Limiting all future expenditures in Iraq to $150 billion, tops, can in no way harm our troops in the field. It responsibly carries out the will of the American people: that the president, with professional military advice, should be unwinding this war and planning a prudent departure for friendlier nearby countries or home.

“Fanaticism,” George Santayana famously observed, “consists of redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim.” There is nothing which sobers the mind more than a fixed budget.

Bruce Ackerman and David Wu | The American Prospect

The legislation, which I am co-sponsoring, would fund, support and coordinate programs already in existence — in schools, prisons, police departments, educational institutions, charitable organizations and elsewhere — that are proven to reduce domestic and international violence and enhance the security and health of all Americans.

I believe a Department of Peace represents the ideals on which this country was founded. Our legislation, HR 808, embodies the dreams and aspirations of Americans to live in a nation that uses its great strength to support the cooperative efforts of people throughout the world to create peace.

In my years as a congressman and as a physician in the U.S. military, I have recognized repeatedly that the interests of the one cannot triumph over the interests of the many; that the security concerns of the United States are best served by diplomacy and cooperation rather than brute force.

A Department of Peace won’t be just another top-heavy bureaucratic organization. Much like the Environmental Protection Agency, it will provide a uniting framework for existing organizations scattered throughout the U.S. currently working to bring peace to our communities and the world.

The department will research, propose and facilitate practical, field-tested solutions to reduce conflict, providing financial and institutional heft to our current ineffectual efforts to deal with all forms of domestic and international violence and discord. And it will help develop curricula to educate students in grades K-12 on how to resolve conflict peacefully.

US Rep. Jim McDermott | Seattle Times 

The reason our mission in Iraq has proven to be so disastrous and corrupt is very simple — the advocates and architects of that war are completely corrupt, inept, and deceitful. Recognizing this fact and ceasing to accord people like this with respect and credibility is infinitely more important than any specific debates over particular policy or strategic questions. Everywhere Joe Lieberman goes, he should be asked by journalists why anyone should listen to anything he says, or believe anything he says, in light of his history of deceitful statements and tragically wrong assertions, beginning with his 2005 Op-Ed which today he completely repudiates while pretending he never said any of it.

These are people who are completely bereft of judgment and integrity, and their behavior has wreaked incalculable and arguably unprecedented damage on our country. Holding them accountable, and recognizing them for what they are, is critical not only for cleansing our deeply poisoned political system, but also for averting identical, or worse, tragedies in the very near future.

Glenn Greenwald | Salon

All U.S. presidents since George Washington have, to one degree or another, believed in a form of nationalism that ascribes to the nation superior qualities, universal values, global interests, unique responsibilities and a special dispensation to use its unparalleled and unprecedented might on behalf of what its leaders deem to be right.

But Bush adhered, and still adheres, to an uncompromising and extreme variant of exceptionalism. It posits, explicitly, that the United States is strong enough, both in hard and soft power, to make one set of rules for itself and a different set for everyone else.

Strobe Talbott | International Herald Tribune 

One of the hallmarks of the Bush presidency — arguably the central one — is that we have adopted the mentality and mimicked the behavior of “our enemies,” including those whom we have long considered, rightfully so, to be savage and uncivilized. As a result, our foreign policy consists of little more than flamboyant demonstrations of our own “toughness” because that, so the thinking goes, is the only language which “our enemies” understand, and we must speak “their language” (hence, we stay in Iraq not because it makes geopolitical sense, but because we have to prove to Al Qaeda that they cannot “break our will”).

Thus, any measure designed to avert war — negotiations, diplomacy, compromise, an acceptance of the fact that we need not force every country to submit to our national Will — are scornfully dismissed as “weakness,” which, in turn, is “provocative.” Conversely, war-seeking policies are always desirable because they show how tough and strong we are.

President Ahmadinejad’s comments yesterday summed up the mentality which drives the Bush administration perfectly, precisely because he shares the same mentality: “If we show weakness in front of the enemy, the expectations will increase, but if we stand against them, because of this resistance, they will retreat.” This is, in essence, the Neoconservative Anthem. It mistakes mindless chest-beating belligerence, panic and hysteria for strength and resolve, even though such behavior is really the ultimate hallmark of deep-seated weakness and fear.

Glenn Greenwald | salon

Even if he’s not lying this time, President Bush’s outrage over Iran’s Quds Force supplying armor-piercing weapons to Iraq’s “insurgents” rings hollow coming from the world’s Number One Merchant of Death.

If it’s an act of war for the Iranians to help the Iraqis against us, why is it not an act of war for Bush to peddle arms to every Tom, Dictator, and Harry to slaughter their enemies? After all, Bush is selling record numbers of attack helicopters, guided missiles, warplanes and small arms to firebrands and crackpots everywhere.

In 2005, the US peddled nearly half of all weapons sold to militaries in the developing world, “as major arms sales to the most unstable regions - many already engaged in conflict - grew to the highest level in eight years,” the Boston Globe reported last November 13th. The US sold $8.1 billion worth of weapons - 46 percent of all - with Russia a poor second at 15 percent, and UK at 13 percent.

Sherwood Ross | t r u t h o u t 

And yet, as the situation continues to deteriorate both for Iraqis inside and outside of Iraq, and for Americans inside Iraq, Americans in America are still debating on the state of the war and occupation- are they winning or losing? Is it better or worse.

Let me clear it up for any moron with lingering doubts: It’s worse. It’s over. You lost. You lost the day your tanks rolled into Baghdad to the cheers of your imported, American-trained monkeys. You lost every single family whose home your soldiers violated. You lost every sane, red-blooded Iraqi when the Abu Ghraib pictures came out and verified your atrocities behind prison walls as well as the ones we see in our streets. You lost when you brought murderers, looters, gangsters and militia heads to power and hailed them as Iraq’s first democratic government. You lost when a gruesome execution was dubbed your biggest accomplishment. You lost the respect and reputation you once had. You lost more than 3000 troops. That is what you lost America. I hope the oil, at least, made it worthwhile.

Riverbend | Baghdad Burning