[Mb-civic] from Havana 1898 to Baghdad 2003

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0508-20.htm

Published on Sunday, May 8, 2005 by the Columbus Free Press 
(Columbus, Ohio)
Four Bloody Lies of War, from Havana 1898 to 
Baghdad 2003
by Harvey Wasserman
 

The Bush Administration's lies about its rationales for attacking Iraq fit 
a pattern of deceit that has dragged America into at least three other 
unjust and catastrophic wars.

The "smoking gun" documents that emerged in the recent British 
election confirm the administration had decided to go to war and then 
sought "intelligence" to sell it.

But conscious, manipulative lies were also at the root of American 
attacks on Cuba in 1898, US intervention into World War I in 1917 and 
in Vietnam. These lies are as proven and irrefutable as the 
unconscionable deception that dragged the US into Iraq in 2003.

In each case, these lies of war have caused horrific human slaughter, 
the destruction of human rights and liberties, and financial disaster.

In Cuba, the 1898 sinking of the battleship Maine brought the US into 
war with Spain. The people of Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines 
were in revolt against the crumbling Spanish empire. Media baron 
William Randolph Hearst, the era's Rupert Murdoch, wanted a war to 
sell papers and promote "jingo" power. He portrayed the Spaniards 
barbaric rapists and worse. In the name of democracy and freedom, 
Hearst and pro-war fanatics like Theodore Roosevelt demanded US 
intervention.

Republican President William McKinley, personal hero of today's White 
House dirty trickster Karl Rove, dutifully sent the battleship Maine into 
Havana harbor. Suddenly, it blew up, killing some 250 American 
sailors.

Spain was blamed, and Hearst got his war. Having just conquered and 
annexed what had been the sovereign monarchy of Hawaii, the 
Americans now annexed Puerto Rico and installed colonial regimes in 
Cuba and the Philippines.

But Filipino guerillas waged a jungle resistance that dragged into the 
new century. Thousands died in the quagmire. An angry anti-imperial 
movement sprung up here amongst farmers, labor unions and 
intellectuals like Samuel Clemens, whose writings under the pen name 
Mark Twain remain among the fiercest critiques of the perils of empire.

And guess what! New underwater technology has shown that the 
Maine actually blew up from the inside. Definitive scientific analysis 
says the Spaniards could not have sunk it. The explosion that brought 
it down most likely came from a faulty boiler or a munitions misfire, but 
definitely not from a Spanish mine or torpedo.

The Spanish-American War, with all its bloody imperial slaughter, had 
been sold on a lie.

As was US intervention in World War I. In 1915, as part of a blockade 
against Great Britain, the Germans downed the passenger ship 
Lusitania, on its way from New York to London. More than a thousand 
people died, many of them Americans.

President Woodrow Wilson screamed that Germany had violated 
international law. As Hearst had done to the Spaniards, Wilson 
portrayed "the Huns" as merciless, bloodthirsty barbarians.

The Germans argued that the Lusitania had been carrying weapons, 
and that they were within their rights to sink her. A substantial majority 
of Americans angrily opposed US intervention, saying only bankers 
would profit and that war would divert us from the real issues of 
unionization, poverty and Robber Baron domination of American 
industry.

In the face of an anti-imperial majority, Wilson withdrew troops he had 
sent into Mexico, then ran as a "peace candidate" in 1916 on the 
slogan "He Kept Us Out of War".

But in April 1917, reviving bloody images of the Lusitania, Wilson 
dragged the US into the slaughter. More than 100,000 Americans died. 
Under cover of war, federal marshals burned and blew up offices of 
the Socialist Party and radical unions like the Industrial Workers of the 
World. Wilson shredded the Bill of Rights and jailed, deported or killed 
thousands of organizers. Eugene V. Debs, the beloved leader of the 
American labor movement, was thrown in federal prison. The 
ideological left was crushed.

Wilson did tip the military balance for Britain and France. But his high-
minded rhetoric about a League of Nations and a balanced peace fell 
into chaos. The Allies demanded reparations which helped feed the 
Nazi movement and an even greater slaughter in World War II. Wilson 
suffered a stroke and left the country in shambles.

And guess what! Deep sea divers recently found the Lusitania, its 
sunken hull laden with illegal armaments. As the Germans had 
claimed, the ship was violating international law. Like McKinley, Wilson 
had duped America into a catastrophic intervention based on a "faulty 
intelligence."

Likewise, Vietnam, which hysterical cold warriors portrayed as the key 
domino in a global struggle against communism. The US had canceled 
1956 elections which would have given to Ho Chi Minh control of a 
unified Vietnam. But nationalist guerillas were clearly on the brink of 
wresting South Vietnam from western control.

In 1964 North Vietnamese allegedly fired on two US ships in the Gulf 
of Tonkin. While campaigning as a peace candidate, Lyndon Johnson 
used the incident to win Congressional approval for unlimited 
intervention. By 1967 he'd sent some 550,000 US troops into 
Southeast Asia.

A mirror image of the earlier war in the Philippines, Vietnam may rank 
as the greatest of all modern American catastrophes. It split and 
alienated a generation, poisoned American politics, spawned a toxic 
cadre of dirty tricksters and marked the downturn of the American 
economy. The war destroyed Johnson's Great Society, and has 
rendered every American tangibly poorer in more ways than can be 
counted.

And guess what! The Gulf of Tonkin incident probably never 
happened. According to then-Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, 
the Vietnamese may never actually have fired shots that may or may 
not have put a few bullet holes in one or two US ships. Even if they did, 
any such attack had zero military significance.

Like the Maine and Lusitania, the guns of Tonkin were nothing more 
than lies of war.

Bitter debate still also rages over the origins of World War II and 
Korea. Many argue that Franklin Roosevelt knew the Japanese were 
going to attack Pearl Harbor, and that he let it happen. Some also say 
that South Korea attacked North Korea, not vice-versa.

At least in terms of public consensus, these two stories still lack 
definitive smoking guns. But the Maine, the Lusitania and the Tonkin 
Gulf are known, irrefutable quantities.

To which we now must add George W. Bush's lies of Iraq. The war 
was primarily sold as a way to destroy Saddam Hussein's Weapons of 
Mass Destruction. The world was also told Saddam was involved in the 
9/11 attacks on the US, and was trying to get nuclear bombs.

These were all lies. The British memos proving the Bush and Blair 
Administrations knew Saddam did not have WMDs, was not involved 
in 9/11 and had no way to make atomic weapons are now public 
monuments. Like the Maine, Lusitania and Tonkin, the proofs are 
tangible and irrefutable.

What happened to the perpetrators of those previous lies?

In 1901, William McKinley became the third sitting president (after 
Lincoln and Garfield) to be assassinated. Theodore Roosevelt then 
dragged the Philippine slaughter to its tragic conclusion. Only when his 
young son Quentin was killed in World War I did TR question the 
glories of imperial conquest.

Woodrow Wilson's debilitating stroke came as he imposed the most 
intense attack on civil liberties in US history destroying the Socialist 
Party and the ideological left. He was succeeded by the affable Warren 
G. Harding, who freed Eugene V. Debs from federal prison, then 
himself died in office (of apparent food poisoning) amidst the a sea of 
scandal.

After Tonkin, Lyndon Johnson's presidency descended into Wilsonian 
chaos. A ferocious anti-war movement forced him to duck out of 
running for re-election. Richard Nixon then took the lies of war to a 
whole new level, expanding the slaughter in Southeast Asia and 
becoming the first US president to resign in disgrace.

Nixon's "dirty trickster" disciples Karl Rove and Dick Cheney have now 
poisoned this nation with yet another ghastly lie of war. Their hopeless 
Iraqi slaughter has become the modern definition of cynical deceit, 
human butchery and economic ruin.

Exactly what will happen to us and to the liars that have dragged us 
into this latest bloody quagmire remains to be seen.

But history does not indicate a pretty outcome.

HARVEY WASSERMAN'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES is at 
www.harveywasserman.com.

© 2005 the Free Press

###


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