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.

Note
To ICH Community

We
ask that you assist us in dissemination of the article published by
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Thank
you for your support.

Peace
and joy

===============================

*
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?

================================

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.