A Centennial Celebration of a Warfare State

On April 6, 2017, President Trump kicked off the festivities for a Centennial Celebration. The President dropped over $50 million worth of bombs on a sovereign nation. On April 6, 1917, exactly one hundred years to the day, the United States Congress declared war upon the German Empire. President Woodrow Wilson, a peace promising progressive, lead us into World War 1. The consequences from what the world has not recovered.

In 1916 Wilson was narrowly re-elected on the bogus campaign slogan, “He kept us out of war.” But Wilson was deceitful man, his actions were contrary to his campaign slogan. The truth was that he had been violating neutrality throughout his first term by providing armaments and money to the Allied powers fighting against Germany since 1914.

Wilson’s push for an official entry into the war began in February of 1917.  Germany announced that they intended to resume a policy to torpedo all supply ship moving war goods to England, making American carriers in the line of fire. After this decree, Wilson introduced bill after bill that aimed at increased military expenditures for war preparedness, measures for war security, wartime repression, spying, and information control.

When England released the Zimmermann’s Note it became a done deal. The Note contained instructions from the Foreign Office in Berlin to their Ambassador in Mexico to approach the Mexican government about entering the war in alliance with Germany and in return it would agree to Mexico’s re-conquest of “the lost territory in Texas”.  Wilson finally got his reason, off to war we go!

“Over There” – The Yanks are Coming

In his war speech to Congress, Wilson hailed the U.S. government as “one of the champions of the rights of mankind” and proclaimed that “the world must be made safe for democracy.”

Wilson immediately demonstrated his contempt of both democracy and the constitution by unleashing ruthless censorship of any criticism. The first battle that Wilson fought was against the US citizens’ civil liberties.

He urged Congress to set up detention camps to quarantine “alien enemies.” Anyone who spoke publicly against military conscription was likely to get slammed with federal espionage or sedition charges. Possessing a pamphlet entitled, “Long Live the Constitution of the United States,” earned six months in jail for a Pennsylvania malcontent.

Censorship was buttressed by a fanatic propaganda campaigns led by the Committee on Public Information, a federal agency whose motto was “faith in democracy… faith in fact.” The creation of a posters campaign of “Uncle Sam – I Wants You” and patriotic songs like “Over There” promoted the Wilson’s war.

The US involvement in World War 1 shifted all momentum away from Germany in favor of the Allied Forces. Until the US entry into the Great War it appeared that the outcome would be a stalemate. The US’s alliance with England and France would prove to be the impetus for victory in Europe.

 Treaty of Versailles – The Gift That Keeps on Giving

The US and its European allied victors: France, England and Italy were empowered with the responsibility to fix the world. The US suddenly became a player at the politics table, a position it was unfamiliar with. Due to the US’s impact on WW1, Wilson would help to create and manage entangling alliance, draw arbitrary lines on maps to create country borders and hand out punishment to the guilty.

Wilson and his 14 Points for Peace were front in center in dictating what Europe, the Middle East and the World would become. Wilson, of the US; Clemenceau of France; Lloyd George of England and Orlando of Italy, authored the Treaty of Versailles (Paris Treaty of 1919). The results of which set in motion a flawed plan that we have continually been fixing for 100 years.

Sowing the Seeds of WW2

Many historians point out that World War 2 began in 1919 at the Paris negotiating conferences held during the Treaty of Versailles. The treaty prepared the soils for dictatorships that the World War 2 participants would eventually declare as enemies.

Wilson and his gang unleashed an environment that allowed for tyrannical regimes to grow; Communism in Russia under Stalin, fascism in Italy under Mussolini, hysteria in Germany under Hitler. The treaty also became the root cause of much of the instability we have in the Middle East.

The Treaty nullified the 1915-1916 McMahon-Hussein Correspondence, (promise for Arab rule) in favor of the 1916 Sykes-Picot Secretive Agreement. (re-established colonialism in the Middle East) It divided up the lands in the Middle East between England and France like one would slice a pie. The treaty installed British mandating in Palestine, making good on the Balfour Declaration for a Zionist Jewish state at the expense of the indigenous Palestinian Arabs.

Then in 1947, the United States and the United Nations would push even harder for the Jewish state. Using UN Resolution 181, it turned Palestine into two states, establishing Israel as a nation. This imposition forced at least 700,000 Palestinian refugees from their homes. eight recognized wars, two Palestinian intifadas, and a series of armed conflicts between Arab–Israeli combatants. The Israeli – Palestinian conflict continues today.

The Paris Treaty attempted to establish a hierarchy of superpowers, through the League of Nations. (forerunner to the United Nations) The gang punished Germany for being responsible for World War 1. The treaty forced Germany to take the brunt of blame for World War 1. It required Germany to make unreasonable restitutions for their involvement that would bring economic chaos that the Germans could not tolerate.

The people of Germany responded by supporting a madman, Hitler and his nationalistic promises. He was just what the desperate Germans were looking for, a road back to dignity. Hitler, at the expense of many, filled that need. His expansive invasions and atrocities to man created World War 2.

Déjà vu – all over again

The US’s entry into World War 2 played out much like World War 1. The US stayed on the sidelines until the Japanese provided the US with a good reason to engage. Roosevelt, another peace loving progressive, after years of strategic economic sanctions applied to obstruct Japan’s economy, finally squeezed them tight enough to goad Japan into bombing Pearl Harbor.

On December 8, 1941, the day after Pearl Harbor, the US Congress declared War on Japan. Germany, with an alliance with Japan, wasted no time to reciprocate. On December 11, 1941 Germany declared war on the US. Roosevelt’s immediately followed Woodrow Wilson’s lead by attacking civil liberties. Like a true Wilson disciple, he rounded up 120,000 Japanese-Americans and put them into internment camps, prisons.

Waxing – not much waning

Preparations for war required a build-up of personal, military armaments and supplies. After World War 1, the Spanish American War, the Civil War and all other wars dating back to the Revolutionary War the US disassemble its military. At the end of WW2, the US briefly began to disassemble its war machine. However, Truman transitioned from fighting Nazism and Fascism to a War on Communism.

In 1947, the President issued his Truman Doctrine. He declared that the US would contain all communist expansion around the world, the Cold War begins. Military escalation grew with every containment; 1948 the communist take-over of Czechoslovakia; 1948 the Berlin Crisis, the communist conquest of China, the Soviet nuclear test, the formation of NATO; the Korean War; the Vietnam War, the list goes on. These events provided the US with a sizable military presence in Europe and Far Eastern Asia.

Bases – What Bases?

The events, listed above, acted to camouflage US’s military expansion around the world. Seventy years after World War II and 62 years after the Korean War, there are 174 US “base sites” in Germany, 113 in Japan, and 83 in South Korea. Hundreds of more bases can be found in 80 countries. The best estimate is that 800 US bases exist outside the 50 states.

The Pentagon’s overseas military personal presence has also increased. There are US troops or other military personnel in about 160 foreign countries and territories with nearly 250,000 troops deployed on these installations costing an estimated $85 billion.

While bases are costly for taxpayers, they are profitable for the country’s privateers of twenty-first-century war corporations. Scholar and former CIA consultant Chalmers Johnson wrote, “Our installations abroad bring profits to civilian industries,” which win billions in contracts annually to “build and maintain our far-flung outposts.”

This global collection of bases enabled the launching of military interventions, drone strikes, and any other war of choice. By making it easier to wage foreign wars, bases overseas have ensured that military action is an attractive option. Anthropologist Catherine Lutz once said, “when all you have in your foreign policy toolbox is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail.”

Middle East

Oil reserves in the Middle East created a rush to secure influence and power in the Arab States. World War 2 diminished Britain’s and France’s capabilities to re-establish their presence in the Middle East. The elimination of both created a “vacuum of power”. The US felt a need and saw the opportunity to fill the void.

To become a power broker, the US would need to have Western friendly regimes. The United States began to orchestrate regime change in the Middle East. The newly formed CIA found success in Iran when it helped to overthrow the democratically elected Prime Minister Mosaddeq and delivered the Shah into power.

The US initiated a series of moves to secure influence in the Middle East. The US propped up dictators, removed dictators, crushed democracies and installed democracies creating less and less stability at the expense of the people. The follows sequence of coups culminated into what we have today:

1949, 1954, 1966 coups in Syria led to the 1970 start of the Assad regime;

1958, 1963 and 1968 coups in Iraq paved the way for Saddam Hussein;

1953 the CIA coup in democratic Iran, led to the 1979 Hostages Crisis

 Use it or lose it

The collapse of the Soviet Union ended the Cold War. During the Cold War years, an estimated $8 trillion was spent, with about 100,000 Americans losing their lives. Reagan ensured the Soviet failure by built up the US military muscle to unprecedented levels. The collapse of the Soviet Union made the muscle of the US military available.

“Use it or lose it” is a concept to keep muscles strong. This same concept applies to military muscle. Atrophy of the Defense Department, the Armed Forces, the State Department and the Industrial Military Complex would have an adverse effect on the Warfare State. Too many jobs, too many politicians, too many bureaucrats, too many US dollars budgeted, too many Industrial Military Corporation profits would be lost. Peace was not an option.

The US quickly changed from fighting a Cold War against Communism to hot war in Iraq. In 1990, George W Bush launched Operation Desert Storm. This invasion helped to create the retaliatory terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. *See below

 War on Terror

On 9/1/2001 the terrorist invasion at the World Trade center terrorist murdered 3,000 civilians. This event prompted the other Bush to declare the “War on Terrorism.”  Just what the Gods of War ordered, a free reign to invade anywhere in the world to battle terrorism.  By 2001 the US was the only surviving superpower, there was not a country to stop it.

In 2002, an operation in Afghanistan to search and destroy terrorist training sites and to get Osama bin Laden turned into a war that continues today. (15 years and running) In 2003, a full-scale invasion of Iraq to search and destroy the weapons of Mass Destruction “ended” in 2011 but we are still there –go figure. The newest adult generation, in their lifetime, has not experienced one day of peace. This is tragic!

Since 9/11 and the subsequent “War on Terror” we have allowed the Military, the Defense Department, the State Department and the Intelligence Community to metastasize into a cancer that is directly or indirectly responsible for:

• 4,491 U.S. service members killed in Iraq between 2003 and 2014
• 2,386 U.S. military deaths from the War in Afghanistan.
• 165,000 civilians in the Iraq war caused by the US and its allies
• 173,000 total deaths in Afghanistan and Pakistan since 2001

Today the US citizens need to be asking. “Should the US contribute to the 17,411 children and 10,847 women already killed in Syria?”

Journalist or Salesmen?

The media encourages the Warfare State while keeping the public shielded from the reality that war is murder. Mainstream media, the “real news”, is today’s version of Wilson’s Committee on Public Information. They formulate a narrative and edit the news to support it.

Their most recent project is the war in Syrian. Their narrative is that Assad “must go”. The justification is the same that Wilson proclaimed 100 years ago. The US is “one of the champions of the rights of mankind” and it is our obligation to ensure that “the world must be made safe for democracy.”

War is immoral and killing innocent people is the product of this immoral act. The media selectively covers the atrocities of war. Their professionals abuse video of gassed children to support their narrative while under reporting civilian being murdered by US led coalitions. The story line that supports the narrative get top billing and those that don’t get buried.

Example abound, On April 7^th, at two locations in northern Syria a US led coalition bombed and killed at least 21 people, including a woman and her six children. Killing is killing! It is immoral to determine that one type of killing is either less or more moral than another. The media has an obligation to discourage all murder. A moral media would promote peace and not solicited retaliation.

A cabal of governmental departments have allied to create an unofficial Warfare State. Permanent government bureaucrats, elected politicians, the industrial military complex with its lobbyists conspire with most mainstream media to sell war. War has become the drug of choice, it is the heroin that the keeps the bureaucracy alive. The US has murdered, lied, cheated and stolen for it. This drug will destroy a nation that is too young to die.

“The road to hell is paved with good intentions”

Wilson’s intervention into World War 1 was an outright rejection of our founders’ wisdom. It not only ignored President Washington’s warning, “to steer clear of permanent alliance with any portion of the foreign world” it violated Thomas Jefferson’s pledge of “Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.”

World War 1 was billed as the War to end all Wars, it proved otherwise. We need to look at the geography of the world. The US is surrounded by oceans and allies, Mexico to the south and Canada to the north. America is the border for our defense, not Europe, not Africa, not the Middle East and not the Far East.

Let us Celebration a Bi-centennial Event

Two hundred years ago, John Quincy Adams became Secretary of State under President James Monroe. In 1817, as Secretary of State, Adams delivered a speech on U.S. Foreign policy.

“Wherever the standard of freedom and independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She will recommend the general cause, by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example.

She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself, beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force. The frontlet upon her brows would no longer beam with the ineffable splendor of freedom and independence; but in its stead would soon be substituted an imperial diadem, flashing in false and tarnished lustre the murky radiance of dominion and power. She might become the dictatress of the world: she would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit.”

Peace and prosperity are linked together for a reason. Our forefathers’ voices are being silenced by the drum beats of war. We must return to the days of moral actions and benevolent purpose. It is time to exorcise the dictatress that has captured our spirit.

 

*Bin Laden’s 3 reason for the 9/11 attack on that World Trade Center and the Pentagon:

            One: US troops in the Islamic holy lands of Saudi Arabia;

            Two: US bombing and killing of Muslim Arabs:

            Three: US’s support for Israeli apartheid government’s treatment of the Palestinians

 Please note: President Bill Clinton’s almost continuous bombings of Iraq throughout the late 1990’s contributed to the response.