Is it a coincidence that a governor that set a record for executions started two wars after becoming president?
What is war, if not a death sentence for those that our leaders deem deserving?
The first step towards preventing war is taking killing for cause (the extermination of human beings not to protect society or sovereignty, but because some individual or group ostensibly deserves it) off the proverbial table of public policy options.
War should be a last resort, and it should be an option only when the very sovereignty of our nation is threatened by a foreign enemy. But we have decided, as a society, or at least as governing bodies, that it is appropriate to kill other human beings simply because we think they earned that fate.
Hypocritically, Americans tend to look upon executions and military aggression in other countries as unjustified or barbaric, because we cling to the sanctimonious belief that their reasons for killing people they think deserve to die aren't as righteous as ours.
Capital punishment must be opposed in all instances. No exceptions. Invariably a commenter will ask "what about this case or that case?". No! Exceptions represent the very paradigm that needs to be changed.
Coretta Scott King put it this way:
As one whose husband and mother-in-law have died the victims of murder assassination, I stand firmly and unequivocally opposed to the death penalty for those convicted of capital offenses. An evil deed is not redeemed by an evil deed of retaliation. Justice is never advanced in the taking of a human life. Morality is never upheld by a legalized murder.
Congressman Dennis Kucinich recently commented:
Violence in a microcosm leads to violence in a macrocosm.
To prevent war, we need to end the mindset that gets us into wars. The mindset behind capital punishment and elective wars are one and the same. That is why anti-war advocates, libertarians and progressives alike, need to fight the death penalty with everything they've got.