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To Make War, Presidents Lie
LewRockwell.com ^ | 1 October 2002 | Robert Higgs

Posted on 10/01/2002 3:13:22 AM PDT by Greybird

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.

Robert Higgs is senior fellow in political economy at the Independent Institute, editor of The Independent Review, and author of Crisis and Leviathan and numerous scholarly and popular articles on Congress.

Copyright © 2002 LewRockwell.com


TOPICS: Editorial; Foreign Affairs; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
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To: Greybird
Please. The idiot sounds like a major revisionist, because only a revisionist spins conclusions wihout facts, or makes conclusions that fly in the ace of fact.

Of course, for all I know, you could be Higgs, and if that is the case, don't give up your day job.

41 posted on 10/01/2002 4:46:38 AM PDT by Chancellor Palpatine
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To: Trickyguy; dansangel
IF we had stayed out of the European theater, MAYBE the Nazis and the Commies would have ground each other to mincemeat.

Fairytale words. Freedom is worth fighting for and worth dying for. Anything of value has a high cost and as it becomes more rare in the world the cost goes up. We as a people and an ideology are what is becomming rare, but we are worth it and we will survive.

42 posted on 10/01/2002 4:50:50 AM PDT by .45MAN
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To: conservatism_IS_compassion
Do not be so arrogant as to attack Democrats for the actions of Roosevelt on the eve of the Second World War. I myself am a strongly conservative Republican, and believe Bill Clinton may have been getting head from Hussein and Osama on Tuesday's, and Monica on Wednsdays.

However, American involvement in WW2 was inevitable. The arrogance of the American people (who clung hopelessly to an "isolationist" attitude throughout the first half of the 20th century, even as the world grew evermore globalist) to think they could stay out of it only facilitated the Pearl Harbor disaster.

Japan had delusions of an empire spanning the Pacific. Germany had delusions of an empire spanning Europe. The United States sits right in the middle of these two camps. Moreover, by 1941, the American Navy maintained the globe's largest Pacific fleet, something the Japanese saw threatening and an inevitable foe.

American foreign policy was most favorable towards Great Britain and China. The Soviets benefited far less from American free trade than the other Allied powers.

The West was unaware of the murderous German actions undertaken by the Germans, and for the most part the similar Japanese atrocities. What we had heard were rumors and unconfirmed reports that had escaped occupied territories on the lips of refugees. There was no independent source. An invitation by the Germans to inspect a specially-built false concentration camp was turned down by the Red Cross.

Perhaps it was a case of turning a blind eye to the truth. Either way, to suggest America or anyone else intended to stand by and allow such atrocities to proceed is a fool. After all, the Jewish minority across the American East coast has long represented an important Democratic caucas, something FDR was very much aware of.

No, I blame the arrogance and ignorance of the American people for 12/7, just as I blame them for 9/11. Eight years of Bill Clinton reduced the military from the worlds most elite fighting force as demonstrated in 1991, to a paramilitary police force charged with enforceing the unenforceable, and left us with our pants down.

Its time for this nation to wake up and realize American intervention in foreign affiars, both politically and militarily, is a necesitty when you remain the globe's sole super power. To avoid the Pearl Harbor's of our history, we must pre-empt our enemies, and strike them first, swiftly and decisively.

Clinton had the opportunity to deal with Saddam in 1998, and likewise with Bin Laden in 2000. However, citing the American public's desire for "isolation" he did nothing.
43 posted on 10/01/2002 4:55:11 AM PDT by talk2farley
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To: NMC EXP
"The .30 caliber carbine is a pipsqueak, minor caliber round."

Hmm..... not to nitpick details, but a .30 caliber ROUND can be quite potent indeed, to the point of putting a hole roughly the size of a baseball in the back of your head. Its all about velocity, my son.

The .30 caliber carbine is a rifle, not a round, and would likewise deliver its lethal ammunition quite effectively. I think its the 5.56mm (Read: M-16) your thinking of.
44 posted on 10/01/2002 5:01:55 AM PDT by talk2farley
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To: Petronius
"What are some examples of pacifists getting more people killed than any hawk?"

World War II --- Neville Chamberlain.

We are currently at the same state vis-a-vis Saddam Hussein as Chamberlain was vis-a-vis Hitler. See McDermott/Bonior/etc. currently in Iraq blathering "peace in our time".

45 posted on 10/01/2002 5:02:51 AM PDT by Wonder Warthog
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To: Howlin
"What are some examples of pacifists getting more people killed than any hawk?

September 11, 2001."

December 7, 1941
46 posted on 10/01/2002 5:03:55 AM PDT by talk2farley
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To: talk2farley
To avoid the Pearl Harbor's of our history, we must pre-empt our enemies, and strike them first, swiftly and decisively.

Sometimes that works and sometimes that doesn't. Unfortunately you can never tell until afterwards and you have spent down your military and diplomatic assets.

I'm not worried that we can't swiftly and decisively defeat Saddam, but I worry about a prolonged attempt to build a democracy afterwards. Algeria is just one example.

47 posted on 10/01/2002 5:09:48 AM PDT by palmer
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To: patriciaruth
Oh, I understand now. Roosevelt lied. We weren't attacked by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor. He made it all up.

Roosevelt set Pearl Harbor up. Collateral damage?

48 posted on 10/01/2002 5:35:14 AM PDT by ET(end tyranny)
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49 posted on 10/01/2002 6:02:07 AM PDT by Mo1
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To: talk2farley; Howlin
How did pacifists cause 9-11? Clinton's benighted attempt to take out Osama was a hideous boondoggle, ineptitude at its finest (or worst, depending how you look at it). But it hardly merits the label "pacifist."

That the U.S. had its guard down in the late 90's is, again, most charitably ascribed to ineptitude/negligence. In the wake of the Oklahoma bombing there was a landslide of talk concerning the awful possibility of terrorism on our soil. What "pacifists" opposed preventitive measures?

I apologize if this is turning into a semantic goose-chase.

Again, it has to be pointed out that questioning the war against Iraq does _not_ entail pacifism. There's more than a few vets few opposed to it.
50 posted on 10/01/2002 6:30:19 AM PDT by Petronius
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To: Petronius
What about the USS Cole? What about what was done after that? The pacifism of the left let the scum who killed our citizens believe we would cower and give in to their demands/actions/whatever before we would lift a finger to do anything. The pacifism and neglect that was perpetuated throughout the clinton years led to the mess we are in right now. Further more, I believe that we will see more strikes of that nature until we remove the dirtbags that harbor, finance, and give sanctuary to the kind of individuals that would see our freedom and way of life come to an end.
51 posted on 10/01/2002 6:41:22 AM PDT by wasp69
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To: Greybird
Good Article.
52 posted on 10/01/2002 7:25:27 AM PDT by FreedomFriend
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To: talk2farley
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.
Notice that last line, "forces he concentrated at Pearl Harbor." FDR in fact fired an admiral over that issue; the admiral judged that no significant advantage was to be gained by basing the battleships in Hawaii. Evidently the admiral was right, and his firing calls into question any second-guessing of any commander at Pearl Harbor. In fact it was Roosevelt's responsibility after he had made it clear that the commanders would do things his way or hit the highway.

All very well to blame we-the-people for the fact that Americans were no more interested in getting killed in Europe than Britons were; recall that Neville Chamberlain's "peace in our time" was popular in Britain. But you would probably have felt the same way, were you the parent or sweetheart/wife of a draft-age young man. 80% of the country was "arrogant."

The irony of it was that the more clearly you saw the horror of Hitler the more bitter you would be about WWI, and the failure of the armistise. The only scenario in which there is no great tragedy called WWII is if the British and/or Americans are led by a Winston Churchill in the mid 1930s.

Britain at least had the man, but didn't listen to him. We weren't even that close; we were too busy suckering for FDR's scapegoating Hoover for policies which in fact were largely indistinguishable from FDR's own. And FDR was too busy rooting for socialism--hence, for Stalin--to oppose Hitler when it was (militarily) simple.

The daunting Soviet Union of my lifetime was the natural result of FDR's hopes for socialism. FDR arranged for Soviet domination of Europe, and would have renominated Henry Wallace for VP if there hadn't been an insipient revolt in the Democratic Party in 1944 . . .


53 posted on 10/01/2002 7:48:13 AM PDT by conservatism_IS_compassion
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To: palmer
One easy one is use carrots instead of sticks: drop economic sanctions in exchange for complete inspections.

Umm, what do you think was going to remove the economic sanctions for the past decade, if not compliance with the resolutions?

Iraq would use them in a war of aggression against a neighboring state Boxing Saddam in has dealt with that threat

Uh-huh. You think we're 100% safe from Iraq-sponsored terrorist attacks right now? That's an incredibly naive assumption. The planet is far better off with Saddam not having the weapons at all, nit just surrounding him and making it more difficult for him to use them.

There's a pandora's box of possibilities after we invade. Here's just one: Iran takes advantage of the situation by increasing its support of terrorists while blackmailing our occupation forces in Iraq which are now in range of their missiles.

So we shouldn't invade, because such an act of war might precipitate retaliatory acts of war? LOL!

The fact of the matter is once Iraq has been invaded, no more countries will be invaded no matter how much they support terrorists, no matter how many of their own people they kill because we will be bogged down in the mother of all nation building and quickly lose all political support for new adventures. Terrorists will then quickly gain new footholds in new countries.

More nonsense. First, invading Iraq acts as an extremely firm deterrent to other nations who support terrorism. Second, the assumption that our military can only handle one Wisconsin-sized nation at a time is absolutely ridiculous. Third, sacrificing national security for political reasons is exactly the same moronic decision that the Democrats are supporting. Are you falling for their copy points?

54 posted on 10/01/2002 8:40:13 AM PDT by Teacher317
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To: Teacher317
invading Iraq acts as an extremely firm deterrent to other nations who support terrorism.

How will invading Iraq deter Saudi Arabia from funding more terrorists? How will having occupation forces in Iraq deter Iran when those forces will be in range of Iranian missiles?

Second, the assumption that our military can only handle one Wisconsin-sized nation at a time is absolutely ridiculous.

Occupation will be a huge burden which is different from invading. Our defeat of Iraq was easy last time and should be even easier this time, but once the troops are there we will have no choice but to supress the Kurds and Shiites or watch the country dissolve into civil war. Leaving the country in chaos is not in our interests.

sacrificing national security for political reasons is exactly the same moronic decision that the Democrats are supporting. Are you falling for their copy points?

I would love to see the reasons for attacking being clearly spelled out so Republicans would not have to spend any political capital on this attack. The pro-attack side has only put out the same old pre-9/11 message with a new post-9/11 frosting. Basically Saddam is evil and has WMD and oh yeah, he probably wants to give them to terrorists. That's an incredibly shallow argument.

55 posted on 10/01/2002 10:07:34 AM PDT by palmer
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To: palmer
How will invading Iraq deter Saudi Arabia from funding more terrorists?

Gee, I don't know, maybe the fear that the same will happen to them? Sheesh.

Occupation will be a huge burden which is different from invading.

Please cite the source where the President is quoted as saying that we are going to be occupying Iraq. All we want is that regime out of power. Iraq can take it from there for all we care. There's more talk about rebuilding Iraq afterwards, just like we created industrial powerhouses Germany and Japan, than there is of occupying Iraq, like... ummm, like... errr, help me out here, who have we occupied and refused all requests to leave? In the last century? Hm?

Basically Saddam is evil and has WMD and oh yeah, he probably wants to give them to terrorists. That's an incredibly shallow argument.

"Basically" to make your point, you ignore Saddam's murderous past, his two invasions of neighboring countries, his open threats against the US, his firing on US and UK forces, his payments to the families of suicide-bombers, his harboring of known terrorists (Abu Nidal ring any bells?), his acceptance of terrorist training camps in Iraq, and his history of using WMD's on innocent civilians. How shallow is that?

56 posted on 10/01/2002 10:25:11 AM PDT by Teacher317
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To: palmer
Basically Saddam is evil and has WMD and oh yeah, he probably wants to give them to terrorists. That's an incredibly shallow argument.

Discounting something because you have no logical answer to it doesn't make it shallow. It's the same thing as the old liberal "Besides the fact that x, what other evidence do you have?"

The reasons for attack have been clearly made. You either believe we should attack to prevent Saddam from getting nukes and giving them to terrorists to blackmail us or you don't. It's a question of politics of the moment vs. preventing nuclear blackmail. If you're just against war or national security, there is nothing I can say.
57 posted on 10/01/2002 10:28:21 AM PDT by ConservativeNewsNetwork
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To: ConservativeNewsNetwork
The reason against attack was made clear on 9/11. Back then it looked like an organization with no state support. Some evidence has come to light since then showing Saudi Arabian support. Our enemy is far more dangerous than Saddam.
58 posted on 10/01/2002 10:34:33 AM PDT by palmer
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To: Teacher317
Of course they won't use the word occupy, it has too many negative connotations.

who have we occupied and refused all requests to leave?

Somalia?

"Basically" to make your point, you ignore Saddam's murderous past, his two invasions of neighboring countries, his open threats against the US, his firing on US and UK forces, his payments to the families of suicide-bombers, his harboring of known terrorists (Abu Nidal ring any bells?), his acceptance of terrorist training camps in Iraq, and his history of using WMD's on innocent civilians. How shallow is that?

Pretty shallow. We supported one of those invasions. Firing randomly at our planes flying over his country is not "murderous". His support of Palistinian terrorists applies equally well to other Arab countries. If they are all that murderous, we need to stay out of that area, not get more involved.

Unless, of course, there is evidence of support of 9/11 hijackers or an imminent threat like a long range missile. That's all I care about, not murderous pasts.

59 posted on 10/01/2002 10:48:39 AM PDT by palmer
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To: talk2farley
Its time for this nation to wake up and realize American intervention in foreign affiars, both politically and militarily, is a necesitty when you remain the globe's sole super power. To avoid the Pearl Harbor's of our history, we must pre-empt our enemies, and strike them first, swiftly and decisively.

God bless you for every word you posted, but I especially wanted these to be repeated. Thanks, FReeper.

60 posted on 10/01/2002 11:11:39 AM PDT by .30Carbine
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