Molly Sinclair McCartney Remarks from 1/5/17 Committee for the Republic

I am Molly Sinclair McCartney, a former Washington Post journalist and the co-author with James McCartney of a book that documents the expansion of the military-industrial complex and our ongoing wars in the Middle East.
 
The  book – America’s War Machine: Vested Interests, Endless Conflicts -- is based on the lifetime work of James McCartney, my husband, who spent his career writing about national security issues.  Jim McCartney learned about war as a teenage soldier on the front lines in France and Germany in World War II. His sense of outrage about presidential wars since then hit new highs in 2003 when President George W. Bush sent the military to invade Iraq. Friends urged Jim to write a book explaining how this could have happened, and that is what he was working on when he died in 2011.
 
I did the reporting, interviews and research to complete his draft manuscript and get it published because I believed in the same ideas.
 
After the book came out in October 2015, I reached out to people who might feel as passionately about these issues as Jim and I did.  A friend at the Cato Institute referred me to John Henry, and I was fortunate to be invited to speak at the Committee’s salon in April last year. Now I am pleased to be joining the committee’s board and supporting this initiative to end presidential wars.
 
Finally a short personal comment about men and women and war. My older brother was drafted and sent to Korea at the height of that war.  My younger brother was drafted and sent to Vietnam where his tank hit a landmine and killed everyone inside. My brother survived because he was riding in the open top and blown out by the blast.  Needless to say my mother was anti-war for as long as I can remember.
 
My point is that women have as much to lose as men in these never-ending wars.  
Our Presidents – all men from the beginning of the Republic  – have repeatedly used the military to manage American foreign policy. Congress has gone along with this system. It’s time to stop this and women can help. One step in that direction is for all of us to support the Committee’s No-Presidential War Pledge