As War Drums Beat for Syria, Remember, Lies And Propaganda Started Nearly Every War In US History

 War is one of the most primitive and senseless manifestations of the  human experience, so naturally, most sane people with families,  ambitions and kind hearts want nothing to do with such things.  Unfortunately, as we are seeing with the Syrian escalation,  governments thrive on war, as it gives them a pressing excuse to grab  more power and take extrajudicial measures—both at home and abroad. To get around the obstacle of public opinion, governments have an  extensive history of lying their way into war. 

This is hard to believe  for people who think that government has their best interest in mind,  but it is something that rulers have been doing since the beginning of  time. In the modern United States, people are led to believe that the  establishment accidentally flounders its way into war with the good  intentions of protecting the country from harm or liberating an ally in  distress. This strategy of deception was illustrated by the Nazi propagandist Herman Goering, who famously said: 

“Of course the people don’t want war. Why should some  poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can  get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally, the  common people don’t want war neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for  that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the  leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a  simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a  fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship.  Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of  the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are  being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and  exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”

Of course, the Nazi regime is notorious for their brutality and  deceit, so this admission is not as stunning as it would be from an  American general, but make no mistake that these are the types of  thoughts that American generals and politicians have—they are just not  brazen enough to say it out loud. 

Believe it or not, using deceptive tactics to sway public opinion in  favor of war is actually an official part of the US military’s playbook.  According to Wikileaks, the U.S. Army’s publication “Special Forces Foreign Internal Defense Tactics Techniques and Procedures for Special Forces”  recommends funding terrorists for regime change operations and using  false flag attacks to destabilize regimes that were unfriendly to  western interests. 

This is nothing new though, this is a part of American history, as nearly every war that the U.S. has ever been involved in was built upon lies. Below are some of the most well-documented examples of wars that were started because of lies and government propaganda. 

Spanish-American War – 1898

In January 1898, President William McKinley ordered the USS Maine to  port in Havana, Cuba, despite years of conflict between Cuban rebels and  the Spanish government. The move was intended to be a show of force  against the Spanish government, in line with the Monroe doctrine, to establish U.S. dominance in the Western hemisphere. 

At 9:40 p.m., on February 15, 1898, The USS Maine  exploded with a crew of 354 men on board, killing 266. While the  Spanish government insisted the explosion was caused by a fire in a coal  bunker that ignited the forward magazines, politicians in the U.S. were  quick to blame Spain because they wanted an excuse to wage a war of conquest for territory in Mexico, the Caribbean, and the Pacific. Although President McKinley had previously voiced his opposition to a military conflict, on April 25, the U.S. declared war on Spain.

The “Ten-Week War” resulted in not only the defeat of the  last remnants of the Spanish empire but in a new era of U.S.  “expansionism” as the United States took control of Puerto Rico, Guam,  and the Philippine islands. In 1976, a team of naval explosive experts examined the evidence  and corroborated Spanish claims that the USS Maine’s sinking was caused  by an internal explosion from ammunition being stored on board. 

World War 1 – 1915

The first world war was opposed by most Americans from the start, as  they rightly saw it as a power struggle between European aristocrats  that they had no business in. This was a problem for the British  military, led by Winston Churchill, as they were desperate to get the  United States behind them in the war. 

The U.S. did finally enter the war in 1915, when a U.S. ship called  the Lusitania was sent through hostile waters as bait, filled with more  than a thousand civilians and an unusually large amount of ammunition.  The ship was hit by a German torpedo and exploded instantly due to all  of the ammunition onboard, killing more than half of the passengers and  crew. 

A week before the sinking of Lusitania, Churchill wrote to Walter  Runciman, the President of the Board of Trade, stating that it is “most important to attract neutral shipping to our shores, in the hope especially of embroiling the United States with Germany.” 

After investigating the tragedy, former British naval intelligence officer Patrick Beesly said, “unless  and until fresh information comes to light, I am reluctantly driven to  the conclusion that there was a conspiracy deliberately to put Lusitania  at risk in the hope that even an abortive attack on her would bring the  United States into the war. Such a conspiracy could not have been put  into effect without Winston Churchill’s express permission and  approval.” 

In addition to this treacherous military maneuver, there was a relentless campaign  in the U.S. to dehumanize Germans and to paint them as monsters. In  some propaganda that was peddled to U.S. citizens, German soldiers were  depicted killing babies and sometimes eating them. There were even false  reports of crucifixions. 

World War 2 – 1941

The history books suggest that Pearl Harbor was an unprovoked attack,  killing thousands of Americans and “forcing” the government to enter a  war that was extremely unpopular at the time. However, the U.S.  government was enacting strict sanctions on both Japan and Germany,  hoping that either country would make the first move and give them an  excuse to enter the war. Not only was the attack provoked, but President  Roosevelt and the U.S. military knew the attack was coming and moved  their most expensive aircraft to other locations while leaving thousands  of people as sacrificial pawns. 

The history books also sell the war against the Nazis as a  humanitarian war to save people from the Holocaust, but the U.S. denied  safe passage to Jewish refugees, and UK intelligence even planned to blow up refugee ships, in a plot called Operation Embarrass. Many American businesses and politicians worked very closely with the  Nazis even after the two countries were at war with each other. 

The  Holocaust had already claimed the lives of millions of German people by  that point, and a police state had long since been established, so  whoever was doing business with the Nazis knew exactly who they were  getting involved with. Prior to the Americans getting involved in the war, there were  corners of the political arena that were actually big supporters of the  Nazi party—both for business purposes and common interests such as  eugenics. 

The most prominent American politician to work with the Nazis  was actually George W. Bush’s grandfather, Prescott Bush. There is no  doubt that he was funding and working with the Nazis because his  company’s assets were seized in 1942 by the United States government  under the “trading with the enemy” act. He worked at the head  of a financial firm called Brown Brothers Harriman, which acted as a  U.S. base for the Nazi business interests. 

Brown Brothers Harriman was one of the biggest international  investment firms in the 1930s and they sent millions of dollars in gold  overseas to rebuild the German army and fund the Nazi party. This racket  was finally exposed on July 30, 1942, when the New York Herald Tribune  posted an article titled, “Hitler’s Angel Has three million dollars in US Bank.” This article raised suspicion about the bank being a “secret nest” for Nazi elites and eventually sparked the investigation that took down the operation. 

Korean War – 1950

The propaganda of war has led many to believe that the North Korean  government launched an unprovoked attack on South Korea, on behalf of  the larger communist powers of Russia and China. Yet, once again, this  was another case where the U.S. was propping up one dictator to fight  another, in an attempt to gain control of an entire continent—all the  while, lying to the people back home about the true motivations for war. As historian Mark E. Caprio, professor of history at Rikkyo University in Tokyo points out: 

“On February 8, 1949, the South Korean president met  with Ambassador John Muccio and Secretary of the Army Kenneth C. Royall  in Seoul. Here the Korean president listed the following as  justifications for initiating a war with the North: the South Korean  military could easily be increased by 100,000 if it drew from the  150,000 to 200,000 Koreans who had recently fought with the Japanese or  the Nationalist Chinese. Moreover, the morale of the South Korean  military was greater than that of the North Koreans. If war broke out he  expected mass defections from the enemy. Finally, the United Nations’  recognition of South Korea legitimized its rule over the entire  peninsula (as stipulated in its constitution). Thus, he concluded, there  was “nothing [to be] gained by waiting.”

Vietnam War – 1964

Information released in 2005 by the National Security Agency showed  that the Gulf of Tonkin incident on August 1964 was deliberately  falsified to make it appear that North Vietnamese gunboats attacked an  American destroyer patrolling in international waters when in reality,  they did not. 

This was the event that the U.S. military used as an  excuse to go to war in Vietnam and it was surrounded by mystery and  controversy until decades later when the official facts were released. It has now been 45 years  since the U.S. withdrew the last of its combat troops from Vietnam and  the last prisoners of war that were held in North Vietnam returned to  U.S. soil. 

According to estimates, more than 2 million civilians,  1.1 million North Vietnamese and Viet Cong fighters, 250,000 South  Vietnamese fighters, and nearly 58,000 U.S. military members were killed  in Vietnam during the war—all because of lies that were used to create  propaganda that made American fear for their safety. 

Libya – 1984 (then 2015)

Former Mossad agent Victor Ostrovsky admitted that the Mossad planted a radio transmitter  in Libyan Prime Minister Muammar Gaddafi’s compound in Tripoli, which  broadcast fake terrorist transmissions that were recorded by Mossad and  used to frame Gaddafi as a terrorist supporter. 

President Reagan bombed  Libya immediately after the false reports, but this was not the first or  last time the U.S. would involve itself in Libya. As The Free Thought Project has reported, 3,000 emails  from former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton released by the State  Department contained damning evidence of Western nations using NATO as a  tool to overthrow Gaddafi. 

The NATO overthrow was not for the protection of the people, but  instead, it was to thwart Gaddafi’s attempt to create a gold-backed African currency  to compete with the Western central banking monopoly. As per usual, the  U.S. and its Western counterparts left the country to its own devices  after slashing the once-thriving nation to the ground. 

“Today there is no government of Libya. It’s simply mobs that patrol the streets and kill one another,” Virginia State Senator Richard Black told RT of the mess left behind. 

Despite certain issues in Libya before the coup, “Libyans had an incredibly high standard of living, the highest in Africa,” international lawyer Francis Boyle told RT. 

“When  I first went to Libya in 1986, I was amazed by the empowerment of  women. What I saw in Libya was that women could do anything they wanted  to do.” 

Iraq – 1990

At the onset of Operation Desert Storm in 1990, a public relations  firm by the name of Hill and Knowlton spent millions of dollars on the  U.S. government’s behalf, constructing news pieces that would sell the  war to the American public. 

One of the most moving hoaxes to come from  this push to war was the testimony of a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl, known only by her first name of Nayirah. In a videotaped testimony that was later distributed to the media,  she claimed that Iraqi soldiers killed babies in incubators at a  hospital. “I volunteered at the al-Addan hospital, While I was there, I saw  the Iraqi soldiers come into the hospital with guns, and go into the  room where… babies were in incubators,” Nayirah said. 

“They took the babies out of the incubators, took the incubators, and left the babies on the cold floor to die.” Sounds horrible, right? Well, luckily it never happened. 

This was a  fabricated event designed to dehumanize the Iraqi people in the eyes of  the American public. The whole thing was exposed when journalists  discovered that the witness, Nayirah was actually the daughter of a U.S. ambassador, who was being coaxed by military psychological operations specialists. In addition to this false testimony, the U.S. government also showed Saudi Arabia fake satellite images that depicted Iraqi troops massing on their border.  

Iraq – 2003-Present

Emails that were declassified in 2015 paint a much different picture of the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq  than they led the public to believe. 

A memo drafted by the U.S. embassy  in London revealed how the Bush administration used “spies” in the  British Labor Party to help shape British public opinion in favor of the  war, prior to U.S. invasion.  In the weeks leading up to the invasion of Iraq, the Bush  administration inundated American airwaves with assertions ranging from  Saddam Hussein’s connections to Al-Qaeda, to Colin Powell’s ‘badly flawed’ claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.  

After invading a sovereign foreign nation, President George W. Bush  blatantly lied to the American public and when news came to light that  there were, in fact, no weapons of mass destruction, he simply accused  anyone who criticized him of attempting to “revise history.”   During his presidency, while giving a speech about that very issue, Bush said, “This  nation acted to a threat from the dictator of Iraq. Now there are some  who would like to rewrite history—revisionist historians is what I like  to call them. ”  

War on Terror – 2001-Present

Now the United States military and its allies are exporting their  wars of terror across the globe, in the name of fighting terrorism, and  most of these wars are also justified with propaganda and lies.  In the early days of the “War on Terror,” the Macedonian government was caught staging a fake terror attack  in an attempt to get funding from western forces. Six innocent  Pakistani immigrants were accused of being terrorists and killed in the  incident.  In 2001, U.S. media spent weeks circulating the idea that anthrax  attacks were being carried out by Arabs connected with Afghanistan, when  in reality it was a government scientist behind the attacks.  

In 2005, former Department of Justice lawyer John Yoo suggested  that the U.S. should create a false terrorist organization to give the  military an excuse to attack places where they believed real terrorists  might be hiding:  “Our intelligence agencies create a false terrorist organization,” Yoo said.  

“It could have its own websites, recruitment centers, training camps,  and fundraising operations. It could launch fake terrorist operations  and claim credit for real terrorist strikes, helping to sow confusion  within al-Qaeda’s ranks, causing operatives to doubt others’ identities  and to question the validity of communications.”  

In 2005, Israeli soldiers admitted  to throwing stones at other Israeli soldiers so they could blame it on  Palestinians to justify using violent force against protesters. Israel  also has a deep history of using lies and false attacks to justify  military action.  

In an incident that came to be known as The Lavon Affair in  1954, undercover Israeli agents set off bombs against U.S. and Brittish  targets, hoping that the attack would be blamed on local rebels.  Luckily, they were caught and the plot was exposed. 

This long track record of deception is important to consider as the  U.S. military is beating the war drum again, this time in Syria, where  there has also been a long list of false attacks at the hands of western  powers. Starting all the way back in 1957, politicians in the U.S. and UK developed a plot  to train Islamic extremists to carry out false flag attacks to push for  regime change in Syria. 

Now, decades later, history is repeating itself  in the same part of the world, as regime change in Syria is back on the  agenda, and the western powers are following the same playbook. It is now known that the rebel groups who would eventually become ISIS were funded by U.S. forces  in the present day Syrian civil war. Also, the previous gas attacks  that were blamed on Assad were never proven to be connected with his  government. In fact, the official story of these attacks is highly  contested. 

Theodore Postol, a professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), made a statement  after an alleged gas attack last year, saying that he does not believe  the Assad regime was responsible for the attacks, and that it is  possible the evidence was tampered with.  

Pulitzer-prize winning investigative reporter Seymour Hersh said high-level  American sources told him that the Turkish government carried out the  chemical weapons attacks blamed on the Syrian government. 

Soon after,  Turkish government officials were recorded discussing plans to carry out similar attacks and blame it on the Assad regime. As TFTP pointed out in an article yesterday, regardless of who is actually responsible for the attack, an intervention from the U.S. military will just lead to more death and destruction. 

Given that the U.S. government has such a reputation for mass murder  and human rights violations, we should always be extremely suspicious  whenever anyone in power claims to be doing something noble, especially  when military force is involved. To learn more, check out “Shadow Ring,” the hard-hitting documentary about the history of war propaganda. 

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AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY:

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My name is John Vibes and I am an author and researcher who organizes a number of large events including the Free Your Mind Conference. I write for numerous alternative media websites, including The Free Thought Project @tftproject and The Mind Unleashed. In addition to my first book, Alchemy of the Timeless Renaissance, I have also co-authored three books with Derrick Broze @dbroze : The Conscious Resistance: Reflections on Anarchy and Spirituality, Finding Freedom in an Age of Confusion and Manifesto of the Free Humans

I just won a 3-year-long battle with cancer, and will be working to help others through my experience, if you wish to contribute to my medical bills, consider subscribing to my podcast on Patreon.