So long as Capital punishment is the law of the land, war is inevitable.
Protesting wars of choice is the right thing to do, but if we want to prevent wars, we must "end the mind-set that got us into war in the first place."
Capital punishment is the very mindset that gets us into wars, yet there seems to be little effort, even among progressives, expended towards ending capital punishment and the mindset it represents.
The death penalty is a calculation – an amoral, cold, hard, cost benefit determination. So is elective war. I cannot think of a more devastating blow to humanity than choosing war, not because it is necessary, but because those in power estimate that the benefits of said war will exceed the costs.
Preemptive, optional, elective, discretionary...however you want to describe such wars, they simply cannot be tolerated in a civilized world. War cannot be a foreign policy tool, and capital punishment cannot be a law enforcement tool, even if they achieve the intended result, which they invariably never do.
Capital punishment is a determination that the benefits of killing for cause outweigh the costs. If capital punishment is legitimate, than so are wars that justify killing for its perceived utility.
Either killing for cause is on the public policy table, or it is not. As progressives, we should be united in our opposition to any policy that provides for the killing of human beings in order to further a political or societal agenda.
The United States murder rate is triple that of Canada. Canada banned the death penalty 34 years ago. Killing people doesn't reduce crime. It doesn't make us safer, nor does discretionary war. But that is beside the point. Even if capital punishment and preemptive wars made us safer, which they clearly don't, they would still be morally wrong.
The United States is not, and cannot be a leader in human rights so long as we engage in capital punishment and war as a means to an end.
If we want to end wars, we have to end the mindset that gets us into them. If we are going to end that mindset, we should start with the relatively low hanging fruit and abolish the death penalty. Then, and only then, can we hope to take killing for cause off the proverbial table of public policy options.