CHICAGO - Congress is debating a possible military strike against the regime in Syria. Supporters say we have no choice but to punish Syria for a chemical attack on its own people. Some oppose the action because they are afraid it will draw the U.S. into another costly war, like Iraq. Secretary of State John Kerry says it would only be a limited strike.

U.S. destroyers are positioned in the Mediterranean, loaded with Tomahawk missiles, the same type used in a limited strike on Libya in 2011. Mattea Kramer, director of research for the National Priorities Project, has crunched the numbers, and she said each one of those missiles costs American taxpayers $1.5 million, and the military used a lot of them.

"In the first hour of our strike on Libya, we launched 110 of those missiles," she declared.

The total bill for the action in Libya, Kramer said, turned out to be more than $1 billion, and there is no way of predicting how much military intervention in Syria would cost. But she pointed out that the George W. Bush administration had predicted that intervening in Iraq would cost no more than $60 billion. Ten years later the bill is up to $814 billion.

Faith communities in Chicago and around the state prayed for peace over the weekend and some plan candlelight vigils for tonight.

According to Mary Zerkel, coordinator of the Wage Peace campaign at the American Friends Service Committee in Chicago, her organization has had people in the region for a very long time and they understand that Syria's problems are complicated. She said it's not just about two choices, to bomb or not to bomb.

"There are more than two options," she declared. "We have to look at a cease-fire, the comprehensive arms embargo, the humanitarian assistance on the ground."

President Obama has told reporters that he is aware of American opposition to a military strike. But he says Congress needs to make a decision that is right for the country.

Professor Marjorie Cohn at the Thomas Jefferson School of Law said that even if Congress approves the strike, it would be illegal under international law, because the United States has not met the two conditions that the United Nations Charter requires for such action.

It would be legal "either if it's acting in self-defense or the Security Council approves it. The Security Council has not approved this military strike."

When President Obama makes his case to the American people, he may have a tough time convincing them. The AFSC is opposed to military intervention. So is the Pope and so are nearly 60 percent of the Americans who were polled last week.

More information is at: goo.gl/2cZf3J; NationalPriorities.org; and at goo.gl/lnbVDR.




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BOSTON -- With a United Nations treaty banning nuclear weapons now in place, Massachusetts advocates for peace, including Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., are laying out their hopes for the future of nuclear-weapons policy.

Not a single nation with nuclear weapons ratified the international agreement, although more than 50 non-nuclear states did.

Markey said nuclear powers such as the U.S. are unlikely to surrender their arsenals and join the treaty any time soon.

"But even if we can see that nuclear weapons will not disappear overnight, we can at least work on measures that ensure that Hiroshima and Nagasaki will never be repeated," Markey urged.

Markey stated he plans to reintroduce a bill in the Senate that would require a congressional declaration of war before the president can authorize a nuclear-weapons launch, as well as urging President Joe Biden and the Senate to make cuts to defense spending on nuclear-weapons.

He added he wants any savings redirected to efforts to vaccinate every American against COVID-19.

Rev. Dr. William Barber, co-chair of the Poor People's Campaign, said our current military budget of $800 billion dwarfs the roughly $200 billion allocated for education, jobs and housing combined.

He noted it's more than the military budgets of China, Russia, North Korea, Iran and Iraq combined.

"The pandemic exposed the fissures of poverty, racism and how bad our public-health systems really are," Barber asserted. "Federal funding for emergency preparedness and health care has been on the decline for 15 years, while the military budget keeps going up, up, up, up."

Barber also pointed to research that found $1 billion in military spending creates roughly 11,200 jobs, while the same amount of money would create 26,000 jobs if it were invested in education, 16,000 jobs if it were put into clean energy, and 17,000 jobs in health care.


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BOSTON -- Seventy-five years ago this Saturday, Imperial Japan announced its surrender, ending World War II.

Now, an American survivor of Iwo Jima is speaking out on the lessons to be learned, then and now.

Retired Navy Lieutenant (J.G.) Robert Pennoyer, 95, was just 19 when his unit helped occupy Japan's northern island of Hokkaido. He said it is a tribute to the Japanese culture that they were able to accept General Douglas MacArthur's help and transition to a democracy.

"They were able to change and become a peace-loving nation, and that was really a remarkable change," Pennoyer said. "But getting control of the military, getting rid of the military, not letting the military dominate their foreign policy, that was the key."

Pennoyer said he was amazed at how well the Japanese people treated American soldiers after the war.

A grandson of J.P. Morgan, he went on to become assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York under President Dwight Eisenhower and served on the boards at Columbia University and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Pennoyer said although we had no choice in World War II, the U.S. has become too quick in recent decades to use military force to impose our will on other countries.

"The trouble is not the military but the civilian leadership in the White House who, because of the hubris about our power, misuse it and abuse it and take us into unjust wars like the Iraq War and Vietnam," Pennoyer said.

Pennoyer counseled greater use of diplomacy and said we should spend much less money on the military and much more on foreign aid and domestic concerns such as education.


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WOLFEBORO, N.H. -- At a weekend campaign event in Wolfeboro, Democratic Party presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg said President Donald Trump's mention of having Iranian targets already picked out probably won't prevent military conflict.

On Saturday, Trump noted on Twitter that the United States has targeted "52 Iranian sites" that could be hit if Iran strikes Americans or American assets in response to the killing of Qasem Soleimani, a top Iranian general, in a U.S. airstrike.

Buttigieg, who served as a military intelligence officer in Afghanistan, had some strong words about Trump's latest tweet.

"In a culture of martyrdom, it seems unlikely that that's much of a deterrent," he said. "We've got to be smart. We've got to understand what we're up against. And we've got to think through not just the immediate, but the second and third-order effects of anything that the United States does."

Buttigieg said Middle East tensions could easily reach a point that the U.S. can't control. He said he's concerned about what he terms a "low level of confidence in the strategic thinking of the current White House," and thinks Congress needs to be consulted before actions of war. He did not comment on whether he agrees with the decision to kill Soleimani.

Buttigieg also shared some insights from a year on the campaign trail in New Hampshire. He said the voters he's meeting in this early primary state take their responsibility seriously and inspire him not to pursue politics as usual.

"I'm getting deep, searching questions about America's role in the world, about how to unify a divided country, about how to make sure that we're able to open up a new era that's going to be better than the last one," he said. "Not just how to beat this president, but replace him with something that's going to lead this nation in the right direction.

"It's a very serious, very healthy conversation," he added. "I've been really honored to be part of it."

Buttigieg said he supports nonpartisan redistricting, as well as getting rid of the Electoral College.

While opinion polls show Buttigieg narrowly leading the Democratic primary race in New Hampshire, he has fallen behind in national polls. The New Hampshire primary is Feb. 11.


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