U.S. presidents and their subordinate political, military, and intelligence officials have a long history of taking actions in foreign-policy situations where refraining from actions or commitments would have had tremendous long-term value to the American republic. In a regrettably consistent manner, when they encounter situations where no action should be taken, you can bet that they almost invariably act The litany of these occasions of ass-backwards actions constitutes a sad history, one that makes it amazing that – though near to death – the republic’s heart still beats.
One example would be President William McKinley’s moving from the correct, U.S.-benefiting position of refusing to get involved in a war over Spain’s misrule of its colonies to a decision – based on moral outrage and political advantages, not material national interests — to enter the Spanish-American War in 1898. The so-called victorious outcome of that war was a plus only for the political future of Theodore Roosevelt, the career and popularity of naval strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan, the circulation of William Randolph Hearst’s newspapers, and the impetus given to multiple, militant Protestant sects who saw their “mission” as an unending overseas campaign to convert the heathen and protect believers, one that would be fueled by taxpayer dollars and the blood of U.S. Marines, sailors, and soldiers, who were expected to dutifully die or be wounded for God, country, and converts.
Given the questionable upsides of victory over Spain, a short audit of what were then termed “the glories of victory” seems in order. The United States acquired Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines from Spain, and occupied Cuba after Spain gave up its sovereignty there. The United States retained a right to intervene in the country after the peace, and when Cuba became independent in 1902 and the right was included in its constitution. How these facts can be deemed positive accomplishments is a stretch. Consider the economic disaster in which Cuba stands today – ruled first by gangsters and now by Communists — and its continuing willingness to host Russian and Chinese military and intelligence assets. All this, 120 years after the United States waged the War of 1898 to “free” the Cubans. In addition, Puerto Rico is now a gangster-ridden island that is completely incapable of successful self-government – as recently demonstrated by the theft and waste of post-hurricane, taxpayer funding – and Guam, which is entirely dependent on U.S. taxpayers.
The American occupation of the Philippines, however, takes the cake for the most damaging aspect of the U.S. interventionist war on Spain. The war there persisted long after the defeat of Spain and involved U.S. Marines and soldiers in militarily suppressing Filipinos seeking self-determination. It also included a prolonged and brutal war against Philippine Muslims, a war that is still remembered negatively and is part of the package of U.S. actions that have earned enduring and still growing anti-American hatred in much of the historically savvy Islamic world. The U.S. government’s decision to block Philippine independence and leave the islands also fathered the conditions that yielded the opportunity for Imperial Japan’s defeat of U.S. forces in the islands in 1941-1942, the barbaric Bataan Death March, four years of a vicious Japanese military occupation, and a long and bloody land and naval campaign by U.S. forces to end Japan’s murderous rule over the archipelago.
The Spanish-American War’s ballyhooed success founders on several facts; namely, it was unnecessary and it gained America nothing but long-term problems. Most of all, it failed to accommodate what should have been a commonsense conclusion by McKinley and his successors that almost no area on earth that was part of the Spanish Empire was capable of the rule-of-law or of stable and equitable self-rule. The fact was obvious in 1898, it remains obvious today, and probably is applicable to much of the Muslim world and Africa. Indeed, one wonders why any country – like the United States – with a long history of relative political stability would welcome immigrants from any former component of Spain’s empire, people who are sure to bring with them the trademarks of Spanish colonialism: a peasant mentality, deep and enduring traditions of corruption in public and private life, a tendency toward violence, and a deep tolerance, even a preference, for authoritarianism. Where American leaders went looking abroad for these problem people in 1898, they today welcome their illicit arrival here at home.
Another, perhaps more instructive example, lies in the deadly year of 1917 and the decision of President Woodrow Wilson – freshly re-elected on the slogan “he kept us out of war” – to take the republic into World War One on the side of Great Britain, France, and the rest of their band of brigands. This war and the War of 1898, incidentally, are excellent reminders that the republic can be launched into an unnecessary war via a constitutional, congressional declaration of war , which in 1917, was opposed by eight senators – including leading non-interventionists Robert M. La Follette and George W. Norris – and 50 members of the Congress. Many of these men and women, and those work-a-day Americans who supported their opposition to the war, would be subject to harassment, media attack, ridicule, arrest, job loss, incarceration, and black-listing into the early 1920s. This campaign was captained by the national government’s Attorney General and Wilson’s propaganda henchman George Creel, who was chief of the pro-war, witch-hunting United States Committee on Public Information. Wilson and Creel were not the comprehensive civil-liberty deniers that Bush, Cheney, Obama, and Biden have been, but only because they did not have the technological weapons that the latter quartet turned against Americans who opposed their war-loving madness.
Because of Wilson, America was unnecessarily involved in Europe’s war of empires for 584 days, at a cost of 116,516 deaths and approximately 320,000 wounded or sick from the Spanish Influenza. (1) Wilson was one of the four men who presided over the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, and he allowed his British and French colleagues – respectively, Prime Minister David Lloyd George and President Georges Clemenceau – to not only impose a humiliating, U.S.-blessed, and economically ruinous peace on Germany, but to expand their nation’s imperial empires, especially in the Middle East.
The terms Treaty of Paris all but ensured a second Great War, and Wilson allowed it to cement the United States into the political and economic broils of Europe, as well as to the eternal Muslin-Jewish war in the Middle East. The modern phase of the latter war began when Britain and France reneged on their wartime promise to champion the Arabs’ bid for self-determination; by occupying Arab territories formerly components of the Ottoman Empire under the terms of the secret Sykes-Picot Treaty of 1917; and, most especially, by Britain’s Balfour Declaration of November 1917 ,which announced the British Empire’s support for Zionism and a Jewish homeland in Arab Palestine.
Wilson accepted all of these actions, implicitly making the United States as culpable as the Europeans for starting the fire that still burns today across the Middle East and much of the Islamic world. The outclassed politician Wilson, one commentator noted, generally behaved as a “blind and deaf Don Quixote” (2) and, on the Middle East, ignored the results of a knowledgeable team – led by two of his staunch supporters – that he had sent to evaluate conditions in the region. The two men presented a final report to Wilson warning him that acquiescing in the Anglo-French-Zionist land grab would make peace in the region an unattainable prospect. “The Peace Conference should not shut its eyes to the fact that the anti-Zionist feeling in Palestine and Syria is intense and not lightly to be flouted,” the King-Crane commission report explained in August 1919.
No British officer, consulted by the Commissioners [Henry C. King and Charles R. Crane], believed that the Zionist program could be carried out except by force of arms. The officers generally thought that a force of not less than 50,000 soldiers would be required even to initiate the program. That of itself is evidence of a strong sense of the injustice of the Zionist program, on the part of the non-Jewish populations of Palestine and Syria. Decisions, requiring armies to carry out, are sometimes necessary, but they are surely not gratuitously to be taken in the interests of a serious injustice. For the initial claim, often submitted by Zionist representatives, that they have a “right” to Palestine, based on an occupation of 2,000 years ago, can hardly be seriously considered.
There is a further consideration that cannot justly be ignored, if the world is to look forward to Palestine becoming a definitely Jewish state, however gradually that may take place. That consideration grows out of the fact that Palestine is “the Holy Land” for Jews, Christians, and Moslems alike. Millions of Christians and Moslems all over the world are quite as much concerned as the Jews with conditions in Palestine especially with those conditions which touch upon religious feeling and rights. The relations in these matters in Palestine are most delicate and difficult. With the best possible intentions, it may be doubted whether the Jews could possibly seem to either Christians or Moslems proper guardians of the holy places, or custodians of the Holy Land as a whole.
The reason is this: The places which are most sacred to Christians-those having to do with Jesus-and which are also sacred to Moslems, are not only not sacred to Jews, but abhorrent to them. It is simply impossible, under those circumstances, for Moslems and Christians to feel satisfied to have these places in Jewish hands, or under the custody of Jews. There are still other places about which Moslems must have the same feeling. In fact, from this point of view, the Moslems, just because the sacred places of all three religions are sacred to them have made very naturally much more satisfactory custodians of the holy places than the Jews could be. It must be believed that the precise meaning, in this respect, of the complete Jewish occupation of Palestine has not been fully sensed by those who urge the extreme Zionist program. For it would intensify, with a certainty like fate, the anti-Jewish feeling both in Palestine and in all other portions of the world which look to Palestine as “the Holy Land.”
In view of all these considerations, and with a deep sense of sympathy for the Jewish cause, the Commissioners feel bound to recommend that only a greatly reduced Zionist program be attempted by the Peace Conference, and even that, only very gradually initiated. This would have to mean that Jewish immigration should be definitely limited, and that the project for making Palestine distinctly a Jewish commonwealth should be given up. (3)
Wilson dismissed and then suppressed these still-wise words, just at President Truman, in 1948, ignored much the same advice from General George Marshall and George F. Kennan, who warned of the substantial danger to the United States if the Truman’s administration officially recognized Israel. Obviously, failing to listen King, Crane, Marshall, and Kennan has led to America’s unnecessary and increasingly mad subjugation to the Israeli government, its foreign policy goals, a startlingly large number of disloyal Jewish-Americans; their organizations, academics, and media; and the non-Jewish Americans who they have suborned in the Senate, Congress, and the military, diplomatic, federal civil service, and intelligence agencies to blindly support Israel via bribes, campaign contributions, post-retirement corporate or think-tank positions, or intimidation.
Thus, America’s War of 1898 left the country’s bipartisan governing elite mesmerized by the door opened by victory over Spain that allowed it ego-gratifying hobnobbing with Europe’s dynastic powers and their monarchs; focused that elite and Protestant clerical eyes on the next prize; namely, the China market and all those Chinese souls to be converted and saved; and created an unquenchable ambition in both to take up with gusto what Kipling described as the “white man’s burden”. Then, after 1917, the U.S. political and economic elite gradually became addicted to the daft concept of “American exceptionalism”. In their hands, such exceptionalism meant aiming at economic exploitation abroad; forcibly imposing so-called values that were often unwanted by foreign peoples; and the cynical fomenting of patriotic fervor among always deeply patriotic taxpayers who would be forced to pay with their taxes and children’s lives to support U.S. military, cultural, political, and economic intervention abroad. All this to make sure that the world would see, applaud, and adore “the indispensable country” and its similarly indispensable and wholly self-loving elite. The strength and durability of this eventually fatal-to-the-republic myth remains the single greatest threat to the nation’s survival.
The foregoing leaves a vast amount of damage to, first, clean up and rebuild, and, second, to ensure that that which is rebuilt is never threatened by the same threats: immigration, NATO, and Israel. For the first time in decades, there is reason to believe that escape from these three lethal snares may be within reach.
–Indisputably, America has had much more than enough, not of the white man’s burden, but of the Americans’ burden, that which has been imposed by uncaring, moronic, and massively egotistical political leaders. For a half-century, the national government under both parties has ignored the well-being and material needs of Americans. Instead, it has funded the unlimited admittance of foreigners who are, as whole, entirely unassimilable, anti-American, and sure bets to rent social cohesion, derange elections, increase crime, drug-running, and disease, and ruin the health-care and educational services of many states. This is simply wicked, and, if blithely continued by the national government, it merits the lives of many politicians and civil servants who back this iniquitous pogrom against the American citizenry, their families, and their republic’s survival.
–French President Macron’s call for a “European army” is a godsend that was made luminous by the concurrence of German Chancellor Merkel. It allows President Trump to see how right his gut-hunch was when he argued that NATO is no longer a necessary or wise U.S. commitment and investment. The NATO alliance is an empty sack except for U.S. forces and endless expenditures of taxpayer dollars on behalf of defending the infantile Europeans. President Trump should yield to Macron’s desire – pretending not to be too happy when doing so – and let him, Merkel, and probably May try to field a 29-nation army of semi-pacifistic Europeans. They will soon need such a force, not to defend against the Russians, but to try to put down the domestic rebellions that they are going to face because of the EU-supported migrant invasion; the EU’s debilitating interference in the election results and economic affairs of member states; and the EU’s ongoing constriction of civil liberties, especially free speech. The United States must take no part in the coming European bloodbath. Macron is an addled, but gold-plated gift horse, Mr. President, accept the gift he is offering and get the republic out of harm’s way. Then you can begin to explain to Americans that the republic’s only “exceptionalism” lies in its geographical remoteness, twin oceanic buffers, abundant fresh water and other natural resources, and a population able to determine its own destiny once it is unbound from the European losers, rids itself of the lethal plague of unneeded and unwanted immigrants, purges the teaching cadre of its educational system, and annihilates the Democratic Party root and branch.
–Finally, when the DNI’s report detailing the intervention of foreign entities in the 2018 election is released in late December, the media is reporting it will note that more than 2o Jewish-American organizations, with close ties to Israel, will be listed as foreign interveners. If that proves to be true, it will follow and make more likely the now mainstream-media-ignored story that Israeli intelligence is involved in the FBI-CIA-MI6 operation that was meant to prevent Mr. Trump’s election and, since his election, to overthrow his presidency. Here, Mr. President, is a chance to act as Wilson and Truman should have acted and end unquestioning U.S. support for Israel, and, with it, end virtually any imaginable cause for U.S. participation in the future wars of the Middle East or Muslim world. As a delightful bonus, Russia can reap the lethal Islamist crop it has sewn in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan, and China can be left to bleed to death from its unimaginably stupid and supremely arrogant plan to build the “One Road, One Belt” system of roads, railways, and maritime transportation through the heart of the Islamic world to Europe, while economically raping the region as it already is doing to the African continent.
These are marvelous opportunities that the United States really had no right to expect after so long pursuing policies that have helped to bring the republic to the brink of bankruptcy, irretrievable corruption, social chaos, and civil war. They may well be a trio of last chances, so not fail to grasp them, Mr. President. A chance to quickly murder three dire threats to the republic’s survival – illegal immigration, NATO, and the Israeli lobby – probably will not come again.
Thereafter, Mr. President accept as your own the foreign-policy view that Senator Robert M. La Follete (R-Wisconsin) presented to the Senate on 18 November 1919,
I do not covet for this country a position in the world which history has shown would make us the object of endless jealousies and hatreds, involve us in perpetual war, and lead to the extinction of our domestic liberty. I, for one, harbor no ambition to see this country start upon the path which has lured other nations to their ruin.
Mr. President, we cannot, without sacrificing this Republic, maintain world dominion for ourselves. And, sir, we should not pledge ourselves to maintain it for another. (4)
–Endnotes:
–1.) https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/war_losses_usa
–2.) Richard Drake. The Education of an Anti-Imperialist. Robert La Follette and U.S. Expansion. Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2013, pp.292-315
–3.) https://wwi.lib.byu.edu/index.php/The_King-Crane_Report
–4.) Congressional Record, 18 November 1919, p. 8278, https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/GPO-CRECB…/GPO-CRECB-1919-pt9-v58-4-1.pdf
