James E. Miller: Up until the first bullet was fired on Fort Sumter, Abraham Lincoln
had been leading a type of economic aggression to force the South into
initiating the official version of the conflict. When Lincoln ran for
president, his platform was based on Henry Clay-inspired mercantilism
where he promised to maintain a high protective tariff that would serve
Northern industrial interests while impoverishing the South’s still
predominantly agrarian economy. This, of course, angered the South much
like it did when John Quincy Adams imposed the same type of tariff in
1828 which lead to the Nullification Crisis. With the Morrill Tariff,
which increased the tax on dutiable imports by about 70%, put in place
by President Buchanan two days before he left office, the South stood
ready to secede. After Lincoln’s inauguration, he began to maneuver the
seceding South into firing the first shot by breaking a previously
established agreement to not attempt to restock Fort Sumter. He
secretly sent troops the Fort which escalated into what turned out to be
the bloodiest war in American history. Lincoln’s close friend and
confidante Senator Orville H. Browning would go on to write in his diary:
He told me that the very first thing
placed in his hands after his inauguration was a letter from Major
Anderson announcing the impossibility of defending or relieving Sumter.
That he called the cabinet together and consulted General Scott—that
Scott concurred with Anderson, and the cabinet, with the exception of PM
General Blair were for evacuating the Fort and all the troubles and
anxieties of his life had not equalled (sic) those which
intervened between this time and the fall of Sumter. He himself
conceived the idea, and proposed sending supplies, without an attempt to
reinforce giving notice of the fact to Governor Pickens of S.C. The
plan succeed. They attacked Sumter—it fell, and thus, did more service
than it otherwise could.
Contrary to popular belief, the Civil War was not a fight over
slavery but a fight over whether the South was allowed to secede from
the union. Lincoln thought war would rally the North behind his
special-interest driven agenda. The South sent numerous commissioners
to Washington in the hopes of finding a peaceful solution to secession.
Lincoln ignored all of them. As he stated in a letter addressed to Horace Greeley of the New York Tribune:
My paramount object in this struggle is
to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I
could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I
could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could
save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.
What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it
helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not
believe it would help to save the Union.
So why is this version of the Civil War not taught in public schools?
It’s a simple answer when you consider the driving force of statism.
Romanticized retellings of war assist in convincing the masses that
the campaigns of murder carried out by political leaders were for the
good of the nation. It enshrines the state as a life-saving guardian to
those fortunate enough to not meet a gruesome death on the
battlefield. In the case of the Civil War, Lincoln didn’t just save the
union; he has forever made secession a nonviable solution to an
overreaching Washington. Lincoln’s war of northern aggression turned these united States of America into the United States of America. It cost the equivalent
of 6 million lives today for honest Abe to destroy the volunteerism
which defined the union of the states in the decades that preceded the
war.
Just as the Civil War was triggered by deceit, many of the wars or
military conflicts of the past century have been fought based on the
lies of a political class all too enamored with their own power and
place in history.
Starting with World War I and Woodrow Wilson’s quest to “make the
world safe for democracy,” the popularly spun tail is that America’s
entering the conflict was in reaction to Germany sinking the supposedly
innocent passenger vessel the Lusitania. After German subs sunk the
ship, thereby killing women and children, popular support reversed and
was now in favor of war. What wasn’t revealed immediately is that the
Lusitania was really outfitted to carry armaments for the British. This
was a strategy developed by then First Lord of the Admiralty Winston
Churchill to bait a German attack and bring America into the fight. As
classical liberal historian Ralph Raico writes:
The Lusitania was a passenger
liner loaded with munitions of war; Churchill had given orders to the
captains of merchant ships, including liners, to ram German submarines
if they encountered them, and the Germans were aware of this. And, as
Churchill stressed in his memoirs of World War I, embroiling neutral
countries in hostilities with the enemy was a crucial part of warfare:
“There are many kinds of maneuvres in war, some only of which take place
on the battlefield. . . . The maneuvre which brings an ally into the
field is as serviceable as that which wins a great battle.
Then there is the often neglected role big business, especially JP
Morgan & Co, played in the propagandizing of the war. As one of the
largest creditors and underwriters to war bonds issued by the
governments of Britain and France, it was in the best interest of the
House of Morgan to guarantee the Allies won the war. As the American
economy drifted toward one of top-down command where government
cartelized industry to ensure adequate munitions for war, big business
was more than happy to play along as it meant stifling regulations
placed on their small-time competitors and the opportunity to keep
prices elevated. This perverted form of capitalism would serve as a
model to Western nations from the war’s end to the present day. Murray
Rothbard believed the first World War was really a victory for the fascist state:
More than any other single period, World
War I was the critical watershed for the American business system. It
was a “war collectivism,” a totally planned economy run largely by
big-business interests through the instrumentality of the central
government, which served as the model, the precedent, and the
inspiration for state corporate capitalism for the remainder of the
twentieth century.
The beginnings of World War II were engulfed by the same collusion of
big business and government along with underhanded tactics to further
chip away at the American public’s noninterventionist stance. The
Morgans still had their financial ties with Britain and France while the
Rockefellers wanted war with Japan since the country competed for raw
materials in Southeast Asia. Both financial powerhouses lobbied for war
early on. After Franklin Roosevelt was reelected on the platform of
keeping America a neutral party, he set about provoking a Japanese
attack sometime around the summer of 1941. This resulted in an oil
embargo, the forceful limiting of exports, and freezing the country’s
assets within the U.S. It was the equivalent of an economic fatal wound
to resource-poor Japan. Not only that, but in recent years it has been confirmed
that Roosevelt had prior knowledge of the Pearl Harbor attack and
actually withheld key information from commanders at the naval base. As
Vice Admiral and aid to the Secretary of the Navy Frank E. Beatty noted at the time:
Prior to December 7, it was evident even
to me… that we were pushing Japan into a corner. I believed that it was
the desire of President Roosevelt, and Prime Minister Churchill that we
get into the war, as they felt the Allies could not win without us and
all our efforts to cause the Germans to declare war on us failed; the
conditions we imposed upon Japan—to get out of China, for example—were
so severe that we knew that nation could not accept them. We were
forcing her so severely that we could have known that she would react
toward the United States. All her preparations in a military way—and we
knew their over-all import—pointed that way.
Following World War II, every conflict the U.S. has engaged in has
been either to the benefit of wealthy special interests or in reaction
to its own misguided policies. The Cold War was a four decade long gift
to the military industrial complex against a supposed world power that
collapsed due to its state-run economy. The various bombings and
occupations of Middle Easter countries which followed have only served
as excuses to not end the flow of money into the pockets of politically
connected military contractors. And the Iraq War, as everyone now
knows, was based on the lie of Saddam Hussein possessing weapons of mass
destruction.
One would think with such a rich history of political patronage in
the death industry, Americans would be adamantly opposed to war. Yet
the usual players in Washington are once again pounding on the war drums
in the name of spreading American values. The target this time is Iran
and at least one presidential candidate in this fall’s election has vowed
to use military force on a nation that hasn’t bowed down and kissed
Uncle Sam’s jackboot. The problem is Iran has the hubris of refusing to
be bullied around by the U.S. Such an attitude undermines American
imperialism in front of the rest of the world. It must be stomped out
by any means necessary.
And then there is the big financial push for an Iranian war going on
behind the scenes. The pro-Israel lobbying group, the American Israel
Public Affairs Committee, has been aggressively pushing for war and appealing to top lawmakers and the heads of Washington’s warmongering apparatus. President Obama has already assured
the flush lobbying group that “the United States will not hesitate to
attack Iran with military force to prevent it from acquiring a nuclear
weapon.” Department of Defense Secretary Leon Panetta made the same promise. Just last week, 44 Senators, including many Democrats, sent an AIPAC letter
to the President urging him to consider military action if Iran
continues with its nuclear program. The letter essentially makes war
the only option on the table as Glenn Greenwald of Salon points out:
This implication is clear: a military
attack by the U.S. on Iran is at least justified, if not compelled, if a
satisfactory agreement is not quickly reached regarding Iran’s nuclear
program. At the same time, the letter itself virtually ensures no such
agreement is possible because the conditions it imposes as the “absolute
minimum” are ones everyone knows Iran will never agree to (closing the
Fordow facility and giving up its right to enrich uranium above 5
percent).
Not only is the push for war bipartisan, but much of the media
establishment has been devoid of criticism of the constant war rhetoric.
Even though Israel has nukes of its own, many of its supporters portray
the country as a weakling in dire need of assistance from the bully of
the Middle East schoolyard. Worse is the complete disregard of the fact
that there is no actual evidence that Iran is concocting a nuclear
weapon. According to the CIA’s own National Intelligence Estimate
of 2007, Iran put a stop to the development of nuclear weapons in the
fall of 2003. Other Western nations such as Germany, France, and
Britain, deny the report’s conclusion. Meanwhile Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has gotten impatient
of the reluctance by the U.S. thus far to act militarily against Iran.
Like a good politician, he wants prestige without the dirty work.
That’s what America is for.
Despite already being engaged in drone wars in Pakistan, Somalia,
Yemen, and still occupying Afghanistan, the U.S. is being duped into yet
another war based on shaky evidence and at the behest of deep-pocketed special interests. This is coming even while a secretive cyber war already being waged to damage Iran’s nuclear capability. According to the Pentagon,
“computer sabotage coming from another country can constitute an act of
war.” Not only that, but the draconian sanctions thus far placed on
Iran are doing enormous harm to the citizens who hardly have a say in
what their government does. The Belgium-based SWIFT payment system that
facilitates most international payments has already denied service to many Iranian banks. With the imposing of an oil embargo from the European Union just around the corner (July 1st) that will all but make it impossible for oil tankers to be insured by Lloyd’s of London, an actual naval blockade is being floated by U.S. lawmakers. Much like the Antebellum South and Japan, Iran too is being pushed into a corner.
What makes the campaign to extend the War on Terror to Iran is that
the anti-American sentiment in the higher echelons of its government are
only a consequence of previous meddling. After Prime Minister Mohammed
Mossadegh nationalized the oil industry in 1953, British Petroleum used the CIA to overthrow the popular leader and put the Shah back in power whose authoritarian rule would be financially supported by the U.S. up to the Islamic Revolution of 1979.
Then and now, wealthy special interests are a driving force behind
American imperialism. Lies will be spun till they are seen as facts.
When the truth comes out, the irreparable damage will already be done.
Like anything the state lays its filthy hands on, war is a racket. The
beneficiaries of the ruling class’s gleeful foray into mass murder are
few in number. The masses, still brainwashed into feverish nationalism,
end up paying the costs with their pilfered income, eroded liberty,
and, ultimately, their own lives.
WAR is a racket. It always has been.
It is possibly the oldest, easily the
most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one
international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are
reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.
A racket is best described, I believe, as
something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only
a small “inside” group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the
benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a
few people make huge fortunes.
The only weapon against such an immoral system of mass murder and
cronyism is to know the truth and to not fall ill with the fever of war.
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