World War I to Iraq

Part III

“A Theory on the Evolution of Today’s Liberal Politics”

By Richard E. Noble

Harry Truman was no Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Harry was all over the ball park politically. But when it came to the American War Machine, he was “Right” on top of the pro-war contingent. When the war was over and it looked like the war machine might be dismantled, Harry together with Winston Churchill laid down the gauntlet for the Cold War and basically put the U.S on a full-time war economy.
Winston was, at heart, a politician and a pro-war man. The British had dumped him after the war. He wanted to be reelected. He talked it over with Harry in Missouri and then came out with his famous “Iron Curtain” speech. This recreated the enemy. Without missing a beat the arms industry went from war with the Nazis to a cold war with Russia - the original enemy of the rich and famous and the real reason for World War II in the first place. With a Cold War in place, the business of war could proceed with a future.
The problem with war, from a business point of view, is the sad fact that all wars come to an end - an often quite abruptly. They often start abruptly and end abruptly. Increasing production to meet the needs of a war, and then decreasing production when the war comes to an end creates big problems for suppliers of war materials.
A perfect case study is the DuPont Company and the Old Hickory gunpowder plant established in Tennessee for the World War I effort.(1)
Consequently Arms manufacturers, of necessity, become subsidized by their respective governments. As with the Banking industry, due to the erratic business cycles of war the Government must become the financier of “last resort”, the Federal Reserve, if you will, of the war manufactures. The governments must guarantee all loans, all R&D, all market fluctuations, and absorb all losses. War like banking, is a Socialized government Capitalist co-operative. Wars cannot take place without the price and profit guarantees of the respective governments involved.
Big Businesses need steady, predictable growth in ordered to be managed properly.(2) War does not provide predictable, managed growth. Governments must be the insurers of war.
The Cold War was a way to stabilize war manufacturing for the smooth operation of the present economy and future preparedness and possible demands. It would serve as a means of continuing public support for war, during the unfortunate slack times when there may be no war presently available - thus stabilizing the economy.
The traditional enemies of Mother Russia were Japan and Germany. So, even though we had just finished a horrible war with them both, the U.S. decided to rebuild these countries and let bygones be bygones. These countries provided a needed base for containing Russia, or attacking Russia if need be. We even hired the German and Japanese, anti-Russian murderers and spy experts. We incorporated them into our country and into our CIA. This is all now a matter of historical fact. I have, right here on my desk a book entitled “The Service”. It is the memoirs of General Reinhard Gehlen.
Gehlen was the leader of the German Intelligence for the Russian Division and after the war for the U.S. and our C.I.A. He is given a good deal of credit for the American Cold War strategy. Although I have yet to read this book, I am of the very strong historical opinion that Gehlen was an activist Nazi who surely should have been brought to trial at Nuremberg and when his activities were investigated would have been convicted of crimes against humanity, and shot. Instead, he lived a very good life as a prominent member of our C.I.A. And he was paid handsomely with your tax dollars.
From 1951 onward the U.S. would never be unprepared for War.(3) The Korean and the Vietnam wars were both good as far as the War Machine and pro-war group was concerned. It kept the home grown socialists cowering for fear of anti-patriotism and the Russian and Chinese Communists contained - and the bomb and bullet factories rolling full speed ahead. The new theory for the pro-war industries was “small” wars; wars that could be controlled. Korea almost got out of hand with Macarthur, but Truman solved that problem. Then Eisenhower came in and put a stop to Korea, entirely. Eisenhower also gave us warning about the future, if the War Machine was not kept under wraps. Lincoln had given a similar warning about big business shortly before his assassination. Both of these presidents gave their grave warning to the American people to no avail. Big business took over the American government after Lincoln and the profiteering War Machine resumed itself after Eisenhower.
Vietnam was perfect for the War Industry. It lasted almost fifteen years. It kept American deaths at a minimum, and conveniently spaced out - no large number of American deaths, all at once, to scare off the American people. Fifty thousand dead in Vietnam is really nothing - we have that many killed on our highways yearly and no one bats an eye. This number dead doesn’t amount to even a small percent of the total population.
The Bosses and the War Machine had lost World War I to the Socialist Revolution. They tried to destroy the movement economically by putting people out of work at home and creating a depression in 1929. This was fairly successful. They then reinvested their money abroad, supporting Russia’s enemies.
They supported Adolf Hitler in particular. He ended up “stabbing them in the back” when he signed a pack with the Russians to divide Poland. He then later went on to attack Russia trying to appeal to his Western secret money suppliers, but it was too late. He had already shown his colors. Adolf was not a man to be trusted or controlled. What caused Adolf to attack Poland instead of going directly to Russia after Czechoslovakia, only Adolf knows.
If he went to Russia after Czechoslovakia he would have had the whole free world as his allies. Maybe, even Poland. Poland had been eager, and had no qualms of conscience with regards to getting their piece of Czechoslovakia after Adolf’s take over. But???(4)
In any case, Hitler had bitten the Western Capitalist hand that was feeding him and he had to be stopped. When that was accomplished then the war against Russia could be resumed. And it was. It would be a Cold War, but the benefits to the war industry would be vibrant and necessary.
Now we had experienced two World Wars and we were still fighting the socialist labor movement. The Left had to be put out of business before it exposed the Right and its Nazi War supporters.
McCarthy and anti-Communist paranoia were the weapons of choice. Whether McCarthy was a paid political “roughneck” from the Right or simply a “Man of Zeal” is irrelevant. The War-for-Profit crowd got off the hook - no war profiteering investigations - and people of leftist principles were vilified. Many were imprisoned or had their lives and careers destroyed for no other crime than supporting or knowing someone who supported our war time ally, Russia. Those who supported our Allies were punished, and those who supported our enemies got off scot-free.
I know of only one American company punished or fined for supporting Nazi Germany during the war. That Company was the Union Banking Corporation under Prescott Bush (George W. Bush’s grandfather). Another company that was investigated was Sullivan and Cromwell with John Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles its most prominent members. Standard Oil (Rockefeller) was challenged somewhat but was able to finesse most allegations.(5) Records show today that there were many, many others. Arthur Miller wrote about one such family in his somewhat anesthetized play “All My Sons”. William
Manchester points out in his “Arms of Krupp” that Roosevelt was well aware of the treasonous activities of prominent American companies and individuals during World War II. Roosevelt didn’t expose them during the war for fear of undermining the morale of the fighting troops, claims Manchester. Instead Roosevelt tried to outwit them and outsmart them. In the end, it seems that they were the ones who outwitted and outsmarted his successors, Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower.
When the Berlin wall came down and the Russian Soviet Union disintegrated, the war machine was set adrift. If Russia was no longer a threat, the war machine could now be disassembled. This actually started to happen. In the U.S. they were actually talking of a peace dividend.(6) The military could now be cut; a military that was by this time the largest military investment ever recorded in all of history. The pro-war people and those involved and benefiting from the War Machine began to panic. They needed an enemy and they needed one quick.
Their first choice was China. Even though Richard Nixon had opened doors with China and American business had befriended China in many avenues of trade, China was still a socialist/communist nation. When Bush II became president he immediately started to turn China into a new Cold War enemy. There was even the possibility that the war advocates could get a little thing going with Formosa. Then came 9-11 and the problems of the War Machine were solved. From the point of the War Machine people and the pro-war advocates, nothing better could have happened. It makes one wonder about Osama bin Laden. I have since heard it rumored that his family is involved in the armament industry. This would put a lot of pieces together. If Osama wanted to help the War profiteers, he could have thought of nothing better.(7)
In any case, here we are at the present. The War Machine is in good shape and on track once again. In declaring war on Iraq, a viable enemy has been re-established. The future of the armament business has been re-established. The execution of John F. Kennedy may very well have been directed towards this same purpose.
Immediately after his death, the Vietnam War Machine was put into overdrive. When Martin Luther King spoke out against the Vietnam War, he ended up on a slab. Robert Kennedy came next and very possibly for the same crime. The execution of Martin Luther King may fit into this category also. It was not long after he took up an anti-war posture that he was assassinated.
The War Machine is once again on the roll. Bush, like Harry Truman and Woodrow Wilson before him, has drawn the line in the desert. Just as Woodrow Wilson, with his trusty attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, and his right hand man J. Edgar Hoover painted the Red Scare after World War I; just as Harry and Winston laid down the Iron Curtain to establish the machinery of war without end in the fifties, George Bush has done the same today.
After watching the U.S. for these last few years there should be no third world country who doesn’t want to have its own nuclear arsenal. I am sure that any country in the world who feels even slightly threatened by the U.S.A. is now in a scramble to get a couple of nuclear weapons or anything that will give the U.S. pause.
China, you can bet will be deep into research and development. In fact, it may even be American based companies that will help them in this project. As Mister Krupp laid out in his dealings with Adolf, the U.S. weapons suppliers and manufacturers will probably only sell China last year’s models. If the U.S. government doesn’t like this option the War Machine can easily move its operations to China just as Krupp had threatened Adolf that he could move his operation to a very accommodating Russia during World War II.(8) Anything more would be ... treason?
Treason? Do we still have such a concept?
And regardless, our war machine no longer belongs to us - the whole process has been internationalized. They are already in China. The international war machine is now a citizen of the world.
This, I think, means that the dead or maimed bodies of Americans will have no more sympathy to the present “Merchants of Death” and those of the future, than the dead and maimed bodies of enemy or lesser and third world nations has mattered in the past.
The War on Terrorism is the “Perfect War”. Dissidents, radicals as well as social reformers can be put down and silenced in every nation of the world, just as World War I and II, as well as Vietnam were used in an attempt to stifle Socialism, Communism and radicalism in their day.
The War on Terrorism can also be used to establish a police state here at home, just as Hitler used the bombing of the Reichstag in Germany. Unfortunately the Bombing of the Reichstag and 9/11 have a vary distinct and familiar smell.
Hitler and his supporters and cronies it is claimed, blew up the Reichstag in order to blame it onto their enemies and establish a police state in Germany before World War II. Could George Bush and his cronies in the pro-war machine have been involved in the attack of 9-11, or simply stood idly by allowing it to happen?
There is certainly a greater and more suspicious link between George Bush and his pro-war machine connections than ever existed in the Roosevelt administration and the accusations by right wingers - to this very day - that the Democrats and Franklin Delano Roosevelt were involved in the vulnerability of Pearl Harbor which opened the door for the U.S. involvement into World War II.
George Bush and his cronies may be truly innocent of any connection with the horror of 9-11, but they are certainly not innocent of using the tragedy to authoritarian and militaristic advantage. Their predisposition to the strategies as outlined in Hitler’s political manual, Mein Kampf, seem uncanny.
Their pre-emption against Iraq and Afghanistan and their “Shock and Awe” tactic, certainly brings to mind the Austrian Anschluss and the German Blitzkrieg; their violations of the Constitution here at home in the name of security; their involvement and, hopefully temporary, return to torture; their use of propaganda - contrived press releases and news stories - to undermine a free press; their all too vicious substitution of the word Liberal as opposed to Hitler’s all encompassing term for universal evil “Jew” - Jew (Liberal) science, Jew (Liberal) intellectual, Jew (Liberal) press, Jew (Liberal) Art, Jew (Liberal) traitor; Jew (Liberal) labor unions; Jew (Liberal) Politics; their attitude to sexually transmitted disease - Syphilis vs. Aids - Hitler suggested quarantine, isolation and death as compared to the present conservative approach of shunning, avoidance, ignoring or lack of funding; their lack of respect for the poor and unproductive - at the moment they have not suggested extermination as Hitler, they are still in the alienation (slums, ghettoes, sewers, homeless) stage; their return to abstinence as a method to eliminate sexually transmitted diseases - Hitler’s more “kinder/gentler” suggestion was “early marriage”; their antipathy toward the legislature and traditional democracy - Hitler eventually dismissed the “congress” - this administration simply wants to modify it, at the moment; their control of the legal system by infiltrating the courts with judges who adhere to their party’s doctrine; their control of the schools and methods of education - the Bible vs. Mein Kampf, Creationism vs. social Darwinism (survival of the fittest); are certainly all reminiscent of European fascism.
As for security, the American people should be intelligent enough to realize that physically securing our borders and our entire population is impossible in a nation this large and with our diversity and acceptance of free trade and unrestrained immigration. To promote fear instead of courage is a tactic along the lines of the Red Scare of the Wilson administration and the Communist Threat of the Truman years; it is not a viable policy. World domination through military adventure rather than via cooperative diplomacy and mutual economic advancement is not possible. This is truly a scenario for destruction and a very, serious look into the evil eye of a final world war or revolution - Armageddon.
If George Bush is, in fact, an employee of the National or International Military Industrial Complex, he is a success. He has, without doubt, re-established war in the minds of Americans and the World as necessary and unavoidable. He has re-established the mandatory nature of our military spending. He has justified paranoia and fear. We will certainly not experience any “peace dividends” in the up and coming decades. George Bush did not need a second term to establish his historical legacy. He has re-established the “glory” and the inevitability of war, and replanted the defense industry on a secure footing for a long time to come. Unfortunately, we the peace-loving people of the world have already lost. There will be thousands more of us lying about the world in pools of blood, fighting for “peace” and “freedom” Bush-style. George Bush has not only condemned us, but our children and their children too.
The War on Terrorism can be waged in bits and pieces. It can be stopped temporarily and started at any time and anywhere by a single explosion. It can be used forever to enhance military spending. By our current administration’s standards, any country can be attacked or “liberated” if we have the suspicion that they may be harboring terrorists or even planning a possible act of aggression against us.
This is not the first time in human history that such a policy has been advocated. All past conquerors and war lords have advocated a similar disposition. This is not new. It is truly “Biblical” in its historical perspective.
The trouble with being prepared for war, as Thomas Jefferson pointed out, is that such preparations invariably lead to war.
Armies need to be maintained. The cost of their maintenance demands conquest and the acquisition of more wealth and assets as Adolf Hitler found out in World War II. People in our defense plants here in America in order to obtain top security are asked to sign a paper accepting the notion that war is necessary to the maintenance of our present standard of living, I have been told.
War is not necessary to our standard of living. If money can be fabricated from thin air to advance needless destruction, certainly the same source could be tapped to promote “creation”.
War is the ultimate “Boondoggle”. Money is advanced; factories are built; people are hired; a product is produced and then this product is destroyed. We build the factories; we hire the people; we design the products; we manufacture the toothpaste of war, then we take it up into a plane and toss it out. If this can be the driving force behind profit and a better standard of living, certainly a similar profit could be gained in producing cancer stopping drugs, eradicating hunger, encouraging architecture, art science and the general welfare of the entire world.
The enemy does not buy our bombs. We give them to him for free. We pay for them ourselves. We do not ask our enemies if they can afford to buy our bombs. Nor do we ask them how they intend to pay us back for our investment in warring on their country. If World War II cured the Depression and saved Capitalism for the world, surely this type of investment and salvation can be made in anything.
If this War Machine scenario outlined above is factual, then what should those of us who disagree with war do about it? It would be nice if we could say ... Let those who enjoy and profit from war do so; and those who do not enjoy or profit from war disengage themselves from such activities ... We can not be so tolerant and understanding. War ends up involving all of us whether we want to be involved or not.
Alger Hiss who was on the Nye committee investigating war profiteering said that the only way that he saw to stop war profiteering was to stop war.(9) That is a good idea, but it doesn’t seem to be happening. I suppose that in the same tone of thinking we could say that the only way to stop death would be to stop making people; or the only way to stop crime would be to stop making laws. We have this same logic on the Right with regards to economic liberty. The only way to promote economic liberty is to abolish government and rules in general. This type of thinking is not realistic. We don’t stop studying medicine because we can not conquer death. We don’t stop making laws because we know that crime will never be eradicated. No one with any reasonable mentality can imagine a better world coming about with the abolition of all governments and all law.
War, like crime and death, should be on our list of things to conquer and overcome. We may never, ever do it, but we should never stop trying. We should expose the abuses of war whenever possible. We should discourage war in every reasonable manner. We should attempt to minimize any profits gained through war, or by active participation in war. People who encourage war for personal gain and profit should be exposed and if they have broken laws in so doing, they should be punished.
Just as removing the outrageous profits from the illegal drug market would reduce crime, if excess profits could be removed from the War Machine a good many wars would not happen and would have never happened in the past. We should not promote war as being glorious. It is not a creator of character, but its destroyer. There is no such thing as a just war. There is no such thing as a just murder.
There is such a thing as rational killing and rational war made mandatory by irrational beings and irrational circumstances.
But there is no justice to killing, whether it is done by man or in the name of God or by God, Himself.
Killing is a part of existence, but it can never be justified - it can only be rationalized. It should never be used as a diplomatic tool and it should only be employed against other men in self-defense. We should work as a nation to wean ourselves from war and gradually replace the War Machine with a Peace Machine. A Peace Machine directed to replace the Machinery of War with the Machinery of Creation. A Peace Machine that produces products, employs people and sells or gives away its end results, just as is done with the machinery of War.
The fact that such a useless industry as War is successful should be adequate inspiration for the world. If products can be made to be destroyed with no limits placed on payroll or production and no limits on costs or sale prices, then certainly anything is possible.
Although no acceptable or adequate definition of Aggressive War has yet to be agreed upon, Aggressive War was declared illegal by the Nuremberg Tribunal after World War 11.(10) It took man all of his civilized history to come to that conclusion. This principle should not be discarded so easily.

Footnotes
1 “Du Pont”, One Hundred and Forty Years, by William S. Dutton, Charles Scribner’s Sons 1942, PP. 230-261. Search This Blog under “Old Hickory”.
2 “Economics and the Public Purpose” by J. K. Galbraith, Penguin Books Ltd.
3 “Shattered Peace”, Daniel Yergin, the Origins of the Cold War and the National Security State, Houghton Muffin Company.
4 “The Gathering Storm”, by Winston Churchill, pp. 347.
5 See Prescott Bush. Go to Search This Blog and enter Prescott Bush.
6 Search this Blog “Fortress America” by William Grieder.
7 Recent Information not only corroborates the involvement of the bin Ladin family with the defense industry via the Carlyle Co. and other industries but also supplies a close connection between all of the above and George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush.
8 “Arms of Krupp”, William Manchester.
9 “Recollections of a Life”, by Alger Hiss. Little, Brown and Company.
10 “The Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials”, Telford Taylor. Little, Brown and Company.