America's Amnesia

Iraq Disaster May Cool War Fever

By Ivan Eland

Consortium News

Thursday 19 April 2007

It is difficult to find any silver lining in the very dark cloud over George W. Bush's Iraq War. More than 3,300 American soldiers are dead, many more are maimed, and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis also have been killed or wounded.

In this guest essay, however, the Independent Institute's Ivan Eland suggests that one positive development might be a public revulsion the next time a trigger-happy leader points the country toward a war not fully justified by the needs of US national security:

America's problems in Afghanistan and Iraq may have one positive effect: They will cause the US public to withhold support for future military interventions that are not absolutely necessary for US security.

(MG) The Greater American Public (GAP) has fully supported only one war in the last 100 years - WW II. In the first world war, the GAP stayed away from the enlistment offices in droves. The European immigrants remembered well the devastation, death and destruction wrought upon that continent over 100's of years of fighting wars allegedly based on religion. Socialist Eugene V. Debs was sentenced to 10 years in prison under the sedition act of 1918. From a disingenuous Supreme Court Ruling came the argument that freedom of speech does not extend to one screaming "fire" in a crowded movie theater. But Debs was handing out anti-war materials on street corners. Rather than screaming "fire" in a crowded theater, Debs was passing along the information that there is a fire going on in the theater, if you enter, you may be burned. The Sedition Act of 1918 was an amendment to the Espionage Act of 1917 passed at the urging of President Woodrow Wilson, who was concerned any widespread dissent in time of war constituted a real threat to an American victory. This may have been due to "subversive activity" in Russia that resulted in the overthrow of the Russian Czar in 1917, and contributed to the Easter Rising in Ireland in 1916. The nation's political elites have ALWAYS feared the will of the people.

That's exactly what has happened in the past and there's no reason to believe the current failed adventures will be different.

In the Korean War, for example, after back and forth offensives, the front stabilized at the 38th parallel, where the conflict had begun. With casualties mounting and no clear-cut victory in sight, the war lost much of its support.

President Harry Truman was so unpopular by this time he decided not to seek re-election. During the subsequent eight years of the Eisenhower administration, the war-weary United States directly intervened militarily just once, in Lebanon in 1958.

(MG) Eisenhower, however DID engage the US navy to address the Suez Canal Crisis of 1956. Daniel Ellsberg served on one of the ships that was sent en route. At that time, the sailors did NOT know which side the US would be taking. Subsequent diplomacy / politics were used to defuse the crisis. Ellsberg (whom Henry Kissinger once called "The most dangerous man in America" - because he KNEW the truth, and felt the American people should know the truth too - he was a truth teller who had come to oppose his governments policies in the prosecution of the war upon the Vietnamese people and a possessor of unique inside information; indeed truth tellers such as this ARE the most dangerous of all the winter patriots) wrote that he was never any prouder to be an American.

Only after this respite was the country ready to elect another hawkish president: John F. Kennedy, an ardent Cold Warrior. The anti-communist Kennedy supported a reckless attempt to eliminate Castro in 1961, the so-called Bay of Pigs invasion, which helped set the stage for the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Kennedy also dramatically increased the number of U.S. advisors in Vietnam, setting another stage.

(MG) Lest we forget, saint JFK was not merely a hawkish president. He was a war mongerer, whose eyes were set on using Vietnam to field test his theories of a more mobile elite armed forces unit that would blend in with the general population, speak their language, train them in guerilla tactics to keep out the despised commies. In a speech from the Senate floor, circa 1954, Kennedy took the REPUBLICANS to task for being soft on national defense. Joe Kennedy had his son, the newly elected president, visit the power elites of America, to assure them that the newly elected president "understood" how important it was to maintain America's power in the world.

After President Johnson escalated the Vietnam War and President Nixon prolonged it, the public got fed up again and pressured Washington to end the war without victory. Like Truman, LBJ was forced to the political sidelines.

(MG) Nixon's slender margin of victory in 1968 was in part owing to his "secret plan" for extracting the US from Vietnam. The plan was so secret, it didn't even exist. But no reporters asked to see it, or to have RMN describe it. What Nixon did differently from LBJ was to withdraw ground troops, and strike ever harder with the hammer of US air power. The satisfied the public, because more troops were coming home alive, and the bombs were not being dropped on them.

During the post-Vietnam administrations of Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter - lasting six-and-a-half years - war weariness again reduced the number of military interventions.

(MG) and during this time, Hollywood, that bastion of the despised liberalism, rewrote the Vietnam war, inverting all of its images. A campaign of propaganda so complete, that even the CIA came to believe that the Russians were behind the victory of the North Vietnamese Forces over the US-backed government of South Vietnam troops. What blather, what revisionist history. The lies one tells oneself are the most vicious.

Once again, however, the restraint only lasted so long, with Carter's successor, Ronald Reagan, intervening in Libya, Grenada, and Lebanon, where the results were disastrous. This was followed by another hiatus, broken by George H.W. Bush's 1989 invasion of Panama.

(MG) One would have to rate Grenada intervention a "success." In quickly, out quickly, few deaths. A triump for good 'ole yankee ingenuity.

War weariness can even result after U.S. victories. In 1846, during the Mexican War, Generals Winfield Scott and Zachary Taylor won great victories against Mexican armies. Yet, even after Mexico City was taken, the war dragged on and the public became restless.

(MG) Because the public ultimately comes to realize the true costs of any war are born by them (the public) and them alone.

The Spanish American War in 1898 also provides parallels to the current conflicts. After the initial taking of Cuba and the smashing of the Spanish fleet by Admiral Dewey in Manila, the United States refused to grant the Philippines its independence. The U.S. military then had to wage a brutal counterinsurgency war, which killed 200,000 Filipinos and resulted in an anti-colonialist backlash in the United States.

This unpleasant experience made subsequent Presidents Teddy Roosevelt, previously a hawk, and William Howard Taft chary of colonialism and direct foreign intervention. The United States fought no major wars again until World War I.

(MG) for the 200,000 dead Filipinos and their relatives, this was more than an unpleasant experience. To Teddy Roo - the anti-colonialist backlash was an unpleasant experience. The American-centric world view, ignoring the devastation, pain, misery, suffering this nations political leaders have inflicted upon the world, because we are inured from it, gives us permission to feel as victims when the world strikes back (or the Viet Cong). strike back. And then we are wounded, and supposed to feel sorry for ourselves.


Despite the U.S. victory in the Great War, the carnage appalled America, resulting in more than 20 years of reduced interventionism during the Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover years and the first two terms of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Then the United States was attacked at Pearl Harbor.

(MG) Given all the so-called "Great War" accomplished, 'twould have been better to have not fought it at all. It merely set the stage for Act II, the "Greatest Generation's" war.

Though U.S. casualties were higher in World War II than World War I, the Second World War didn't produce the usual fatigue. The different outcome resulted from the United States clearly being attacked first and the complete defeat of diabolical despotic regimes: Nazi Germany, Italy, and Imperial Japan.

(MG) The American way of waging war, since the last half of the 20th century involved first firing up the nation, stroking the nation to wargasmic pitch, using techniques all too-familiar. Conflating Saddam with Osama, and Iraq with Al-Queada, lies repeated and amplified by the usual suspect media outlets were the first parts. Painting Saddam and Iraq as responsible for 9/11 was the master stroke. Clearly, the US was attacked first. If the GAP could just be convinced they were attacked by Saddam, AND Saddam could have "the bomb", which, evil despot which he was, he would surely drop upon us, too late for USA when the mushroom cloud provides the smoking gun. Saddam = Hitler. And we the people, we the sheeple, bought into it. The vast majority of us did.

The collapse of the fourth totalitarian regime of the 20th century, the Soviet Union, magnified U.S. hubris.

With no nuclear superpower rival with which to contend, the administrations of George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush went into overdrive, expanding U.S. alliances and "commitments," acquiring new military bases around the world, and flexing America's military muscle where it was not really necessary.

(MG) What's the point in having the mightiest military in the world if you can't use it once in a while? POWER, true power, to influence people to do what you want them to do, does not come from a gun, but when one's moral example, and the potential THREAT that one might grab its big gun, unless some compromising can be done ... real power lies in statescraft and diplomacy. This has been known by military strategists for ever. And in the 20th and 21st centuries, when the military might of the US is so apparently overwhelming, here our army sits bogged down in Iraq, fighting a lightly armed resistance force consisting of about 20% of that nations population.

(MG) The US military objective was achieved long ago. Evil dictator - deposed; Weapons of mass destruction - accounted for (oops, sorry); Democracy established (January elections of 2004). And yet, this war will forever be branded LOST -- well, it was not lost militarily. It was lost politically, and it was lost politically before it was begun.

When I was back there in cable land news
Someone put for the proposition to me
That you can invade and impose rule on a sovereign nation.

Invade and impose rule on a sovereign nation?
Invade and impose rule on a sovereign nation?
You CANNOT invade and impose rule
on a sovereign nation!

Now, U.S. politicians and the public are beginning to realize that the greatest military in history may not be able to defeat a bunch of rag-tag and loosely organized guerillas and militias in Iraq, and the Taliban in Afghanistan.

The good news is that these twin failures, however tragic and painful, will likely usher in a new period of U.S. military restraint, the policy championed by America's founders.

The bad news is that proponents of non-interventionism will only have a limited amount of time before the public forgets the pain of unnecessary wars and America's foreign policy elites begin rattling their sabers again.

Ivan Eland is Director of the Center on Peace & Liberty at The Independent Institute and Assistant Editor of The Independent Review. Dr. Eland has been Director of Defense Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, Principal Defense Analyst at the Congressional Budget Office, Evaluator-in-Charge (national security and intelligence) for the US General Accounting Office, and Investigator for the House Foreign Affairs Committee.