THE BIG LIE: Tyranny In The Name of Freedom
Freedom of expression still exists in America, but only on
behalf of lies. Truth is forbidden, except on the Internet. The Internet is
still free, because Americans are accustomed to believing what they hear on TV
and read in the news columns of newspapers, whereas the Internet is new and iffy
to most Americans and of less concern to the government. The mainstream media,
which serves as a government propaganda organ, and the Internet are two parallel
universes.
The influence of neocon propaganda now extends to National Public Radio. Prior
to the Bush Regime and total Republican control of our government, NPR offered
in-depth reporting and alternative views. This important service has diminished
under Republican control. On May 18
NPR
reported on a controversy at Yale University. A former spokesman for the
Taliban government in Afghanistan is now a student at Yale. Conservative
students and alumni are up in arms.
A spokesman for the concerned Yale students said that the Taliban had killed
3,000 Americans on 9/11. The NPR reporters and commentators took for granted
that the Taliban had attacked America and were a dangerous enemy of our country.
We have reached the point where the media that brainwashes the public is itself
brainwashed. The Taliban had nothing to do with 9/11 and was not a declared
enemy of the US. The Taliban was fully absorbed in a struggle to unify
Afghanistan. Their opponent, the Northern Alliance, was comprised of Tajiks,
some ethnic minorities, and the remnants of the Soviet puppet government. As
Afghanistan has never been unified and consists of a collection of tribes and
warlords, the only basis for Afghan unity is Islam, the emblem for the Taliban.
The Taliban became an enemy only after Bush attacked them and took the side of
the Northern Alliance. Bush claims that he attacked the Taliban because they
refused to deliver Osama bin Laden to US custody.
The Bush Regime blames bin Laden for 9/11, although the evidence is sketchy and
inconclusive. Take a moment to consider the chances of bin Laden, who was fully
occupied in his involvement in civil war in Afghanistan, being able to organize
a successful attack on high-tech America from a primitive country half a world
away. A man in a cave operating on a shoestring somehow defeats the myriad
intelligence agencies of the US.
Regardless of bin Laden's responsibility for 9/11, the Taliban could not turn
over bin Laden, and the Bush regime knew that. Bush made a demand that could not
be met in order to have the excuse to attack the Taliban.
Why couldn't the Taliban turn over bin Laden? Osama, of course, had his own
armed fighters, but this is not the reason. Bin Laden helped to drive the
Soviets out of Afghanistan and is an Afghan national hero. He was helping the
Taliban to finish off their opponents, including the remains of the Soviet
puppets. The Taliban could not possibly claim to be unifying Afghanistan in the
name of Islam and turn over an Islamic hero to the Great Satan.
At that time Americans were told that bin Laden was the target of the invasion
of Afghanistan. In retrospect we know that that was just another lie. The target
was Iraq (and Iran and Syria). Bin Laden was the excuse for getting the camel's
nose under the tent.
Iraq has nothing whatsoever to do with bin Laden or 9/11. Yet, war in Iraq has
completely absorbed the Bush Regime. The regime sticks with its war despite its
sinking polls, which even Karl Rove attributes to the fruitless war.
The war in Iraq has multiplied terrorism, not reduced it. The war has
destroyed America's reputation.
The war has served as an excuse for concentrating unconstitutional powers in the
executive for removing the institutional protections against a police state.
The war has already cost 20,000 American casualties (dead and wounded) and
hundreds of billions of dollars, which have had to be borrowed from foreigners,
and is projected to have a total cost in excess of one trillion dollars.
This is a horrendous commitment. What is its purpose?
THE BIG LIE: So Big That
People Will Die For It.
Dying for a Lie
"A thing is not necessarily
true because a man dies for it."
- Oscar Wilde
All Americans know that Memorial Day is a federal holiday.
Most Americans know that it commemorates U. S. soldiers who died in military
service for their country. Many Americans believe that U. S. soldiers died
defending our freedoms. Few Americans believe that they died for a lie.
Memorial Day was first observed in honor of Union soldiers who died during the
War to Prevent Southern Independence. It was initially called Decoration Day
because the tombs of the dead soldiers were decorated. Originally celebrated in
select localities (to this day several cities claim to be the birthplace of
Memorial Day, although the federal government recognizes Waterloo, NY, as the
official birthplace), the holiday was first widely observed on May 30, 1868,
because of an earlier proclamation by General John Logan of the
Grand Army of the Republic, an organization of Union
veterans:
The 30th of May, 1868, is designated for the purpose of strewing with flowers, or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village, and hamlet churchyard in the land. In this observance no form of ceremony is prescribed, but posts and comrades will in their own way arrange such fitting services and testimonials of respect as circumstances may permit.
New York, in 1873, was the first state to officially
recognize the holiday. After World War I, the holiday was expanded to include U.
S. soldiers who died in any war. Until this time, Southern states did not
observe the holiday: they preferred to honor their Confederate dead on separate
days. Although Congress in 1971 declared Memorial Day to be a national holiday
celebrated on the last Monday in May, to this day some Southern states still
maintain a day to honor their Confederate dead.
The focus this Memorial Day will be on those men and women who have died in the
current Iraq war, although it is likely that only a small minority of Americans
realize that
2,464 U.S. soldiers have died thus far. The 117,000
U.S. soldiers who died in that war to end all wars, World War I, are ancient
history. Few can name even one of the 405,000 U.S. soldiers who died in that
"good war," World War II, so that Eastern Europe could be turned over to the
mass murderer Stalin. The 54,000 U.S. soldiers who died in what is called
America’s forgotten war, the Korean War, are certainly long forgotten. The
58,000 U.S. soldiers who died in Vietnam so their names could be inscribed on a
wall are remembered by very few.
They died in vain; they died for a lie.
This does not mean that they were not brave, heroic, well-meaning, or patriotic.
They may have fought with the best of intentions; they may have sacrificed
themselves for others; they may have been sincere in their belief that they were
fighting for a good cause; but they died for a lie.
The first lie is that war is necessary. After commanding forces that firebombed
Tokyo, which killed as many civilians as the atomic bomb dropped a few months
later, General Curtis LeMay remarked: "We knew we were going to kill a lot of
women and kids when we burned that town. Had to be done." But regardless of what
happened beforehand, or what might have happened in the future, since when does
slaughtering 100,000 people at one time ever have to be done? War should not be
considered as an alternative; it is always the worst possible solution. As
psychologist Alfred Adler has said: "War is not the continuation of politics
with different means, it is the greatest mass-crime perpetrated on the community
of man." War is not inevitable; it is never an absolute necessity. As Adler’s
successor Lydia Sicher once said: "Wars are inevitable... as long as we believe
that wars are inevitable. The moment we don’t believe it anymore it is not
inevitable."
The second lie is that it is the people in a country that want war.
Surprisingly, it was Ronald Reagan who recognized that "governments make wars,
not people." It is up to the government to convince its citizens that the
citizens of another country are "the enemy." After all, as one columnist
remarked: "When people have friends and customers in other lands, they tend to
take a dim view of their government dropping bombs on them." Governments abuse
the concept of patriotism to convince the populace that "the enemy" should be
bombed, maimed, and killed. Hermann Goering recognized that all a government has
to do to get the people to support a war is to "denounce the pacifists for lack
of patriotism and exposing the country to danger." Real patriotism is not
wanting to see the blood of your country’s soldiers shed in some desert or
jungle halfway around the world fighting the enemy of the week, month, or year.
Patriotism, as Charles de Gaulle explained, "is when love of your own people
comes first; nationalism, when hate for people other than your own comes first."
It is the old men who make wars, and then send the young men to fight them; it
is the members of Congress with no children in the military who agitate for war.
The third lie is that there are winners and losers in a war. No side ever really
wins a war. As Jeannette Rankin, the only member of Congress to vote against
U.S. entry into both World Wars, said: "You can no more win a war than you
can win an earthquake." Every side loses something in a war. English
mystery writer, Agatha Christie, certainly showed more wisdom than most members
of Congress when she said: "One is left with the horrible feeling now that
war settles nothing; that to win a war is as disastrous as to lose one."
The consequences of a war are never as
expected. One reason, as recognized by Thomas Jefferson, is that "war is
an instrument entirely inefficient toward redressing wrong; and multiplies,
instead of indemnifying losses."
The fourth lie is that war can be good for a nation’s economy. This myth of war
prosperity was exploded by Ludwig von Mises: "War prosperity is like the
prosperity that an earthquake or a plague brings. The earthquake means good
business for construction workers, and cholera improves the business of
physicians, pharmacists, and undertakers; but no one has for that reason yet
sought to celebrate earthquakes and cholera as stimulators of the productive
forces in the general interest."
More recently, Robert Higgs has called this "The
Fallacy that Won’t Die." But didn’t unemployment fall
during World War II? Of course it did. How could it not fall when the government
conscripted 16 million men into the armed forces? But what about GDP during
World War II? Naturally, it increased, but only because of the increased output
of military goods and services. Tell the grieving parents of their only son, who
never gave them any grandchildren, about how much greater their standard of
living will now be because of the war that took their son.
The fifth lie is that the U.S. military defends our freedoms. The military is
too busy policing the world to defend our freedoms. We have U.S. troops in 158
countries or territories of the world. How are the 69,395 U.S. troops in Germany
defending our freedoms? How are the 35,307 U.S. troops in Japan defending our
freedoms? How are the 32,744 U.S. troops in Korea defending our freedoms? How
are the 12,258 U.S. troops in Italy defending our freedoms? How are the 11,093
U.S. troops in the United Kingdom defending our freedoms? How are the ______
U.S. troops in _______________ defending our freedoms?
To appease his conservative base on the
illegal immigration issue, President Bush recently called for the stationing of
some National Guard troops along the border with Mexico. The National Guard
units that have been deployed to Iraq should not be assigned to guard the
Mexican border. They should be sent home to their jobs and their families, and
only used for genuine emergencies on U.S. soil. Stationing U.S. soldiers along
the Mexican border would be defending our freedoms a thousand times more than
putting them along any German or Italian border.
Contrary to these lies, the truth about war, in the words of Major General
Smedley Butler, is that "war is a racket. It always has been. It is
possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious."
Ambrose Bierce once made a callous statement about war that nevertheless comes
to pass whenever the United States intervenes in another country: "War is
God’s way of teaching Americans geography."
The aphorism that truth is the first casualty of war has often been spoken but
rarely learned from. This is because, as Charles Lindbergh said: "In a
time of war, truth is always replaced by propaganda."
This war in particular was started and maintained by more
government lies than perhaps any other war in our history.
What were our objectives in this war? Finding weapons of mass destruction?
Finding chemical and biological weapons? Removing Saddam Hussein? Imposing
democracy to Iraq? Bringing stability to the Middle East? Forcing Iraq to comply
with UN resolutions? Protecting the nation of Israel? Dismantling Al Qaeda?
Freeing Muslim women from oppression? Enforcing the no-fly zone imposed on Iraq
after the first Persian Gulf War?
If one stated objective was found to be a lie another could quickly be offered
in its place. The number and scope of these objectives shows that there were no
legitimate obtainable objectives. So why did we invade and occupy Iraq? I call
your attention to two documents. Just two. Both of these documents are readily
available online.
The first document is called
Uncovering the Rationales for the War on Iraq: The Words of the Bush
Administration, Congress, and the Media from September 12, 2001 to October 11,
2002. It was written by Devon M. Largio in 2004 as a
thesis for a bachelor’s degree in political science at the University of
Illinois. It is a total of 212 pages. Print it out and read it in its entirety.
If you don’t have time to read it right now then at least read her
executive summary. Largio documents twenty-seven
rationales given for the war by the Bush administration, war hawks in Congress,
and the media between the September 11th attacks and the October 2002
congressional resolution to use force in Iraq. It was "the Bush
administration, and the President himself" that "established the
majority of the rationales for the war and all of those rationales that make up
the most prominent reasons for war." The result of this investigation
shows that Bush is a bigger liar than Clinton ever was, and, even worse, his
lies are more deadly.
The second document is called
Iraq on the Record: The Bush Administration’s Public Statements on Iraq.
It was prepared for Representative Henry Waxman (D-CA) by the U.S. House of
Representatives Committee on Government Reform Minoority Staff, Special
Investigations Division. It is dated March 16, 2004. It is a total of 36 pages.
Print it out and read it in its entirety. An executive summary appears on pages
iiv. The report is "a comprehensive examination of the statements made by
the five Administration officials most responsible for providing public
information and shaping public opinion on Iraq: President George Bush, Vice
President Richard Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State
Colin Powell, and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice." Here is
the report’s conclusion:
Because of the gravity of the subject and the President’s unique access to classified information, members of Congress and the public expect the President and his senior officials to take special care to be balanced and accurate in describing national security threats. It does not appear, however, that President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretary Rumsfeld, Secretary Powell, and National Security Advisor Rice met this standard in the case of Iraq. To the contrary, these five officials repeatedly made misleading statements about the threat posed by Iraq. In 125 separate appearances, they made 11 misleading statements about the urgency of Iraq’s threat, 81 misleading statements about Iraq’s nuclear activities, 84 misleading statements about Iraq’s chemical and biological capabilities, and 61 misleading statements about Iraq’s relationship with al Qaeda.
Every U.S. soldier who died in Iraq died
for a lie. They may have died for Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, the U.S.
global empire, the U.S. government, the military-industrial complex, or
Halliburton, but none of them died for the American people or our freedoms.
If they died for a lie, then the liars should be held accountable. But don’t
look for Congress to do anything. How can we expect a Congress that continues
to fund this war to hold the Bush administration accountable for its lies?
Every member of Congress that continues to vote to fund this war is complicit in
these lies.
How many more dead American soldiers and billions of dollars will it take before Congress finally says enough is enough? How many American soldiers not currently in Iraq who are enjoying this Memorial Day holiday will be sent to Iraq to die for a lie before the next observance of Memorial Day?
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Laurence M. Vance [send him mail] is a freelance writer and an adjunct instructor in accounting and economics at Pensacola Junior College in Pensacola, FL. He is also the director of the Francis Wayland Institute. His new book is Christianity and War and Other Essays Against the Warfare State. Visit his website.
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"None are so hopelessly enslaved,
as those who falsely believe they are free.
The truth has been kept from the depth of their minds
by masters who rule them with lies.
They feed them on falsehoods
till wrong looks like right in their eyes."
- Johann Goethe
"The lie can
be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people
from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It
thus
becomes vitally important for the State to use all its powers to repress
dissent,
for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension,
the truth becomes the mortal enemy of the State."
- Dr. Joseph M. Goebbels,
Hitler's propaganda minister
Bush on the Constitution: 'It's just a goddamned
piece of paper'
Article at
www.heartcom.org/Bushit.htm
A State of
Emergency / Constitution Under Attack
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/060206L.shtml
"Bush is a danger to the Constitution
in his wartime capacity
as Commander in Chief," writes Sidney
Blumenthal.
WAR POWERS FEED CENTRALIZATION FORCES
"Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be
dreaded
because it comprises and develops the germ of every other...
No
nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare."
- James Madison, 4th U.S. President,
April 20, 1795
"The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and
judiciary, in
the same hands ... may justly be pronounced the
very definition of tyranny."
-James Madison, Federalist 47
"If I Were a Dictator... "
George W. Bush has stated he'd prefer to be a dictator at least
three times: