To Make War, Presidents Lie

When American presidents prepare for foreign wars, they lie. Surveying our history, we see a clear pattern. Since the end of the nineteenth century, if not earlier, presidents have misled the public about their motives and their intentions in going to war. The enormous losses of life, property, and liberty that Americans have sustained in wars have occurred in large part because of the public's unwarranted trust in what their leaders told them before leading them into war.

In 1898, President William McKinley, having been goaded by muscle-flexing advisers and jingoistic journalists to make war on Spain, sought divine guidance as to how he should deal with the Spanish possessions, especially the Philippines, that US forces had seized in what ambassador John Hay famously described as a "splendid little war."

Evidently, his prayer was answered, because the president later reported that he had heard "the voice of God," and "there was nothing left for us to do but take them all and educate the Filipinos, and uplift and Christianize them."

In truth, McKinley's motivations had little if anything to do with uplifting the people whom William H. Taft, the first Governor-General of the Philippines, called "our little brown brothers," but much to do with the political and commercial ambitions of influential expansionists such as Captain Alfred T. Mahan, Theodore Roosevelt, Henry Cabot Lodge, and their ilk. In short, the official apology for the brutal and unnecessary Philippine-American War was a mendacious gloss.

The Catholic Filipinos evidently did not yearn to be "Christianized" in the American style, at the point of a Springfield rifle, and they resisted the US imperialists as they had previously resisted the Spanish imperialists. The Philippine-American War, which officially ended on July 4, 1902, but actually dragged on for many years in some islands, cost the lives of more than 4,000 US troops, more than 20,000 Filipino fighters, and more than 220,000 Filipino civilians, many of whom perished in concentration camps eerily similar to the relocation camps into which US forces herded Vietnamese peasants some sixty years later.

When World War I began in 1914, President Woodrow Wilson's sympathies clearly lay with the British. Nevertheless, he quickly proclaimed US neutrality and urged his fellow Americans to be impartial in both thought and deed. Wilson himself, however, leaned more and more toward the Allied side as the war proceeded. Still, he recognized that the great majority of Americans wanted no part of the fighting in Europe, and in 1916 he sought reelection successfully on the appealing slogan, "He Kept Us Out of War."

Soon after his second inauguration, however, he asked Congress for a declaration of war, which was approved, although six senators and fifty members of the House of Representatives had the wit or wisdom to vote against it. Wilson promised this war would be "the war to end all wars," but wars aplenty have taken place since the guns fell silent in 1918, leaving their unprecedented carnage -- nearly nine million dead and more than twenty million wounded, many of them hideously disfigured or crippled for life, as well as perhaps ten million civilians who died of starvation or disease as a result of the war's destruction of resources and its interruption of commerce.

And what did the United States or the world gain? Only a twenty-year reprieve before the war's smoldering embers burst into flame again.

After World War I, Americans felt betrayed, and they resolved never to make the same mistake again. Yet, just two decades later, President Franklin D. Roosevelt began the maneuvers by which he hoped to plunge the nation once again into the European cauldron. Unsuccessful in his naval provocations of the Germans in the Atlantic, he eventually pushed the Japanese to the wall by a series of hostile economic-warfare measures, issued clearly unacceptable ultimatums, and induced them to mount a desperate military attack, most devastatingly on the US forces he concentrated at Pearl Harbor.

Campaigning for reelection in Boston on October 30, 1940, FDR had sworn: "I have said this before, but I shall say it again and again: Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars." Well, Peleliu ain't Peoria. Roosevelt was lying when he made his declaration, just as he had lied repeatedly before and would lie repeatedly for the remainder of his life. (Stanford historian David M. Kennedy, careful not to speak too stridently, refers to FDR's "frequently cagey misrepresentations to the American public.")

Yet many, many Americans trusted this inveterate liar, sad to say, with their lives, and during the war more than 400,000 of them paid the ultimate price.

Among FDR's many political acolytes was a young congressman, Lyndon Baines Johnson, who eventually and, for the world, unfortunately, clawed his way to the presidency. As chief executive, he had to deal with vital questions of war and peace, and like his beloved mentor, he relied heavily on lying to the public. In October 1964, seeking to gain election by portraying himself as the peace candidate (in contrast to the alleged mad bomber Barry Goldwater), LBJ told a crowd at Akron University: "We are not about to send American boys 9 or 10,000 miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves."

In 1965, however, shortly after the start of his elected term in office, Johnson exploited the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, itself based on a fictitious account of an attack on US naval forces off Vietnam, and initiated a huge buildup of US forces in Southeast Asia that would eventually commit more than 500,000 American "boys" to fight an "Asian boy's" war.

Some 58,000 US military personnel would lose their lives in the service of LBJ's vanity and political ambitions, not to speak of the millions of Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians killed and wounded in the melee. Chalk up another catastrophe to a lying American president.

Now President George W. Bush is telling the American people that we stand in mortal peril of imminent attack by Iraqis or their agents armed with weapons of mass destruction. Having presented no credible evidence or compelling argument for his characterization of the alleged threat, he simply invites us to trust him, and therefore to support him as he undertakes what once would have been called naked aggression.

Well, David Hume long ago argued that just because every swan we've seen was white, we cannot be certain that no black swan exists. So Bush may be telling the truth. In the light of history, however, we would be making a long-odds bet to believe him.

What is the timeline for your series of events? Did Pearl Harbor occur first?

Yes, but in some cases it was only a matter of hours.

Had Pearl Harbor not occured but been prevented, perhaps the other events would have been averted as well.

Hypothesis contrary to fact--the Japanese plans were going to go forward no matter what the outcome of the Hawaii Operation was. (Most Americans forget that Pearl Harbor was not the principle Japanese operation at the outset of the war--grabbing the East Indies and its oil was the decisive operation that dictated all else. Right up to the moment of its success, a sizable chunk of the Combined Fleet's flag staff thought the Hawaii Operation to be a waste of scarce carrier assets on a long-shot gamble, an attitude also held at Imperial General Headquarters.)

What we do KNOW is that Pearl Harbor did NOT have to happen. But, FDR and his cronies made sure that it would.

Actually, we don't, unless you're talking to doctrinaire FDR-hating cranks, who were in turn passed BS by some retired Navy brass in the early postwar era looking to cover up the Navy's dirty linen. The arguments advanced by these folks have only one teensy-weensy problem--they assume that the Department of the Navy's intelligence organs were working at peak efficiency. The facts on record make it very clear that (a) War Plans (RADM turner) was basically running his own intelligence shop (which was NOT his division's job) and actively interfering with all other intel efforts (including those conducted by the people who really DID have the intel job), (b) the Wegener brothers over in Navy Communications were cheerfully interfering with cryptographic and signals intelligence work work (this continued on well into the war), and (c) Admiral Stark did nothing to put an end to these shenanigans. In short, the Navy's intelligence gathering and analysis was broken by intramural feuding and empire-building.

H.R.4205
National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2001 (Engrossed Amendment as Agreed to by Senate)
SEC. 576. SENIOR OFFICERS IN COMMAND IN HAWAII ON DECEMBER 7, 1941.

(a) FINDINGS- Congress makes the following findings:

(1) Rear Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, formerly the Commander in Chief of the United States Fleet and the Commander in Chief, United States Pacific Fleet, had an excellent and unassailable record throughout his career in the United States Navy prior to the December 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor.

(2) Major General Walter C. Short, formerly the Commander of the United States Army Hawaiian Department, had an excellent and unassailable record throughout his career in the United States Army prior to the December 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor.

(3) Numerous investigations following the attack on Pearl Harbor have documented that Admiral Kimmel and Lieutenant General Short were not provided necessary and critical intelligence that was available, that foretold of war with Japan, that warned of imminent attack, and that would have alerted them to prepare for the attack, including such essential communiques as the Japanese Pearl Harbor Bomb Plot message of September 24, 1941, and the message sent from the Imperial Japanese Foreign Ministry to the Japanese Ambassador in the United States from December 6 to 7, 1941, known as the Fourteen-Part Message.

(4) On December 16, 1941, Admiral Kimmel and Lieutenant General Short were relieved of their commands and returned to their permanent ranks of rear admiral and major general.

(5) Admiral William Harrison Standley, who served as a member of the investigating commission known as the Roberts Commission that accused Admiral Kimmel and Lieutenant General Short of `dereliction of duty' only six weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor, later disavowed the report maintaining that `these two officers were martyred' and `if they had been brought to trial, both would have been cleared of the charge'.

(6) On October 19, 1944, a Naval Court of Inquiry exonerated Admiral Kimmel on the grounds that his military decisions and the disposition of his forces at the time of the December 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor were proper `by virtue of the information that Admiral Kimmel had at hand which indicated neither the probability nor the imminence of an air attack on Pearl Harbor'; criticized the higher command for not sharing with Admiral Kimmel `during the very critical period of November 26 to December 7, 1941, important information . . . regarding the Japanese situation'; and, concluded that the Japanese attack and its outcome was attributable to no serious fault on the part of anyone in the naval service.

(7) On June 15, 1944, an investigation conducted by Admiral T. C. Hart at the direction of the Secretary of the Navy produced evidence, subsequently confirmed, that essential intelligence concerning Japanese intentions and war plans was available in Washington but was not shared with Admiral Kimmel.

(8) On October 20, 1944, the Army Pearl Harbor Board of Investigation determined that Lieutenant General Short had not been kept `fully advised of the growing tenseness of the Japanese situation which indicated an increasing necessity for better preparation for war'; detailed information and intelligence about Japanese intentions and war plans were available in `abundance' but were not shared with the General Short's Hawaii command; and General Short was not provided `on the evening of December 6th and the early morning of December 7th, the critical information indicating an almost immediate break with Japan, though there was ample time to have accomplished this'.

(9) The reports by both the Naval Court of Inquiry and the Army Pearl Harbor Board of Investigation were kept secret, and Rear Admiral Kimmel and Major General Short were denied their requests to defend themselves through trial by court-martial.

(10) The joint committee of Congress that was established to investigate the conduct of Admiral Kimmel and Lieutenant General Short completed, on May 31, 1946, a 1,075-page report which included the conclusions of the committee that the two officers had not been guilty of dereliction of duty.

(11) The then Chief of Naval Personnel, Admiral J. L. Holloway, Jr., on April 27, 1954, recommended that Admiral Kimmel be advanced in rank in accordance with the provisions of the Officer Personnel Act of 1947.

(12) On November 13, 1991, a majority of the members of the Board for the Correction of Military Records of the Department of the Army found that Lieutenant General Short `was unjustly held responsible for the Pearl Harbor disaster' and that `it would be equitable and just' to advance him to the rank of lieutenant general on the retired list.

(13) In October 1994, the then Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Carlisle Trost, withdrew his 1988 recommendation against the advancement of Admiral Kimmel and recommended that the case of Admiral Kimmel be reopened.

(14) Although the Dorn Report, a report on the results of a Department of Defense study that was issued on December 15, 1995, did not provide support for an advancement of Rear Admiral Kimmel or Major General Short in grade, it did set forth as a conclusion of the study that `responsibility for the Pearl Harbor disaster should not fall solely on the shoulders of Admiral Kimmel and Lieutenant General Short, it should be broadly shared'.

(15) The Dorn Report found that `Army and Navy officials in Washington were privy to intercepted Japanese diplomatic communications . . . which provided crucial confirmation of the imminence of war'; that `the evidence of the handling of these messages in Washington reveals some ineptitude, some unwarranted assumptions and misestimations, limited coordination, ambiguous language, and lack of clarification and followup at higher levels'; and, that `together, these characteristics resulted in failure . . . to appreciate fully and to convey to the commanders in Hawaii the sense of focus and urgency that these intercepts should have engendered'.

(16) On July 21, 1997, Vice Admiral David C. Richardson (United States Navy, retired) responded to the Dorn Report with his own study which confirmed findings of the Naval Court of Inquiry and the Army Pearl Harbor Board of Investigation and established, among other facts, that the war effort in 1941 was undermined by a restrictive intelligence distribution policy, and the degree to which the commanders of the United States forces in Hawaii were not alerted about the impending attack on Hawaii was directly attributable to the withholding of intelligence from Admiral Kimmel and Lieutenant General Short.

(17) The Officer Personnel Act of 1947, in establishing a promotion system for the Navy and the Army, provided a legal basis for the President to honor any officer of the Armed Forces of the United States who served his country as a senior commander during World War II with a placement of that officer, with the advice and consent of the Senate, on the retired list with the highest grade held while on the active duty list.

(18) Rear Admiral Kimmel and Major General Short are the only two eligible officers from World War II who were excluded from the list of retired officers presented for advancement on the retired lists to their highest wartime ranks under the terms of the Officer Personnel Act of 1947.

(19) This singular exclusion from advancement on the retired list serves only to perpetuate the myth that the senior commanders in Hawaii were derelict in their duty and responsible for the success of the attack on Pearl Harbor, a distinct and unacceptable expression of dishonor toward two of the finest officers who have served in the Armed Forces of the United States.

(20) Major General Walter Short died on September 23, 1949, and Rear Admiral Husband Kimmel died on May 14, 1968, without the honor of having been returned to their wartime ranks as were their fellow veterans of World War II.

(21) The Veterans of Foreign Wars, the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association, the Admiral Nimitz Foundation, the Naval Academy Alumni Association, the Retired Officers Association, and the Pearl Harbor Commemorative Committee, and other associations and numerous retired military officers have called for the rehabilitation of the reputations and honor of Admiral Kimmel and Lieutenant General Short through their posthumous advancement on the retired lists to their highest wartime grades.

(b) ADVANCEMENT OF REAR ADMIRAL KIMMEL AND MAJOR GENERAL SHORT ON RETIRED LISTS- (1) The President is requested--

(A) to advance the late Rear Admiral Husband E. Kimmel to the grade of admiral on the retired list of the Navy; and

(B) to advance the late Major General Walter C. Short to the grade of lieutenant general on the retired list of the Army.

(2) Any advancement in grade on a retired list requested under paragraph (1) shall not increase or change the compensation or benefits from the United States to which any person is now or may in the future be entitled based upon the military service of the officer advanced.

(c) SENSE OF CONGRESS REGARDING THE PROFESSIONAL PERFORMANCE OF ADMIRAL KIMMEL AND LIEUTENANT GENERAL SHORT- It is the sense of Congress that--

(1) the late Rear Admiral Husband E. Kimmel performed his duties as Commander in Chief, United States Pacific Fleet, competently and professionally, and, therefore, the losses incurred by the United States in the attacks on the naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and other targets on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941, were not a result of dereliction in the performance of those duties by the then Admiral Kimmel; and

(2) the late Major General Walter C. Short performed his duties as Commanding General, Hawaiian Department, competently and professionally, and, therefore, the losses incurred by the United States in the attacks on Hickam Army Air Field and Schofield Barracks, Hawaii, and other targets on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941, were not a result of dereliction in the performance of those duties by the then Lieutenant General Short.

criticized the higher command for not sharing with Admiral Kimmel `during the very critical period of November 26 to December 7, 1941, important information . . . regarding the Japanese situation'; and, concluded that the Japanese attack and its outcome was attributable to no serious fault on the part of anyone in the naval service.

(7) On June 15, 1944, an investigation conducted by Admiral T. C. Hart at the direction of the Secretary of the Navy produced evidence, subsequently confirmed, that essential intelligence concerning Japanese intentions and war plans was available in Washington but was not shared with Admiral Kimmel.

(8) On October 20, 1944, the Army Pearl Harbor Board of Investigation determined that Lieutenant General Short had not been kept `fully advised of the growing tenseness of the Japanese situation which indicated an increasing necessity for better preparation for war'; detailed information and intelligence about Japanese intentions and war plans were available in `abundance' but were not shared with the General Short's Hawaii command; and General Short was not provided `on the evening of December 6th and the early morning of December 7th, the critical information indicating an almost immediate break with Japan, though there was ample time to have accomplished this'.

(16) On July 21, 1997, Vice Admiral David C. Richardson (United States Navy, retired) responded to the Dorn Report with his own study which confirmed findings of the Naval Court of Inquiry and the Army Pearl Harbor Board of Investigation and established, among other facts, that the war effort in 1941 was undermined by a restrictive intelligence distribution policy, and the degree to which the commanders of the United States forces in Hawaii were not alerted about the impending attack on Hawaii was directly attributable to the withholding of intelligence from Admiral Kimmel and Lieutenant General Short.

FDR knew. Pearl Harbor was the first in the chain of events. Had Pearl Harbor been averted, everything after Pearl Harbor becomes hypothesis because they could very well have been averted too. Proper warning for Pearl would have changed much! Sorry you can't see that. Dec 7's a day of infamy all right, but not quite for the reason FDR thought.... people are waking up and the truth is coming out.

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