So, Americans are dupable

by David Grand
January 22, 2004

No question about that as regards the war in Iraq, what with the former secretary of the Treasury Paul H. O'Neill stating in his book that the president was hell-bent on toppling Saddam from the day he took office; that a study by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace concluding that virtually every significant premise advanced for the war was fallacious; and with the Army War College indicating in its report that linking Saddam with the al-Qaida was a strategic error of the first order, and that war with Iraq was unnecessary and a detour from the importance of combating that terrorist organization.

But so what I said to myself, if most Americans swallowed the administration's bait for going to war hook, line and sinker. For its "water over the dam," and all the "Monday morning quarterbacking" and incriminations won't reverse the decision made by the White House, with Congress' concurrence, to invade Iraq. And it certainly won't stop our troops blood from being shed there daily, with no end to the bloodletting in sight. (No, I didn't come to that realization after hours of soul-searching, for I've searched it so many times in my life that it no longer bothers to respond.)

And I also reminded myself that this wasn't the first time in our history that Americans have been bamboozled into believing that going to war with a country was the only sensible and logical choice.

The Vietnam War is a prime example of where the country was "sold a bill of goods" by President Johnson, who rushed headlong into war with North Vietnam with little or no justification. For even though the commander of the destroyer Maddox had at first reported "preparations were underway by North Vietnamese torpedo boats to attack it and its companion destroyer the Turner Joy," just five hours later he sent word that "a review of the action makes many prior reported contacts and of torpedoes having been fired 'appear doubtful,' and recommending that a 'complete evaluation' be made before any further action is taken." But Johnson chose to ignore the true facts of the situation, pushing through Congress the next day the Tonkin Gulf resolution giving him congressional approval and support "to repel and counter future attacks on our Armed Forces." And you know the rest of the story.

And turning the clock back to the mid and late 1800s, two wars were started by the U.S. under phony pretexts for what was clearly the nation's impulse toward imperialism at that time: the war with Mexico in 1846-1848 and the 1898 Spanish-American War

The former was ignited out of a border dispute between the two nations, with the U.S. claiming its southwest boundary extended to the Rio Grande, while Mexico claimed that the boundary was the Nueces River 100 miles eastward. And when President Polk ordered Gen. Zachary Taylor to advance to the Rio Grande-a clear invasion of Mexican territory-the die was cast after a Mexican force crossed the river.

And boy did we make out like bandits afterwards, acquiring California, New Mexico and parts of the present states of Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Colorado and Wyoming, for the same measly price of 15 million dollars that we'd paid France for the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. What bargains!

"Remember the Maine, and to hell with Spain" was the battle cry that galvanized the nation and led President McKinley to declare war on Spain in 1898, one of the shortest (seven months) and most pathetically one-sided wars in modern history. But as today's explosive experts and metallurgists have since determined, that it was an explosion in the boiler room which ignited the munitions and caused the destruction of the ship, not by a Spanish mine floating in Havana's harbor as had long been accepted as the reason. But out of that trumped-up war we got Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines and with Spain granting Cuba its independence. Considering, though, who's now running that country we might've been better off letting 'em keep it.

So now, it looks like we can only hope that the president and congress will think extra long and hard before once again beating the war drums and taking the country down yet another road "where angels fear to tread," and where our young men will die in trying to.