The title of this subversive little missive comes from a quote by Harry Patch, the last surviving soldier from World War I. The great Smedley Butler said that war is never about enemies, but opportunities for profit. Butler was one of Huey Long’s closest friends, and retreated from politics after the Kingfish was assassinated.
Jeanette Rankin was the only member of Congress to vote against WWII, and had to have a police escort out of that sanctified temple of democracy afterwards. She noted that “You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.” She explained, in her unique fashion, “As a woman I can’t go to war, and I refuse to send anyone else.” Her courageous stance ruined her political career. Then, as now, it wasn’t popular to stand for peace. In my view, she is the greatest woman in American history, and should have her likeness on a fiat currency bill over Harriet Tubman or any other female. I’m confident that only a very small percentage of today’s dumbed down Americans have even heard of her.
The last war that America was justified in fighting was the War of 1812. Our shores were undeniably invaded. The White House was set on fire. They say that Dolley Madison saved the Gilbert Stuart painting of George Washington. Of course, they say a lot of things. Still, picture Hillary Clinton or Michelle Obama doing something like that. I’m no literal pacifist. You have to defend yourselves and your family when you are being attacked. I don’t count the Pearl Harbor false flag. FDR might as well have been flying one of the Japanese planes himself. Every other war revolved around a dubiously perceived threat emanating from one of those “foreign hobgoblins” that the great H.L. Mencken so colorfully described.
James Polk was elected president on a saber rattling platform. A warlike stance rarely fails in American politics. The 1848 invasion of Mexico was not only unconstitutional, the atrocities committed there created resentment that lingers even today, in groups like La Raza. Ironically, one of those who opposed this unnecessary skirmish was Congressman Abraham Lincoln. Honest Abe wouldn’t bat an eye just over a decade later, when he ignored his own advice and pushed for the bloodiest war in our history. That internal conflict shattered the old Republic, and made a mockery of the guiding principle behind our War for Independence. The Confederates didn’t consent to those governing them. Period. As the first Imperial President, Lincoln set countless ugly precedents that paved the way for today’s America 2.0.
The Civil War was unlike all our others. The enemy wasn’t a foreign bogeyman. It was, in too many cases, someone’s brother or cousin. Such a sad internal bloodletting was simply permitted to happen. As I pointed out in my book Crimes and Cover-Ups in American Politics: 1776-1963, not a single public official tried to stop it from happening. The pointless carnage wiped out one quarter of the young males in the south. We became the United States, singular, as a result. Centralized government won. Press censorship won. Lack of due process won. “Total War,” the scorched earth policy, won. The Imperial Presidency won. Nothing good came out of it. This includes freeing the slaves, something the Emancipation Proclamation didn’t in fact do.
The court historians tell us that the greatest presidents preside over wars. In 1898, a reluctant warmonger, William McKinley, would be pressured into our disastrous venture in Cuba, which further crossed the unconstitutional line that was first seen in Mexico. One of the most aggressive proponents of the ridiculous Spanish-American War was young Teddy Roosevelt, who would become McKinley’s second vice-president after Garret Hobart died at just fifty five. Which put Teddy into a convenient position to assume the presidency when McKinley was assassinated a few years later. The first real false flag came with the misrepresented sinking of the Maine. Remember it. As William Randolph Hearst put it, they gave us a damn war.
Woodrow Wilson was, like Lincoln, a phony who masqueraded as a voice for peace. He ran on a campaign to keep us out of the European war, but once elected president he conspired behind the scenes to get us involved. Franklin Roosevelt was even busier finagling us into the next world war, despite saying, “I’ll say it again and again and again: your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars.” FDR was the first of the great chicken hawks. He never came close to any field of battle, but lusted for any armed conflict. His chicken hawk descendants are everywhere today, from Bill Clinton to Lindsey Graham. The entire neocon movement consists of laughably weak chicken hawks. They all talk very loudly and carry no stick.
Over the past few decades, we’ve seen the birth of the initial band of female chicken hawks. Hillary Clinton is literally the anti-Jeanette Rankin. Like her draft dodging husband, she has been enthralled with all our nonsensical foreign interventions since the Vietnam War. We came, she saw, and they died. The very word “peace” would get stuck in her throat, perhaps choking her to death. Picture a vampire saying “Jesus Christ.” Today’s peace movement, such as it exists, is thanks to Gerald Celente, Cindy Sheehan, Cynthia McKinney, and a handful of others. Peace has never been more unpopular. Considering our history, that’s really saying something.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is an unlikely warmonger. After all, his uncle, President John F. Kennedy, was the only president in American history who disobeyed orders from his hidden masters in this regard. After being left hanging out to dry following the Bay of Pigs disaster, JFK fired the top three officials in the CIA, including director Allen Dulles. Then he resisted pressure from the entire Joint Chiefs of Staff, and every leading figure in the Pentagon, and remained cool during the Cuban Missile Crisis. He began the withdrawal from Vietnam shortly before his death. This was all reversed by LBJ, of course, following the events in Dallas. JFK signed his death warrant with his June, 1963 American University “peace” speech.
RFK, Jr. has been tweeting out some pro-peace comments recently. In one tweet, he vowed, “I won’t send our troops abroad for oil wars or regime change wars. Once elected, I will give veterans a formal say in shaping policies that are pro-veteran and pro-peace.” Commenting on the pathetic Republican debate, RFK, Jr. tweeted, “Now they’re talking about war with China. These people are obsessed with it. No wonder our domestic economy and infrastructure is quickly deteriorating to Third World status.” In another tweet, he declared, “As President, my loyalty is to you. Not foreign wars going nowhere.” His critique of the Republicans could have come from me.
He further lashed out at the Republicans for talking only about war, and being “more interested in Ukraine’s border than our own.” He publicly calls Julian Assange a “hero,” and quotes from Orwell. On the latest crisis in the Middle East, he tweeted, “It didn’t take long for the neocons in Washington to spin the Hamas terror attacks to advance their agenda of war against Iran.” He even criticized our massive foreign aid, including the latest $14.3 billion to Israel. RFK, Jr. seemed to be echoing his uncle’s rhetoric some sixty years before. In addition to all his other overtures for peace, JFK was also the last president to challenge Israel. At the time of his death, he was engaged in a battle with David Ben-Gurion over Israel’s developing nuclear program.
So how do we juxtapose these consistently laudable comments with RFK, Jr.’s reaction to Hamas attacking Israel? “This ignominious, unprovoked, and barbaric attack on Israel must be met with world condemnation and unequivocal support for the Jewish state’s right to self-defense. We must provide Israel with whatever it needs to defend itself—now.” Kennedy tweeted. “As President, I’ll make sure that our policy is unambiguous so that the enemies of Israel will think long and hard before attempting aggression of any kind. I applaud the strong statements of support from the Biden White House for Israel in her hour of need.” He went on to note, “we must follow through with unwavering, resolute, and practical action. America must stand by our ally throughout this operation and beyond as it exercises its sovereign right to self-defense.” Hard to believe all these comments came from the same person.
When Vivek Ramaswamy’s mild attempts at even-handedness towards the Middle East situation is the best you have, you know your political process doesn’t represent America’s interests. Our kind of “bipartisan,” interventionist foreign policy is incompatible not only with peace, but with national sovereignty. Ironically, while meddling in the affairs of several other nations, who represented no threat and had never done us harm, our bold leaders have permitted a real invasion to go unchecked for over forty years. If the continuous stream of migrants through our open southern border isn’t an invasion, what would be? While usurping endless authority not granted to it under the Constitution, our government has refused, and still refuses, to perform the most basic requirement of any nation- to protect its borders.
When Donald Trump, in his customary fashion, threatened to do the logical thing, and bring home the troops that nonsensically remain in some 150 countries around the world, the establishment was aghast. How absurd would that be- to remove these troops that serve no purpose whatsoever, and use a fraction of them to guard our own southern border? Just hinting at that brings out the kind of venom reserved for transgender rights and “White Supremacy.” The war fever our “representatives,” state controlled media, and mindless public all habitually suffer from doesn’t feature an affinity for defending the border. In fact, American war fever includes a chronic opposition to guarding the border at all. Well, at least the southern border.
The innate American love for war reflects many of our quaint traditions. The notion that disputes can be settled by “taking this outside.” Good parents teach their children that might doesn’t make right. But everything they experience suggests otherwise. Certainly the culture promotes might makes right relentlessly. If someone can beat someone else up, they were right. They become virtuous. I covered all this extensively in my book Bullyocracy. A society that respects bullies, that thinks “nice guys finish last,” is not likely to be attracted to nonviolence, or peace. There’s a reason why so many politicians, including presidents, came from the military. War heroes have always naturally garnered votes. Who else could be an effective Commander-in-Chief?
I have often observed how the qualities society admires the most- assertiveness, self-confidence, “toughness,” are the traits that bullies, and psychopaths in general are renowned for. Society doesn’t respect the qualities that most rational people are attracted to; kindness, gentleness, fairness, empathy, etc. They are the characteristics of the weak. The losers. “Winners” are strong. They can beat you up. That’s why they’re winners. As Father Flanagan might have said back in 1930s Hollywood- “Put the gloves on and let’s settle this in the ring.” Or the fields of war. That’s how we “settle” things. Whoever has the bigger punch, or the bigger bombs, is the winner. Which makes them right. Just ask the history books, which are written by the victors.