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.

The fine folks you listed were not part of that failure. (I would say that the fact that they cannot be 100% prescient is not really a failure, BTW.) The chances of preventing 9-11 MIGHT have been increased with a better overall structure of the intelligence organizations, and a co-operative, rather than competitive, relationship. Those short-comings, however, are not the fault of anyone in office (or even alive) today.

Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA) was recently in Iraq and said on national television that President Bush would "mislead" the American people about Iraq and war, and that we should take Hussein "at his word."

Now, Greybird, I ask that you answer this one simple question with an up or down "yes" or "no:"

Do you stand with Rep. McDermott?

....and from the link at #118, just fyi:

Indeed, this is the problem with most goofy theories about a war: They reveal a profound naiveté about how government works. If Bush were doing this for oil or for money or for "revenge" against the man who tried to kill his dad, he wouldn't be able to say so in a single meeting. He couldn't say such a thing to his inner circle, let alone his senior staff or the hundreds of people below them who make the policy. Word would get out. Opponents would leak it. Ambitious men would blow the whistle and become heroes. Decent men would blow the whistle too.

In other words, Bush would have to keep all of his motives secret from the people he'd have to convince to go along. Now, since most of these anti-Bush, antiwar types also think the commander-in-chief is an idiot, it's hard to imagine how they think he'd be smart enough to pull off a con like that.

When were those commercial images taken?

Mid-September 1990, the same time the Bush Sr. administration was trying to drum up support for the coalition.

At one point, Iraqi troops had actually crossed into Saudi Arabia proper (right after they arrived in Saudi and got sent up to the border with Kuwait, some USMC buddies of mine found the tracks left by Iraqi T-54s).

I have no way of disputing this of course. I find it remarkable though, that tracks would still be identifiable for very long in the sand and dirt. Wouldn't they disappear pretty rapidly?

Hey, he replied:

Your hysteria belies your family name. Get a grip.

LOL! I fired back this to him:

I overstepped in calling you a liar. I honestly should have said I strongly disagree with your (implied) opinion that President Bush is a liar.

I suspect you are a Liberal. I am a moderate conservative (a true moderate, NOT moderate in the media elite definition). We are on two different pages. Just so I'll know, tell me your opinion of THIS article if you would please:

Same Old - Tiresome arguments of war
National Review Online ^ | October 1, 2002 | Jonah Goldberg

I gave him the link to the article you pointed me to. I'm sure he'll spew if he looks at that......

There isn't enough data to determine whether Bush is misleading or not.

I'm beginning to think that we would be better off, leaving Iraq to the UN to handle, and make the UN our target. The UN is the group that is remiss in not enforcing their own resolutions. Let the UN do their own work, and give them the deadline. The President shopuld make sure they know that if they fail to comply they, the UN can clean their desks and pack their bags and get the heck out of the US.

A direct link between Saddam and 9/11 has NOT been established. Iraq is thus separate from the war on terrorists, even if the divide is a fine line. Without a connection it remains separate, and a continuance of the previous 10 years.

The unfortuante thing is that it will likely take an actual WMD attack for other nations to realize that a premptive strike was necessary. And unfortunately that attack will probably occur in the states instead of in France, Germany or Russia which would make a difference. The terrorists and scum know this.

But to start acting on 'suspicion', inches us towards a slippery slope, and other nations with better capabilities than Iraq could also act on 'suspicion' against the US.

Think about it. Do you really want to set a precedent that China could follow?

Mid-September 1990, the same time the Bush Sr. administration was trying to drum up support for the coalition.

OK, in other words, over a month AFTER Saddam's troops had scared King Fahd into accepting troops by driving right up to (and across, in some cases). Saddam backed down when the first US troops arrived. But the second they left, he'd be able to invade Saudi Arabia.

I find it remarkable though, that tracks would still be identifiable for very long in the sand and dirt. Wouldn't they disappear pretty rapidly?

If you're looking for a place that's as much like the Moon as possible and still be on Earth, the Saudi-Kuwaiti border region would be a good start. And my buddies got there in early September, only a month after they were laid.

Gosh, you can even make bold text. I'm so impressed.

Again, the portions you bolded do NOT prove your claim. They are part and parcel of the Stark/Turner/Wegener problem at OPNAV Headquarters.

The information may have been collected in Washington, but the intelligence cycle doesn't begin and end with collection. It has to be analyzed (and analyzed without the benefit of the 20/20 hindsight that Admiral Hart had) and distributed to the end users. Turner's actions at War Plans, and the Wegener brothers' activities in Navy Communications, choked off the intelligence cycle as a byproduct of their political infighting and empire-building.

Of course! Everyone knew EXCEPT FDR!!!!

No. If you don't know how intelligence works, kindly do me a favor and read up on it. Data gathering (which DID work, after a fashion) is only the start. The pieces of information thus gained need to be looked at by people who actually understand the topic (i.e., people who actually know something about both Japan and naval warfare) and studied carefully, then turned into a finished product (a report of the enemy's probable goals and courses of action to achieve those goals).

NOBODY knew about Pearl Harbor before the fact. Hart was able to analyze the information AFTER THE FACT (that's a big help) and interpret it correctly. However, not one person at OPNAV Headquarters had access to all of the information gathered, and everyone kept using their pieces of the data to support their preconceived theories. (Turner kept saying that the Japanese were going to attack Russia, the Wegener brothers were insisting on an attack coming down only in the Philippines, and all of the other intel wannabes were touting their own ideas to the exclusion of anyone else.) The Office of Naval Intelligence (which SHOULD have been analyzing and collating all of the data thus gathered) was completely ignored by all of the feuding parties, and never did get the information that had been gathered.

Now, Greybird, I ask that you answer this one simple question with an up or down "yes" or "no:"

Do you stand with Rep. McDermott?

OK...whay lie was told regarding the Gulf War?
Well, what about the claim that Iraq was amassing troops on the Saudi Arabia border after they invaded Kuwait and were ready to take SA? Commercial satellite images showed no troops on the border at all.

The big lie told during the first Gulf War was when Bush (I) pounded the lectern and in response to anti-war protestors, declared, "THIS IS NOT A WAR FOR OIL!!!" As if we would have sent 500,000 troops to free a country that isn't a major petroleum producer. Even Rush has disputed this "little white lie"..

OK..guess you guys busted my little bubble. Bush Sr must be a lier.

Guess that makes Bush Jr a lier too.

Case closed.

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