Ending War, Building Peace

The US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq led to more than a million people being killed, displaced five million from their homes and shattered countless more lives.

It was a colossal, premeditated war crime. Leaders of governments in the countries responsible for this enormity seek to minimise and forget about it: to ‘move on’. We must not let them, because they want to retain the option of making the same political decisions, condemning more innocent people to death, somewhere else in the future. Contributors to this book are united in saying: never again. They examine how and why this unmitigated disaster for humanity was allowed to happen, and how we can prevent it being repeated. And they imagine more peaceful ways to engage with conflicts and crises in times to come.

It raises a question: what will you do to help end war and build peace?

Leah Chan is the civil affairs officer at the United Nations Mission in the Republic of South Sudan.

Lynda-ann Blanchard is an honorary associate at the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Sydney.

Foreword: ending war, building peace
Lynda-ann Blanchard and Leah Chan
Contributors
Introduction: thinking war, crafting peace – a future for Iraq and civil liberties in Australia
Stuart Rees

Part 1: the fascination with violence
1. The venerated and unexamined violence in everyday life
 Michael McKinley
2. Iraq, six years on: the human consequences of a dirty war
 Richard Hil
3. The human and environmental costs of the Iraq and other wars
 Sue Wareham
4. Spectacles of honour: barbarism within civilised reactions to public killings
 Sandra Phelps
5. The US invasion and occupation of Iraq and the implications for the Middle East: instability and the unravelling of US hegemony
 Noah Bassil

Part 2: nonviolent alternatives
6. Between Iraq and a hard place
 Michael Otterman
7. Coalition of the unwilling: the phenomenology and political economy of US militarism
 Jake Lynch
8. Disarmament, demobilisation and rehabilitation: the pacifist dilemma
 Isezaki Kenji
9. The campaign against US military bases in Australia
 Hannah Middleton
10. The road to Fallujah
 Donna Mulhearn
11. The floating peace village: an experiment in nonviolence
 Yoshioka Tatsuya

Afterword: learning and doing – the genesis of CPACS
Mary Lane
Index

‘It is impossible to read [this book] … without being struck by the futility of war generally and, in the case of Iraq, the failure of the international community properly to consider non-violent alternatives to conflict.’
Nicole Abadee   Sydney Morning Herald

Format: paperback
Size: 210 × 148 × 11 mm
212 pages
9 colour illustrations
Copyright: © 2009
ISBN: 9781920899431
Publication: 11 Jan 2010