Experts, activists speak against U.S. military intervention

On the 12th anniversary of the start of the Iraqi War, a group of U.S. veterans and experts gathered in Washington Friday to urge an end to a military-first approach in U.S. foreign policy.

"We've reached a point in this country that our foreign policy for decades has been based on a military-first approach," said Matthew Hoh, a former State Department official and now a senior fellow at the Center For International Policy.

"If you look at the list of nations we have intervened in, you'll see there has been no stability," said Hoh, citing Libya, Iraq, Yemen and Afghanistan as examples where U.S. military intervention has resulted in chaos.

Right after former U.S. President George W. Bush told the world that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction and would not shy away from using them against America and its allies, U.S. Vietnam veteran Barry Ladendorf betted 100 U.S. dollars with his friends that no trace of such weapons would be found.

It turned out that he was right.

"Since the end of World War II, the United States has been involved in the invasion or the overthrow and the attempted overthrow of over 50 nations. We've attempted assassination of over 30 leaders of countries. We've bombed over 30 nations," Ladendorf, national board president of a nonprofit organization called Veterans For Peace, told Xinhua.

"Are we any safer today because of it? There has to be another solution," said Ladendorf, stressing that his organization has been dedicated to finding nonviolent means to end conflicts and informing the public about the risks of U.S. active engagement in conflicts across the world.

One important aspect of U.S. engagement in world conflicts is arms export, as the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) found recently that the United States continued to take a firm lead as the major arms exporter globally.

According to a SIPRI report released on Monday, the volume of U.S. exports of major weapons rose by 23 percent between the 2005-2009 period and the 2010-2014 period, with the country's share of international arms exports reaching 31 percent in the 2010-2014 period.

"We send more arms to other countries than any other nations in the world," said Ladendorf, warning that a number of those weapons ended up in the hands of militants who are fighting against the United States.

According to a report by The Washington Post, the Pentagon has lost track of more than 500 million dollars in U.S. military aid given to Yemen, a predominant power base for al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, which claimed responsibility for the deadly attacks on French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in January.

Fears were raised that large amounts of weaponry, aircraft and other military equipment may have already been snatched by extremist militants, said Pentagon officials.

Meanwhile, Professor Marjorie Cohn from Thomas Jefferson School of Law told Xinhua that the UN Charter explicitly forbids countries to use military force except in self-defense or with Security Council approval.

"Yet the United States has mounted a long history of armed interventions," said Cohn. "Unfortunately throughout U.S. history, the United States governments and military see military force as a first resort rather than a last resort."

The UN Security Council refused to endorse the 2003 Iraqi War and in an interview with the BBC in September 2004, then UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said the invasion was illegal. Endi