Vrede is het belangrijkste onderwerp op aarde, een toespraak van John F. Kennedy

Afgelopen donderdag was het 56 jaar geleden dat VS president John F. Kennedy werd vermoord in Dallas, Texas. Information Clearing House (ICH) bracht gisteren een toespraak die John F. Kennedy (JFK) op 10 juni 1963 hield op de American University in Washington (D.C.) en waarin hij stelde dat vrede het belangrijkste onderwerp is op aarde vrede. Niets tegen in te brengen zou je zeggen, totdat je de hele toespraak op je laat inwerken en dan kan je maar tot één conclusie komen: ook JFK was een enorme hypocriet (ook al was hij m.i. een beter president dan alle na hem aangetreden presidenten.

Hypocrisie als stellen dat vrede het belangrijkste onderwerp is op aarde, terwijl de VS de ene oorlog na de andere begon, hoe vaak Kennedy ook stelde dat elk land op zijn/haar manier het volk kan dienen, de praktijk zag er ook destijds geheel anders uit..... Kennedy stelde dat hij geen voorstander was van een Pax-Americana, terwijl de VS volkeren knechtte en knecht als zij tegen de (economische) belangen van de VS handelden en handelen..... (ofwel weinig verschil met de Pax Romana, waar de VS tegenwoordig inderdaad een imperium is....) De VS die democratisch gekozen leiders afzet en dictators parachuteerde en parachuteert en dat niet zelden ten koste van veel mensenlevens......

Het woord vrijheid valt meermaals in de lezing van Kennedy, echter wat is vrijheid in de VS als je geen werk hebt en je afhankelijk bent van voedselbonnen, waar je dure medicatie kan vergeten als je kanker hebt daar je niet of niet voldoende verzekerd bent? Wat is vrijheid als je 2 banen nodig hebt om rond te kunnen komen ? (veel voorkomend in de VS, al moet ik zeggen dat het er tijdens JFK wel wat beter uitzag voor de grote onderlaag van de VS maatschappij) Wat is vrijheid als je alleen al door je kleur op afstand staat en je vanwege je kleur wordt gediscrimineerd? (vergeet niet dat er onder Kennedy nog steeds apartheid bestond in de VS....)

JFK stelt dat hij niet van een alomvattende vrede en in de goede wil van de mens gelooft dat is voor fantasieën en fanatiekelingen...... Ja, als je een alomvattende vrede nastreeft ben je een fanatiekeling, niet als je als land: -overal en nergens met veel geweld ingrijpt, -geheime dodelijke militaire missies uitvoert, -verkiezingen manipuleert, -opstanden organiseert en ga nog maar even door.....) Als je ziet wat de VS vanaf haar oprichting heeft gedaan en doet op het gebied van buitenlandbeleid, staat dat in schril contrast tot vrede en de goede wil van de mens.....

Echte vrede moet volgens JFK door vele naties worden nagestreefd en vrede is niet statisch maar dynamisch, vrede is een proces, een manier om geschillen op te lossen..... Lullig dan toch weer dat de VS precies doet wat JFK niet wenselijk acht: geschillen worden door de VS 'opgelost' met: -sancties waarbij grote aantallen mensen omkomen (vooral kinderen, zwakkeren en ouderen), -staatsgrepen en -illegale oorlogen......

Vrede is niet onuitvoerbaar en oorlog is niet onvermijdelijk, zo stelde JFK in zijn lezing, volgens hem moet de VS volkeren leiden om dat in te zien..... Ik zal niet lachen, maar nogmaals: de VS is vooral goed in het volkeren bijbrengen wat de VS verstaat onder vrede, door geweld te gebruiken, ofwel oorlog voeren om zogenaamde democratische vrede te brengen en zoals gezegd regelmatig door democratisch gekozen regeringsleiders ten val te brengen en daar een trouwe lakei van de VS in de vorm van een dictator te parachuteren.....*

Over kernwapens stelt Kennedy dat het geld daarvoor beter uitgegeven kan worden aan sociale programma's, voor ziektebestrijding en de bestrijding van armoede..... Lullig dan dat vooral de VS groots heeft ingezet op kernbewapening en dat Rusland en China in feite niet anders konden doen dan te volgen, zeker gezien de agressie van de VS, vanaf haar illegale oprichting (op gestolen grond van de oorspronkelijke bevolking die middels een genocide werd gedecimeerd)

Kennedy wees op de bemoeienissen van de VS met Afrika en Azië, dit om communistische invloed tegen te gaan, waar de VS in werkelijkheid een neokoloniaal bewind voerde (en voert) en ondanks al het geblaat in de VS over corruptie, deze elders juist in stand hield (en nog houdt)... Corrupte was en is tenslotte goed voor het grote bedrijfsleven..... Neokolonialisme, waar Kennedy stelde dat de Sovjet-Unie juist haar ('verderfelijke', Ap) invloed uitbreidde.....

Te zot voor woorden zijn de zinnen die JFK gebruikte voor een tekst van de Sovjet-Unie voor militaire strategie, een tekst volgens JFK zonder enige grond en op basis van ongeloofwaardige claims en dat op de ene na de andere bladzijde waar werd gesteld stelt dat de VS bezig is haar invloed te vergroten door oorlogsvoering..... Ben het niet eens met de Sovjet leiders of hoe zij met het volk omgingen, maar in deze hadden ze het volledig bij het rechte eind..... Het voorgaande geldt ook voor wat de top van de Sovjet-Unie zei over de wil van de VS om Europa onderhorig te maken aan haar economische en strategische belangen, ja lullig maar wel degelijk waar..... 

De meest belachelijke zin die Kennedy gebruikte is wel de volgende: “The United States, as the world knows, will never start a war. We do not want a war”. ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! Wat een oplichter!

Ja, vrede is het belangrijkste onderwerp op aarde, handelde de VS maar eens dusdanig......(plus uiteraard de klimaatverandering, daar bij geen actie een enorm deel van de mensheid en van de dieren het dodelijke slachtoffer zullen zijn en zoals je weet: ook op dat gebied laat de VS het afweten) 

In het ICH artikel hieronder zie je de video van de bewuste toespraak en daaronder de uitgeschreven lezing van JFK, die allen aangeven hoe hypocriet ook JFK was (ik ben verantwoordelijk voor de vet gearceerde teksten vanaf het begin van de uitgeschreven lezing):

Lest we forget

The Most Important Topic On Earth

By President John F. Kennedy

"A topic on which, too often ignorance abounds and the truth too rarely perceived and that is the most important topic on earth, world peace."

"What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children, not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women, not merely peace in our time but peace for all time." John F. Kennedy - Address at American University Washington, D.C., June 10,1963

Address at American University Washington, D.C., June 10,1963

Posted November 22, 2019

Transcript

President Anderson, members of the faculty, board of trustees, distinguished guests, my old colleague, Senator Bob Byrd, who has earned his degree through many years of attending night law school, while I am earning mine in the next 30 minutes, ladies and gentlemen:
It is with great pride that I participate in this ceremony of the American University, sponsored by the Methodist Church, founded by Bishop John Fletcher Hurst, and first opened by President Woodrow Wilson in 1914. This is a young and growing university, but it has already fulfilled Bishop Hurst's enlightened hope for the study of history and public affairs in a city devoted to the making of history and to the conduct of the public's business. By sponsoring this institution of higher learning for all who wish to learn, whatever their color or their creed, the Methodists of this area and the Nation deserve the Nation's thanks, and I commend all those who are today graduating.

Professor Woodrow Wilson once said that every man sent out from a university should be a man of his nation as well as a man of his time, and I am confident that the men and women who carry the honor of graduating from this institution will continue to give from their lives, from their talents, a high measure of public service and public support.

"There are few earthly things more beautiful than a university," wrote John Masefield, in his tribute to English universities, and his words are equally true today. He did not refer to spires and towers, to campus greens and ivied walls. He admired the splendid beauty of the university, he said, because it was "a place where those who hate ignorance may strive to know, where those who perceive truth may strive to make others see."

I have, therefore, chosen this time and this place to discuss a topic on which ignorance too often abounds and the truth is too rarely perceived, yet it is the most important topic on earth: world peace.

What kind of peace do I mean? What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children, not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women, not merely peace in our time but peace for all time.

I speak of peace because of the new face of war. Total war makes no sense in an age when great powers can maintain large and relatively invulnerable nuclear forces and refuse to surrender without resort to those forces. It makes no sense in an age when a single nuclear weapon contains almost ten times the explosive force delivered by all of the allied air forces in the Second World War. It makes no sense in an age when the deadly poisons produced by a nuclear exchange would be carried by wind and water and soil and seed to the far corners of the glove and to generations yet unborn.

Today the expenditure of billions of dollars every year of weapons acquired for the purpose of making sure we never need to use them is essential to keeping the peace. But surely the acquisition of such idle stockpiles -- which can only destroy and never create -- is not the only, much less the most efficient, means of assuring peace. I speak of peace, therefore, as the necessary rational end of rational men. I realize that the pursuit of peace is not as dramatic as the pursuit of war and frequently the words of the pursuer fall on deaf ears. But we have no more urgent task.

Some say that it is useless to speak of world peace or world law or world disarmament and that it will be useless until the leaders of the Soviet Union adopt a more enlightened attitude. I hope they do. I believe we can help them do it. But I also believe that we must reexamine our own attitude -- as individuals and as a Nation -- for our attitude is as essential as theirs. And every graduate of this school, every thoughtful citizen who despairs of war and wishes to bring peace, should begin by looking inward -- by examining his own attitude toward the possibilities of peace, toward the Soviet Union, toward the course of the cold war and toward freedom and peace here at home.

First: Let us examine our attitude toward peace itself. Too many of us think it is impossible. Too many think it unreal. But that is a dangerous, defeatist belief. It leads to the conclusion that war is inevitable -- that mankind is doomed, that we are gripped by forces we cannot control.

We need not accept that view. Our problems are manmade, therefore, they can be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings. Man's reason and spirit have often solved the seemingly unsolvable and we believe they can do it again.

I am not referring to the absolute, infinite concept of universal peace and good will of which some fantasies and fanatics dream. I do not deny the value of hopes and dreams but we merely invite discouragement and incredulity by making that our only and immediate goal.

Let us focus instead on a more practical, more attainable peace -- based not on a sudden revolution in human nature but on a gradual evolution in human institutions, on a series of concrete actions and effective agreements which are in the interest of all concerned. There is no single, simple key to this peace, no grand or magic formula to be adopted by one or two powers. 
Genuine peace must be the product of many nations, the sum of many acts. It must be dynamic, not static, changing to meet the challenge of each new generation. For peace is a process -- a way of solving problems.

With such a peace, there will still be quarrels and conflicting interests, as there are within families and nations. World peace, like community peace, does not require that each man love his neighbor; it requires only that they live together in mutual tolerance, submitting their disputes to a just and peaceful settlement. And history teaches us that enmities between nations, as between individuals, do not last forever. However our likes and dislikes may seem, the tide of time and events will often bring surprising changes in the relations between nations and neighbors.

So let us persevere. Peace need not be impracticable, and war need not be inevitable. By defining our goal more clearly, by making it seem more manageable and less remote, we can help all peoples to see it, to draw hope from it, and to move irresistibly toward it.

Second: Let us reexamine our attitude toward the Soviet Union. It is discouraging to think that their leaders may actually believe what their propagandists write. It is discouraging to read a recent authoritative Soviet text on Military Strategy and find, on page after page, wholly baseless and incredible claims such as the allegation that "American imperialist circles are preparing to unleash different types of wars ... that there is a very real threat of a preventive war being unleashed by American imperialists against the Soviet Union ... [and that] the political aims of the American imperialists are to enslave economically and politically the European and other capitalist countries ... [and] to achieve world domination ... by means of aggressive wars."

Truly, as it was written long ago: "The wicked flee when no man pursueth." Yet it is sad to read these Soviet statements -- to realize the extent of the gulf between us. But it is also a warning -- a warning to the American people not to fall into the same trap as the Soviets, not to see only a distorted and desperate view of the other side, not to see conflict as inevitable, accommodation as impossible, and communication as nothing more than an exchange of threats.

No government or social system is so evil that its people must be considered as lacking in virtue. As Americans, we find communism profoundly repugnant as a negation of personal freedom and dignity. But we can still hail the Russian people for their many achievements -- in science and space, in economic and industrial growth, in culture and in acts of courage.

Among the many traits the peoples of our two countries have in common, none is stronger than our mutual abhorrence of war. Almost unique, among the major world powers, we have never been at war with each other. And no nation in the history of battle ever suffered more than the Soviet Union suffered in the course of the Second World War. At least 20 million lost their lives. Countless millions of homes and farms were burned or sacked. A third of the nation's territory, including nearly two thirds of its industrial base, was turned into a wasteland -- a loss equivalent to the devastation of this country east of Chicago.

Today, should total war ever break out again no matter how our two countries would become the primary targets. It is an ironic but accurate fact that the two strongest powers are the two in the most danger of devastation. All we have built, all we have worked for, would be destroyed in the first 24 hours. And even in the cold war, which brings burdens and dangers to so many countries, including this Nation's closest allies our two countries bear the heaviest burdens. For we are both devoting massive sums of money to weapons that could be better devoted to combating ignorance, poverty, and disease. We are both caught up in a vicious and dangerous cycle in which suspicion on one side breeds suspicion on the other, and new weapons beget counterweapons.

In short, both the United States and its allies, and the Soviet Union and its allies, have a mutually deep interest in a just and genuine peace and in halting the arms race. Agreements to this end are in the interests of the Soviet Union as well as ours, and even the most hostile nations can be relied upon to accept and keep those treaty obligations, and only those treaty obligations, which are in their own interest. So, let us not be blind to our differences, but let us also direct attention to our common interests and to the means by which those differences can be resolved. And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal.
Third: Let us reexamine our attitude toward the cold war, remembering that we are not engaged in a debate, seeking to pile up debating points. We are not here distributing blame or pointing the finger of judgment. We must deal with the world as it is, and not as it might have been had the history of the last 18 years been different.

We must, therefore, persevere in the search for peace in the hope that constructive changes within the Communist bloc might bring within reach solutions which now seem beyond us. We must conduct our affairs in such a way that it becomes in the Communist's interest to agree on a genuine peace. Above all, while defending our own vital interests, nuclear powers must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war. To adopt that kind of course in the nuclear age would be evidence only of the bankruptcy of our policy -- or of a collective death -- wish for the world. To secure these ends, America's weapons are nonprovocative, carefully controlled, designed to deter, and capable of selective use. Our military forces are committed to peace and disciplined in self-restraint. Our diplomats are instructed to avoid unnecessary irritants and purely rhetorical hostility.

For we can seek a relaxation of tensions without relaxing our guard. And, for our part, we do not need to use threats to prove that we are resolute. We do not need to jam foreign broadcasts out of fear our faith will be eroded. We are unwilling to impose our system on any unwilling people, but we are willing and able to engage in peaceful competition with any people on earth.

Meanwhile, we seek to strengthen the United Nations, to help solve its financial problems, to make it a more effective instrument for peace, to develop it into a genuine world security system -- a system capable of resolving disputes on the basis of law, of insuring the security of the large and the small, and of creating conditions under which arms can finally be abolished. At the same time we seek to keep peace inside the non-Communist world, where many nations, all of them our friends, are divided over issues which weaken Western unity, which invite Communist intervention or which threaten to erupt into war. Our efforts in West New Guinea, in the Congo, in the Middle East, and in the Indian sub continent, have been persistent and patient despite criticism from both sides. We have also tried to set an example for others by seeking to adjust small but significant differences with our own closest neighbors in Mexico and in Canada.

Speaking of other nations, I wish to make one point clear. We are bound to many nations by alliances. Those alliances exist because our concern and theirs substantially overlap. Our commitment to defend Western Europe and West Berlin, for example, stands undiminished because of the identity of our vital interests. The United States will make no deal with the Soviet Union at the expense of other nations and other peoples, not merely because they are our partners, but also because their interests and ours converge.

Our interests converge, however, not only in defending the frontiers of freedom, but in pursuing the paths of peace. It is our hope -- and the purpose of allied policies -- to convince the Soviet Union that she, too, should let each nation choose its own future, so long as that choice does not interfere with the choices of others. The Communist drive to impose their political and economic system on others is the primary cause of world tension today. For there can be no doubt that, if all nations could refrain from interfering in the self determination of others, the peace would be much more assured.

This will require a new effort to achieve world law -- a new context for world discussions. It will require increased understanding between the Soviets and ourselves. And increased understanding will require increased contact and communication. One step in this direction is the proposed arrangement for a direct line between Moscow and Washington, to avoid on each side the dangerous delays, misunderstandings, and misreadings of the other's actions which might occur at a time of crisis.

We have also been talking in Geneva about other first-step measures of arms control, designed to limit the intensity of the arms race and to reduce the risks of accidental war. Our primary long-range interest in Geneva, however, is general and complete disarmament designed to take place by stages, permitting parallel political developments to build the new institutions of peace which would take the place of arms. The pursuit of disarmament has been an effort of this Government since the 1920's. It has been urgently sought by the past three administrations. And however dim the prospects may be today, we intend to continue this effort to continue it in order that all countries, including our own, can better grasp what the problems and possibilities of disarmament are.

The one major area of these negotiations where the end is in sight, yet where a fresh start is badly needed, is in a treaty to outlaw nuclear tests. The conclusion of such a treaty, so near and yet so far, would check the spiraling arms race in one of its most dangerous areas. It would place the nuclear powers in a position to deal more effectively with one of the greatest hazards which man faces in 1963, the further spread of nuclear arms. It would increase our security -- it would decrease the prospects of war. Surely this goal is sufficiently important to require our steady pursuit, yielding neither to the temptation to give up the whole effort nor the temptation to give up our insistence on vital and responsible safeguards. I am taking this opportunity, therefore, to announce two important decisions in this regard.

First: Chairman Khrushchev, Prime Minister Macmillan, and I have agreed that high-level discussions will shortly begin in Moscow looking toward early agreement on a comprehensive test ban treaty. Our hopes must be tempered with the caution of history but with our hopes go the hopes of all mankind.

Second: To make clear our good faith and solemn convictions on the matter, I now declare that the United States does not propose to conduct nuclear tests in the atmosphere so long as other states do not do so. We will not be the first to resume. Such a declaration is no substitute for a formal binding treaty, but I hope it will help us achieve one. Nor would such a treaty be a substitute for disarmament, but I hope it will help us achieve it.

Finally, my fellow Americans, let us examine our attitude toward peace and freedom here at home. The quality and spirit of our own society must justify and support our efforts abroad. We must show it in the dedication of our own lives, as many of you who are graduating today will have a unique opportunity to do, by serving without pay in the Peace Corps abroad or in the proposed National Service Corps here at home.

But wherever we are, we must all, in our daily lives, live up to the age-old faith that peace and freedom walk together. In too many of our cities today, the peace is not secure because freedom is incomplete.

It is the responsibility of the executive branch at all levels of government -- local, State, and National -- to provide and protect that freedom for all of our citizens by all means within their authority. It is the responsibility of the legislative branch at all levels, wherever that authority is not now adequate, to make it adequate. And it is the responsibility of all citizens in all sections of this country to respect the rights of all others and to respect the law of the land.

All this is not unrelated to world peace. "When a man's ways please the Lord," the Scriptures tell us, "he maketh even his enemies to be at peace with him." And is not peace, in the last analysis, basically a matter of human rights -- the right to live out our lives without fear of devastation, the right to breathe air as nature provided it, the right of future generations to a healthy existence?

While we proceed to safeguard our national interests, let us also safeguard human interests. And the elimination of war and arms is clearly in the interest of both. No treaty, however much it may be to the advantage of all, however tightly it may be worded, can provide absolute security against the risks of deception and evasion. But it can, if it is sufficiently effective in its enforcement and if it is sufficiently in the interests of its signers, offer far more security and far fewer risks than an unabated, uncontrolled, unpredictable arms race.

The United States, as the world knows, will never start a war. We do not want a war. We do not now expect a war. This generation of Americans has already had enough -- more than enough -- of war and hate and oppression. We shall be prepared if others wish it. We shall be alert to try to stop it. But we shall also do our part to build a world of peace where the weak are safe and the strong are just. We are not helpless before that task or hopeless of its success. Confident and unafraid, we labor on, not toward a strategy of annihilation but toward a strategy of peace.

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* Tegenwoordig pakt de VS het iets voorzichtiger aan, men plaatst een interim president aan, die belooft dat er binnen een paar jaar democratische verkiezingen worden gehouden (onder toezicht van de VS en met manipulaties onder regie van de VS...).... Tja je wilt niet dat zo'n afgezette leider opnieuw aan het bewind komt, zeker niet als het grootste deel van het volk achter deze leider staat, neem nu weer Bolivia......

Zie voor VS geweld:

 'VS vermoordde meer dan 20 miljoen mensen sinds het einde van WOII........' Tot het jaar 2000, deze eeuw zijn er intussen meer dan 2,5 miljoen moorden aan toe te voegen, moorden begaan door de VS en de NAVO (waar deze terreurorganisatie onder militair opperbevel stond en staat van de VS...)....

'VS buitenlandbeleid sinds WOII: een lange lijst van staatsgrepen en oorlogen..........'

'List of wars involving the United States'

'CIA 70 jaar: 70 jaar moorden, martelen, coups plegen, nazi's beschermen, media manipulatie enz. enz.........'

Spanningen met Iran: VS geschiedenis van false flag operaties en andere manipulaties die tot oorlog hebben geleid

Gisteren op The American Conservative een artikel van Robert W. Merry, waarin hij schrijft over eerdere false flag operaties en andere manipulaties die tot oorlog dan wel oorlogsdeelname van de VS hebben geleid.

Je had al begrepen dat Merry dit artikel schreef n.a.v. de beschuldigingen aan het adres van Iran over het aanvallen van olietankers en het neerhalen van een VS drone.

Met 5 voorbeelden geeft Merry aan dat de VS in een aantal gevallen onterecht in een oorlog verwikkelde raakte. Daarbij noemt Merry ook WOII, echter het was bijna onmogelijk dat de VS uit deze oorlog kon blijven, daar ook het beheersen van olievoorraden (in de grond) deel uitmaakte van deze oorlog, echter de manier waarop e.e.a. gebeurde is welhaast ongelofelijk......

Lies They Told Us: A Long History of Being Manipulated Into War

Before we retaliate over drone and oil tanker attacks, take a look at all the times we've been duped.

By ROBERT W. MERRY • June 21, 2019

“It is the assessment of the U.S. government that Iran is responsible for today’s attacks in the Gulf of Oman” Credit: @SecPompeo

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says there’s no question that Iran initiated the recent attacks on those two oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman. The evidence, he says, is “indisputable” and “unmistakable.” President Donald Trump weighs in with the same degree of certainty. “Well, Iran did do it,” he told Fox News.

Maybe. But our past is screaming at us: don’t buy it; you can’t trust your leaders when war fever sets in and war prospects are on the rise. Consider the history surrounding the run-ups to the Mexican War, World War I, World War II, Vietnam, and the Iraq war. Lies, misrepresentations, and manipulations abound in all those episodes.

As for those tankers, where’s the evidence? True, the U.S. Central Command trotted out a video that appears to show unidentified people in a small boat removing something from the side of a tanker—an unexploded mine, we are told by U.S. officials, who assert this constitutes proof of Iran’s complicity. As Trump puts it, “And you know they did it because you saw the boat.”

But that’s pretty thin stuff. The Germans and Japanese made that clear when they requested stronger evidence than that grainy video released by the Pentagon.

Now comes Politico with a piece saying the Trump administration has been making the case “in public and private” that no new congressional authorization would be necessary to go to war with Iran. They could simply rely on the 2001 authorization against Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks on American soil.

Leave aside for the moment the ominous threat this poses to the constitutional precept that Congress is the repository of the nation’s warmaking power. It also would preclude a congressional debate on the matter, depriving the nation of an opportunity to assess the facts before hostilities actually begin. The following historical episodes reveal the importance of getting those facts established before the country goes to war.

James K. Polk and the Mexican War: Contrary to allegations that have dogged the 11th president for nearly 180 years, it isn’t quite true to say that he lied. But he did declare to the nation that Mexico had “spilled American blood on the American soil.” The problem is that it wasn’t, strictly speaking, American soil. That territory had been under dispute between Mexico and Texas during the time of Texas independence, and America inherited that dispute when it acquired Texas through annexation in 1845. So it could be argued that Polk was merely expressing his view that that disputed territory actually belonged to the United States, just as Texas had always insisted that it belonged to Texas.

But such niceties of language shrouded the fact that, if there was no other way for America to acquire what is now the Southwest and California, then Polk wanted a war with Mexico. And he maneuvered events with a clear intent to force the issue, much as Pompeo seems to be doing now.

Polk sent an army into the disputed territory and planted it directly across the Rio Grande from the dusty little Mexican town of Matamoros, where a large number of Mexican troops were stationed. This was highly incendiary, and it inevitably led to a skirmish in which 11 American soldiers were killed and another 50 or so captured. Polk promptly sent a message to Congress saying the United States and Mexico were in a state of war and calling for a congressional war declaration.

South Carolina’s Senator John C. Calhoun, among others, would have none of it. This skirmish, he said, was a “mere local conflict, not authorized by either government,” and it was “monstrous” to blow it up into a doctrine that “every American is [now] an enemy of every Mexican.” But American blood had been spilled, and the country was riled. The final Senate vote was 40 to 2, with Calhoun refusing to answer the roll call. The previous House vote was 173 to 14.

There is plenty of documentary evidence, including Polk’s own diary, that the president wanted that war and that, by maneuvering his troops in such a way as to render bloodshed all but inevitable, he manipulated public opinion. Indeed, even before the skirmish on the Rio Grande, he was preparing to ask Congress for a war declaration.

Woodrow Wilson and World War I: There can be no doubt that Wilson was reelected president in 1916 (with just 49.2 percent of the vote) on his stated resolve to keep America out of Europe’s Great War. But it was all phony, as he’d always hankered to get America onto the world stage. It wasn’t easy keeping the United States out of the war through the election season, given delicate neutrality issues forced upon the U.S. by both Britain and Germany. Britain imposed a blockade designed to thwart all trade to Germany and the Central Powers and to ”starve the whole population—men, women, and children, old and young, wounded and sound—into submission,” as Britain’s pugnacious First Sea Lord, Winston Churchill, brazenly declared.

Wilson initially sought to wend his way through this neutrality thicket, rendered all the more difficult after Germany initiated submarine attacks designed to stop munitions shipments to Britain and counteract the blockade. But ultimately he favored the UK and took actions he knew would draw America into the war. He not only observed the British blockade but also allowed armed British merchant ships entry to U.S. ports, which in turn fostered a flow of American munitions to the Allied Powers. At the same time, Wilson declared that Germany would be held to a “strict accountability” for any American loss of life or property from German submarine attacks designed to enforce the neutrality that Wilson was flouting. This policy, he added, would apply even if affected Americans were traveling or working on British or French ships. After all, he declared, Americans had the “right” to travel on any vessels they wanted, even in wartime.

Wilson’s secretary of state, William Jennings Bryan, warned the president that he faced a stark choice: either adopt a more evenhanded approach or accept the inevitability of war. Bryan ultimately resigned over the issue, and he turned out to be right. A desperate Germany, suffering horrendously under Churchill’s starvation policy, initiated unrestricted submarine warfare against ships carrying goods to Britain or France. Wilson promptly asked for a congressional declaration of war—and got it.

Franklin Roosevelt and World War II: When Europe was once again thrust into a dark conflict after Nazi Germany’s invasion of Poland in September 1939, FDR almost desperately wished to take America in. But the country, still stung by the bitter fruits of Wilson’s previous intervention, didn’t want to enter the fray. “I am almost literally walking on eggs,” Roosevelt wrote to a foreign official, explaining the precarious perch between his own powerful conviction and the public’s aversion to war. “I am at the moment saying nothing, seeing nothing, and hearing nothing.”

But this wasn’t quite true. He was applying his stealth and wiles in every way possible to help Britain and nudge his country to war. He passed diplomatic secrets to friendly reporters to help the cause. He initiated secret depth charge attacks on German submarines in the North Atlantic. As Robert Shjogan writes in his book Hard Bargain, FDR almost certainly violated the prevailing Neutrality Acts by making destroyers available to Britain—an action that in another time and political climate could have been impeachable. And he maneuvered Japan into a position of near desperation in an effort to force a confrontation. That he knew what he was doing is evidenced by the fact that he initiated planning for the removal of Japanese Americans from the West Coast even before Pearl Harbor, as John Toland reveals in his 1982 book Infamy. Shogan writes that FDR didn’t hesitate “to twist the law, flout the Constitution, hoodwink the public, and distort the political process.”

Lyndon Johnson and the Vietnam war: On August 2, 1964, North Vietnamese PT boats attacked the U.S.S. Maddox in the Gulf of Tonkin. This could not have surprised those in the know inside the U.S. government. The Maddox had been providing logistical and electronic surveillance support to South Vietnamese forces engaged in raiding parties on North Vietnamese soil. Two days later, when it seemed another attack on the Maddox had ensued, President Johnson snapped into action. He asked for a congressional resolution authorizing him to counter such raids with military action as needed. This allowed Johnson to prosecute what became America’s disastrous seven-year Vietnam war.

But that second attack on the Maddox never took place. It seems that rare weather patterns distorted radar imaging and gave the impression of multiple hostile ships when none had been in the vicinity.

When this was ascertained by Navy Captain John Herrick, commander of the Seventh Fleet destroyer division, he promptly sent a corrective message to Washington: “Review of action makes many reported contacts and torpedoes fired appear doubtful. Freak weather effects on radar and overeager sonarmen may have accounted for many reports. No actual visual sightings by Maddox. Suggest complete evaluation before any further action taken.”

But action already had been taken, and Johnson administration officials weren’t about to turn around and let the opportunity slip. So they lied. Within days, Secretary of State Dean Rusk and Defense Secretary Robert McNamara traveled to Capitol Hill to assure lawmakers that the August 4 “attacks” represented ”open aggression on the high seas against the United States of America,” as Johnson put it.

In response to expressions of skepticism by Oregon Senator Wayne Morse, McNamara declared, “Our Navy played absolutely no part in, was not associated with, was not aware of, any South Vietnamese actions, if there were any…. The Maddox was operating in international waters, was carrying out a routine patrol of the type we carry out all over the world at all times.” As Robert Mann writes in a footnote in A Grand Delusion: America’s Descent into Vietnam, “That statement was, as McNamara knew, false.”

Arkansas Senator William Fulbright agreed to manage the Tonkin Gulf resolution on the Senate floor largely because he had faith in Johnson’s veracity. As Fulbright’s staff chief, Lee Williams, later said, “He had no reason to believe that he was used as a dupe, if you will, and that this was a ruse on behalf of Johnson to get the authority that he needed to conduct a wider war.”

George W. Bush and the Iraq war: Did Bush lie to the American people about those weapons of mass destruction that the U.S. government expected to find in Iraq? Probably not. More likely, Bush and his people lied to themselves in their zealous efforts to fashion justifications for overthrowing Iraq’s leader, Saddam Hussein, and to ensure Middle East peace, protect the U.S. homeland, and preserve America’s regional influence. But officials have a grave responsibility to ensure extensive fact finding and sober deliberation in matters of war and peace. Presidents shouldn’t take America to war based on an oops. This was reckless behavior for which the Bush people, including Bush himself, have never been brought to account.

And it’s undeniable that the president and many of his top officials were bent on going to war against Saddam irrespective of the factual intricacies involved. There’s the rub. That invasion arguably constitutes the greatest American strategic blunder in at least half a century, perhaps in the entire postwar period. Those kinds of decisions require serious due diligence. So if Bush and his people didn’t know that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, they should have. If not malfeasance, it was abject nonfeasance.

The lesson: beware when our leaders manifest a passion for war. That’s when it’s time to demand honesty, sobriety, and restraint—and answers. The burden of proof rests with the war advocates. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t go to war, just that when we do, it should be with our eyes open.

Robert W. Merry, longtime Washington journalist and publishing executive, is the author most recently of President McKinley: Architect of the American Century.

Related articles:

Bret Stephens, Warmonger

Is the White House Plotting an End-Run Around Congress Into Iran?

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Nog even het volgende: Merry noemt ook Pearl Harbor, waar intussen bekend is dat de VS op de hoogte was van de komende aanval, maar deze heeft laten gebeuren om zo mee te kunnen doen aan de oorlog in een fiks gebied van de Stille Oceaan.

Hier meer voorbeelden van VS terreur, gefundeerd op leugens, fake news en andere manipulaties:
'VS vermoordde meer dan 20 miljoen mensen sinds het einde van WOII........' Tot het jaar 2000, deze eeuw zijn er intussen meer dan 2,5 miljoen moorden aan toe te voegen, moorden begaan door de VS en de NAVO (waar deze terreurorganisatie onder opperbevel stond en staat van de VS...)....

'VS buitenlandbeleid sinds WOII: een lange lijst van staatsgrepen en oorlogen..........'

'List of wars involving the United States'

'CIA 70 jaar: 70 jaar moorden, martelen, coups plegen, nazi's beschermen, media manipulatie enz. enz.........'

Zie voorts:
'Bernard Hammelburg rijp voor oorlogshitsclub Atlantic Council: Al Qaida opereert vanuit Iran'

'VS chanteert de wereld: geen olie import uit Iran, anders........'

'''False flag terror' bestaat wel degelijk: bekentenissen en feiten over heel smerige zaken..........'

'VS plant een bombardement op een Iraanse kerncentrale, verkennende VS drone neergeschoten' (zie ook de links in dat bericht)

'VS heeft stok 'gevonden' om oorlog tegen Iran te beginnen: Iran zou tankers hebben aangevallen'

'Twee olietankers aangevallen in Golf van Oman: VS oorlogsbodem in de buurt'

Wat betreft 9/11 zie:
'De rol van Israël en de VS in de 9/11 aanslagen op het WTC' (zie ook de links naar andere 9/11 artikelen in dat bericht)

Arcering in geel toegevoegd op 16 juli 2019.