The old saying goes, “history is written by the victors.” This is especially true when one reviews the history of the American Empire. Government schools white-wash history painting a rosy picture. ‘We” are the good guys and “they” are the bad guys. All the wars the USA were “necessary” and were caused by “unprovoked” attacks. Attacks on a “country” that was just “minding its own business”. But, Mr. Ivan Eland at Antiwar.com reveals that things aren’t as cut and dry as text books would have you believe:
The killing of Osama bin Laden reminds us that there are only two disciplines in which uncaused events occur—quantum physics and the history of U.S. foreign policy. According to the version of history expounded by the American media and politicians, the passenger aircraft hitting the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 9/11 were a diabolical surprise attack out of the blue by the evil bin Laden against unsuspecting and naïve Americans. Of course, Americans were naïve, but principally about their government’s political and military interventions in Muslim countries since World War II, and especially since 1980. Bin Laden was blunt about this in his pronouncements on why he attacked the United States, but America never wanted to hear.
But this is not the first time in America’s version of its history that uncaused events have just happened. All countries twist their history into a more favorable light, and America is no exception.
The sanitized version of American history begins early with the War of 1812. If causes are discussed at all, the war was allegedly caused by British violation of American rights of neutral shipping during the Napoleonic Wars and the impressment of American sailors to fill shortages of manpower on British warships during those wars. Yet these affronts had been going on for more than a decade, and the region most adversely affected by them—seafaring New England—was almost in open revolt against the U.S. government over war with Britain. A more important reason that the new American nation unwisely declared war on a superpower was the election of “war hawks” to Congress in 1810. They wanted to grab Canada, and when the war started, an American invasion force was quickly dispatched there to do so.
The Mexican War set a precedent for what became a rich tradition in the American democracy of provoking your enemy into firing first. President James Polk—who wanted to and did steal one-third of Mexico’s land by using military force against a much weaker country—deliberately sent U.S. forces into a disputed area on the Texas-Mexico border, because he calculated that the Mexicans would attack that force in defending their border. The Mexicans had a much better border claim than did the Americans. Most historians agree that Polk provoked the war to grab the land, but they don’t focus on the fact that Polk had also blockaded the Rio Grande River—an internationally recognized act of war. So the United States didn’t just provoke the enemy to attack, it started the war, just as in the War of 1812.
Almost erased from the history of the Civil War [sic] and the actions of the now-canonized Abraham Lincoln is his deliberate provocation of the Confederates to fire on a supply ship to Fort Sumter. They had already done so on another such ship at the very end of the James Buchanan administration, so Lincoln knew what would happen when he sent the ship. Lincoln even admitted that he was trying to get the Confederates to fire first. As George W. Bush did when he fell into bin Laden’s trap and invaded Iraq after 9/11, the Confederates foolishly took the bait and even went Lincoln one better. They not only fired on the ship but also the fort, thus beginning the most cataclysmic war in U.S. history.
One of the most outrageous distortions in American history is the standard version of the “massacre” of George Armstrong Custer’s forces at the Little Bighorn—as if it just occurred out of the blue with an attack by warlike savages. In the now-erased lead-up to the massacre, the U.S. Army had been “protecting” the Native Americans from the inflow of voracious miners, who had found gold on Indian land, by surrounding the Indians while the miners stole their gold. Furthermore, Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse attacked only soldiers at Little Bighorn, whereas the American military, and especially the ruthless Custer, regularly used scorched-earth tactics to kill Native American men, women, and children and burn Indian crops.
In the Spanish-American War, the United States took advantage of the sinking of the Maine in the port of Havana—even at the time, arguments were made that it was an accident, which later was found to be almost assuredly the case—to start a war against weak Spain in an attempt to grab its colonies in Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines.
In World War I, the United States took advantage of the sinking of the Lusitania by German U-boats to enter the conflict—no matter that the U.S. was insisting on neutral rights for a passenger ship carrying weapons for the enemy of Germany through a war zone.
Although the hallowed World War II was fought against the ruthless Imperial Japanese and Nazis, the full story is a bit more complex. The Japanese didn’t just attack Pearl Harbor for no reason, and the Nazis didn’t simply declare war against the United States. At some point in the 1930s, FDR decided that he could not live with Hitler’s regime, so in the spring and summer of 1941, long before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, he ordered the U.S. Navy to help the British sink German U-boats in the Atlantic—hoping that would cause Hitler to declare war on the United States. But Hitler refused to take the bait, and the German leader avoided declaring war on the American colossus until his ally Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. That Japanese attack was made in desperation, because the United States, then the world’s largest oil producer, had cut off the supplies of petroleum and other key materials to the island nation in an attempt to economically strangle Japan for colonizing China by force. FDR refused the Japanese prime minister’s attempt to negotiate an end to the dispute; the “Hail Mary” Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor followed.
In Vietnam, American history focuses on the North Vietnamese attacks on U.S. destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin, at least one of which was fictitious. Even if the North Vietnamese did attack, what goes unexamined was the secret U.S. raiding of the North Vietnamese coast, which provoked any attack.
In 1979, most Americans thought that the new diabolical theocratic regime in Iran just kidnapped U.S. diplomats and held them hostage out of spite. Long forgotten was the CIA’s overthrow of the democratically elected Iranian government of Mohammad Mossadegh and U.S. restoration and support for the thuggish and oppressive regime of the shah until he was overthrown by the theocrats.
In Grenada in the early 1980s, Ronald Reagan accused the Marxist regime of allegedly threatening U.S. medical students, who weren’t really in harm’s way, in order to justify invading the small Central American country.
And then there was George W. Bush, who unnecessarily invaded Saddam’s Iraq—which had been severely weakened by Bush Sr.’s pounding of it a decade before—on a bunch of trumped up-accusations.
American history vindicates the old saying that “truth is the first casualty of war,” but the passage of time should allow a republic to undertake a more honest and dispassionate examination of historical events. It rarely does, with truth being swept under the rug in favor of assuming uncaused indignities.
The U.S. Government really is the face of terrorism. The people that support such actions can be called terrorist also.
Would it not have been immoral for the US to provide resources to a country (Japan) that it knew would use them to faciliate the aggressive conquest of others? From a moral standpoint does it really make sense to knowingly furnish a criminal with the means to commit his crimes?
I am not a cheeleader of the US government by any stretch of the imagination, but cutting off supplies to Japan was the morally correct action. Of course, I realize trade embargos often lead to war, but sometimes you have to fight to defend yourself for doing the right thing. This is true for individuals, so it applies to nations as well.
That’s not to say I totally agree with how the US administered the war that followed. I’m simply saying that although the US provoked the Japanese to attack, such provacation in my view was justified.
That’s an interesting point you bring up, Jared. I would say that the individual person and company should have made the choice whether to trade with Japan – not the US Federal Government. Plus, the Feds had been engaging in imperialist activities themselves for a long time in the Pacific. They stole and colonised Hawaii. They took the Philippines in an imperialist war with Spain and ultimately killed thousands of native Philipinos who wanted to be free from US domination. The Feds built a large Pacific fleet to patrol that part of the world and keep the empie under tight reigns. After the war they expanded their empire by stealing Somao and permanently basing tens of thousands of troops throughout the region. US imperialism is still obvious in the Pacific and Far East.
So, while I understand your point and think it should be considered, we are talking about one empire taking measures against another empire. Both were evil systems. Any moral highground the US might have thought it had disappeared forever when they nuked 2 cities full of women, children, the aged, etc. which killed hundreds of thousands of unarmed civilians. This was nothing but mass murder. The US is the only regime in history to nuke civilians.
“That’s an interesting point you bring up, Jared. I would say that the individual person and company should have made the choice whether to trade with Japan – not the US Federal Government.”
Well I failed to think about it that way. Touche.
I disagree with a lot of the “history” in that antiwar.com article. I’ll add more to that when I have time.
My biggest problem is with the portrayal of the War of 1812. First off, who the real “hawks” were is a matter of debate, and so is the desire to take Canada. One has to remember that the big government Federalists Hamiltonians were in control of the national government until the election of 1800 when the Jeffersonian libertarians came to power. I don’t know if the folks at antiwar.com are all libertarians or liberals or a mixture of both, but their portrayal of the War of 1812 skewers libertarians, who were in charge during the lead up and execution of the war.
The portrayal of the facts is all wrong. The simplistic text book explanations often focus on the Hamiltonian support for the English, and the Jeffersonian libertarian support for the French. The Hamiltonians all wanted to go to war with France, and the Jeffersonians all wanted to go to war with England. This is not exactly the case.
The author of the article claims that impressment by the British was just a side issue because the area most affected was the North East, and they were in open revolt against the government after this had been going on for over a decade. If you understand what was going on, this actually becomes a point against the antiwar.com article.
The fact of the matter is that the United States was on the verge of war with BOTH France and England practically from the start of the French Revolution until the declaration of war with England in 1812. In fact, the United States fought a small “Quasi War” with France before we fought against England in 1812. France armed privateers to raid American shipping, and impressing sailors, and the United States responded with the navy against the pirates. Most notably, the USS Enterprise captured eight French pirate vessels and freed 11 US ships that had been captured. The fight died down when Napoleon eased back the attacks on American shipping.
Despite being portrayed as a supporter of France, right or wrong, Jefferson was not a fan of what had become of the French Revolution, or Napoleon. Jefferson himself had to struggle to keep from ending up in a full blown war with France. Jefferson’s attempts to solve the matters peacefully ended with a bargain he had not expected, the Louisiana Purchase. Jefferson knew the purchase was unconstitutional, he even drafted a proposed amendment to the Constitution to allow him to make the purchase, but he did not have time. His options were to accept a huge amount of land at a bargain basement price, even if it weighed on his conscience for being unconstitutional, or continue to risk a full blown war with Napoleon. The purchase of the land ended trade disputes between the United States and France over the use of the Mississippi river, among other things. Northerners did not like having more Southern ports open for greater trade and taking away their trade monopolies. They also did not like the idea of Southerners expanding westward and gaining even greater influence in Washington.
The reason it took so long to go to war with England is precisely because the Jeffersonian libertarians were not so hawkish as this article claims. Despite the rebellion of Yankee merchant interests that didn’t care if a few of the their sailors got taken away, they would not have to pay them after all, the libertarians engaged in a long term embargo against England, similar to the embargoes in the years before the Revolution, that they hoped would force the English into a more reasonable stance without risking open war. There were also other serious issues. The British were still occupying areas that they were supposed to give up under the Treaty of Paris of 1783, which ended the Revolutionary War. There were also disputes over the certain borders with What today is all Canada. However, the idea that Jefferson or Madison had any intention of forcing Canada to join the United States at bayonet point is lunacy. They only sought that the terms of the previous treaty, as they saw it, be enforced. Furthermore, the English were still stirring up Indian attacks against the United States on the frontier. Americans saw Indian attacks as British attacks by proxy. The battle of Tippecanoe was fought November 7, 1811 as things began to move towards full blown war with England. It soon came out that the Indians had been supplied and equipped by the British.
The embargo had extended from Jefferson’s Presidency into Madison’s and tensions were increasing. Madison believed that the embargo had had time to work if it was going to, and things were getting worse. He determined that the English would not respect anything but full military action. On June 1, 1812 both houses of congress passed a declaration of war. Interestingly, after all that time the British were on the verge of backing down. Communication was slow and Madison was unaware that the British had finally modified their policy. If there had been instant communication between England and the United States back then, it is highly likely that the war would not have occurred.
The invasion of Canada was not an attempt to take over the country. Canada was of course an English holding, and was a danger to the United States in a military sense. Canada provided a place for the British to gather forces and move from out of the reach of the United States. It had done so during the Revolution. The strategy of the United States was to invade and neutralize Canada as a military tool of the British, and hopefully quickly bring the English to the bargaining table. They had no interest in forcing Canada to join the Union at the conclusion of the war. Many Yankees excused their lack of support for the war by claiming it was a conquest of Canada. It was nothing more than Yankee/English propaganda. The Yankees depended on England for their trade and certainly didn’t want to participate in a war that they feared would further degrade their political influence in the Union. It was not long after this that the Yankees began exploiting slavery as a means of regaining political influence, especially in western territories. Jefferson makes special note of this in his famous 1820 “wolf by the ears” letter in response to the Missouri Compromise
To their credit, Jefferson and Madison did not respond to the Yankee betrayal with threats or invasion. Why in the world would anyone think that they wanted to force others into the union by the bayonet if they did not even use the bayonet to keep those already in the union in their place? Madison did not rape and pillage the North when it was acting out its displeasure.
I have other problems with the article, but this is a long enough response for now.