In 1947 a curious thing happened. The United States government changed the name of the Department of War to the Department of Defense. Maybe not an unreasonable name change. If your chief preoccupation for the next seven decades is going to be war and plenty of it, how better to mask your intentions with the anodyne title Department of Defense.
Not five years after the world had suffered the carnage of World War II with an estimated 53 million deaths (38 million civilians, 15 million military personnel), President Truman, invoking the specter of a world-wide plot to overthrow democracy — “communism has passed beyond the use of subversion to conquer independent nations and will now use armed invasion and war,” ordered U.S. troops to invade Korea (when the war ended in 1953, 4 million Koreans had been slaughtered along with 37,000 U.S. soldiers). Fifteen years later, two different Presidents, John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, democrats and committed anti-Communists, sent troops into Vietnam (Kennedy called them “advisors) with the same absurdities clouding their rational faculties. Here’s how President Johnson put it — “I am not going to lose Vietnam. I am not going to be the president who saw Southeast Asia go the way China went [to the Communists.” Three decades later in reprisal for 9/11, the US invaded Afghanistan although neither Afghanistan nor its people had anything to do with 9/11. To tug on the heartstrings of American women, the media dutifully reported that the US was there to “liberate” the women (while simultaneously unleashing drones to kill their sons, husbands, fathers and often the women themselves.) and to “defend freedom. Our grief has turned to anger, and anger to resolution… we’ll meet violence with patient justice — assured of the rightness of our cause, and confident of the victories to come. [George Bush address to Congress and the American people]. It took twenty years for U.S. “confidence” to melt away precipitating the usual rush for the exits.
By 2003, it was obvious the U.S. had bigger fish to fry than Afghanistan. Iraq was the real target. Communism was no longer the excuse du jour, it was those mythical WMDs that “posed a threat to the national security of the United States and international peace and security in the Persian Gulf region.” [President George W. Bush]. An estimated one million Iraqis died and a country was obliterated on the basis of that lie. Accompanying the invasion, was the Iraq War Resolution, an unholy pack of lies which passed congress with only one representative having the courage to vote no.
Now the U.S. has set its sights on a bigger target: Russia. The proxy war it engineered has already destroyed one country (Ukraine) and killed thousands of young Ukrainian and Russian soldiers. What’s the excuse this time? Leave it to Adam Schiff that pathetically obtuse senator wannabe and presently California congressman to come up with this doozy “United States Aids Ukraine And Her People So That We Can Fight Russia Over There And We Don’t Have To Fight Russia Here.”
There are exceptions to every rule. Sixty years ago, the U.S. faced what it considered another reason for invoking the gods of war: Russian nukes in Cuba. Unlike the Bay of Pigs when at the Pentagon’s urging and with his predecessor, Eisenhower’s blessing, Kennedy greenlighted a failed invasion of Cuba by Cuban mercenaries. From that escapade, Kennedy learned the value of negotiation and during the missile crisis overruled the Pentagon’s and his own advisers’ advice to nuke Cuba and kept the lines of communication open with Russian leader, Khrushchev. The outcome —a negotiated settlement that left both sides with a partial victory and led to the signing of a partial nuclear test ban treaty. A singular departure from US SOP: shoot first and keep shooting.
U.S. history of self-inflicted foreign policy humiliations points to America’s bipartisan love affair with war. U.S. engineered wars have never resulted in peace. In many parts of the world, the U.S. is hated and feared for its bullying tactics.
Let’s look at the wars the U.S. has started through the lens of its chief foreign policy failure: refusal to negotiate. For decades, U.S. leaders have basked in the fantasy that the most powerful nation on earth doesn’t need to negotiate. One of the earliest examples occurred in 1943 when President Roosevelt, seeing no need to consult with other allies, demanded non-negotiable “unconditional surrender” of the enemy. Winston Churchill, U.S. generals Eisenhower and George Marshall, and a conservative former president, Herbert Hoover were dubious. Even the Pope was unconvinced. After FDR’s death, President Truman could have negotiated Japan’s surrender allowing Japan to retain the institution of emperor. He declined to negotiate instead dropping nuclear bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (after the bombings, the terms of surrender included retaining the emperor).
Twenty years later and the U.S. got its war mojo going again as the conflict between North and South Vietnam heated up. Initially, negotiations towards neutrality of the country seemed possible. Not so fast. Secretary of State Dean Rusk, alleged U.S. chief negotiator, quickly put the usual kibosh on that notion— “No negotiations unless and until North Vietnam ceased its “aggressions” against South Vietnam” [Dean Rusk press conference, 2/25/1965]. Unbelievably, four years later in 1969, when President Nixon knew the U.S. could not possibly win the war—“In Saigon the tendency is to fight the war to victory…but you (Kissinger) and I know it won’t happen—it is impossible. Even Gen. Abrams [Commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam] agreed.” (Nixon to Kissinger, May 12, 1969) — Nixon nevertheless dropped 20,000 tons of bombs on the cities of Hanoi and Haiphong a month before the U.S. signed the Paris Peace Accords. Vietnam and its neighbors paid a terrible price for the U.S. refusal to negotiate — at least 2 million dead. The U.S. death toll was 58,000.
According to the Costs of War Project at the Watson Institute at Brown University, the U.S. War on Terror after 9/11 probably caused the deaths of 4.5 million men, women, and children in six countries: Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen. The U.S. wasted $8 trillion pursuing unwinnable wars, sacrificed the lives of thousands of young Americans killed or maimed, experienced the highest rate of economic inequality among wealthy nations and the breakdown of social programs like food aid that many Americans depend upon to survive.
Here’s Donald Rumsfeld, another U.S. negotiator who wasn’t: “We don’t negotiate surrenders.” Afghan-American diplomat Zalmay Khalilzad disagreed: “America’s longest war might have instead gone down in history as one of its shortest had the United States been willing to talk to the Taliban in December 2001.” Instead, America chose Door 3 and spent twenty fruitless years fighting the same war it fought in Vietnam with the same results.
Despite a history of losing wars, the U.S. refuses to negotiate or countenance negotiations by its “partners” when it has a country in its crosshairs. One month after the Ukrainian war began Presidents Zelensky and Putin negotiated a deal to neutralize Ukraine and end the war. In response, the U.S. sent in one of its vassals, then UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, threatening to withdraw NATO (aka US) support and leave Zelensky to the tender mercies of his Nazi buddies. Zelensky caved. With 113 billion US dollars most of which is probably in one of Zelensky’s offshore accounts, he is no longer talking about negotiations. As in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq, U.S. leader already know (thanks to leaked Pentagon documents) that the Ukrainians are on the brink of defeat, nevertheless Biden mindlessly repeats “America . . . will stand with you as long as it takes.” How many times have we heard that?
It’s always about “our values” — “This is about freedom. Freedom for Ukraine, freedom everywhere…” [Remarks by President Biden on continued support for Ukraine, January 25, 2023]. To make inflammatory rhetoric bipartisan, here’s Tom Cotton, one of the Senate’s biggest troglodytes, talking tough — “The Russian attack on an American drone cannot go unanswered if President Biden makes no response, he invites more aggression.” [Tom Cotton (R-AR)] While U.S. military and political leaders are beating their chests and filling the air with war whoops, about 130,000 Ukrainians are dead and their country is a wreck.
What can mitigate the shame of a country whose leaders find negotiation handy only to protect the patent and monopoly rights of their mega donors, particularly the pharmaceutical industry? With China and Russia in their crosshairs. U.S. politicians talk breezily of the chances of a nuclear holocaust. Some even predict that wiping out China or Russia or both with nukes isn’t out of the question. Some things never change — “You know that peace can only be won when we blow them all to kingdom come” [The Vietnam Song, Country Joe and the Fish, Woodstock 1969] (YouTube video)
