed civilians almost like
a game. So Chelsea video game. Yeah, yeah yeah. Congressman Former Congressman Dennis Kucinich won the award in twenty ten, introduced an awful lot of anti war legislation and try to reduce the budget. Cindy she and everyone familiar with her, won the award in two thousand and nine, became very active after her son was killed in war. So you know, it's a distinguished group of people like Medea, Benjamin and
who founded Code Pink. I'm probably missing a few names, but I apologize that Kathy Kelly exactly, who's actually put her life on the line many times in Afghanistan to keep the US military from beating up or killing Afghanian families. So you know, it's we have American heroes. And when
I started this, I'm a university professor. I started asking my students, can you think of any anti war hero, American anti war hero, and you know, just silence, And someone said Gandhi and I said, well, he's from India. So if you press them hard, they will remember that. Martin Luther King Junior did speak out against the Vietnam War,
but they don't know other names. So our mission is to elevate these people like Muhammad Ali who said, no, I'm not going ten thousand miles to help murder, kill and burn other people to simply help continue the domination of white slave masters over dark people. He said that when he evaded the draft or refused to be drafted,
so showed tremendous courage. So we've got we have lots of people that we honor and we want to elevate their names and their prestige so we can show, especially young people, that there are role models out there for opposing one or more wars. And I have to say we're not you know, we're not necessarily against all wars. We have many people that we've honored who have fought
in wars. Tulsa Gabbert is an example something. She was nominated for the US Peace Prize last year when she was a member of Congress and also a major in the military. So, you know, it doesn't matter if if you're pacifist or not. What matters is that you have the courage to speak out against any war, any bombing of people that doesn't make sense to you, and demand accountability.
Right, A lot of the people who are anti war activists who want to end the war were in some of these wars. They become the most anti activists out there, right, M.
Yeah, exactly. And so I just hope that people will take a look at uscasemorl dot org and consider joining us as founding members. We're not going really public with the national media until we have a thousand members representing all fifty states. And we list all of our members that are well about four hundred and fifty right now from forty six states plus Washington, d C, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands. So you know, we're what we need another you know, or five hundred more to
get to the thousand. But we wanted to have a thousand founding members representing all fifty states before we really went public to the mainstream media. Uh. And that's you know, that's something that we have to build. We have. Raising funds for a national monument is very expensive and you.
Are I mean, you're expecting to spend a significant amount of money and you're also a nonprofit, right, so it's a five it's.
A five O one C three not for profit, Yes, and we have. We have many, many donors. We counted them in our annual report and on our website. Many people have had their their distributions from the IRIS sent directly to US, so they don't have to pay taxes, taxes that contribute to more funding for the military. Uh. And you know there are many ways that you can contribute. Also have a volunteer program that you can read about on our website.
And what can you describe for the audience what the National Peace Registry is?
Yes, well, the usp US. The US Peace Registry documents the work of hundreds of Americans and US organizations that have worked up four piece and against war. So we have people, we have documented what exactly they've done and behaviorally specific terms like they founded an organization, they chain themselves to the White House fence demanding an end of the war in Afghanistan. You know, they wrote a letter to the editor of their local newspaper or an a
pad article. And we have links in the US Peace Registry and on our website where you can see the US Peace Registry a links so that you can read an article someone wrote see ev interview that they gave an opposition to war, or see a piece of legislation. We have several members of Congress former members of Congress who introduced legislation. So they are about nine hundred specific
behaviors that we that we have documented. Many of them have hot links, so you can actually go and look at what the person did and and hopefully be inspired from them and get some ideas of what you might do if you oppose war. You might not want to do civil disobedience, but you might want to write a r editor or a letter to your member of Congress. You might want to join anti war organizations, become a founding member of the US Piece for Moral Foundation. There's
lots of things you can do. There are people that will hold a sign like in the war in Afghanistan or which I think will be continuing, you know, on a bridge over an interstate, they'll hold a big sign up. Don't don't you know China is not our enemy. Is one I've seen recently, China is not our enemy. You know, to probably convince people these are things that usually you won't you have trouble with the police for doing. And uh, you know, we'll show public support, hold holding signs on
the street corner. We have yard signs, that people put in the yard saying and the wars. So anyway, there are hundreds of examples here and hundreds of people in organizations. Uh, we're trying to connect people and and hold them up as role models so that people will see that there are things they can do. And there really are national
heroes that have opposed war. And you know, we even describe what some of the consequences of their opposition have been so people understand what those might be right.
And and so you have those lists in there is where's the best place for people to get this book, Ending US Wars?
Well, I don't want to say Amazon is the best, but if you go if you go to Amazon and look at Ending US Wars by honoring Americans who work for peace, you will be able to read the first forty pages for free where it says look inside. So but Barnes and Noble has it, and if you go to our home page, you can click on the picture of the book and it will give you I think Powell's Bookstore. They're about seven or eight different bookstores that
care nationwide books a million. There are all kinds of opportunities to order the book and it's available on hardcover which is a really nice looking beautiful book, softcover and nintendall or epub, so if you get it any format you want.
And you have in the best website to check out the Peace Memorial is ww DW US Peace Memorial dot org. Is that correct?
That's correct? And no periods on the US just uspiacefmoril dot org. Correct.
And where's the best way to contact you or reach out to you have social media or is it the website?
Well, you know, I don't mind emails. My email address is knox k n o X at uspace Memorial dot org. That's the same as a website, noos at uspacemmorial dot org. But we also have that you can see on our homepage. We have Twitter accounts, we have you know, Instagram, we have Facebook, and there's a YouTube account. You can see all kinds of stuff, including presentations of the US Peace
Prize or were held before large audiences different venues. So yeah, so there's access to the US Peace Prize, all that information to the US Peace Registry, to quotations, they're on our website too. The quotations that we're proposing to our founding members that be considered to be on the monument once it's built. We have of course a donate button and lots of information about the book and about us and our board of directors and how the idea initially developed.
And you can read the introduction to the book there too.
Right and again the title of the book is ending US Wars by honoring Americans who work for Peace, by Michael d NOTx PhD. Thank you so much for your time, Mike, thank you very much.
William I really appreciate the opportunity, my pleasure.
All right, stay there,