[Peace-discuss] Veterans' Day

Sun Nov 10 18:07:07 UTC 2013

In spite of which, Wilson's repressive policies at home and abroad were rejected by the electorate in 1920 "in the largest electoral landslide of modern times."

People are not fools, as is illustrated once again today when repressive policies at home and abroad by another Democratic president - with a even more "extensive propaganda / public relations campaign" - are being decisively rejected by the populace.

--CGE

On Nov 10, 2013, at 11:41 AM, David Johnson <davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net> wrote:

> Yes, and let's not forget the extensive propaganda / public relations campaign waged by the Wilson administration with the help of an army of government paid journalists, etc. with the help of Edward Bernays, to " convince " the American people of the need to enter World War I.
> Prior to the propoganda campaign a vast majority were opposed to war. After only 6-months a slight majority were in favor and those who still opposed like Labor Leader Eugene Debs were persecuted and jailed.
> 
> David Johnson
> 
> 
> 
> Subject: [Peace-discuss] Veterans' Day
> 
> 
> "American entry into the First World War had answered to no determinable national interest. A gratuitous decision by its president, enforced with sweeping ethnic persecution and political repression at home, it was the product of a massive excess of US power over any material goals procurable by it. "
> 
> 
> PRESIDENT WILSON & WORLD WAR I
> 
> ...With the arrival of Woodrow Wilson in the White House, however, a convulsive turn in the trajectory of American foreign policy was at hand. As no other President before or after him, Wilson gave voice to every chord of presumption in the imperial repertoire, at messianic pitch. Religion, capitalism, democracy, peace and the might of the United States were one. ‘Lift your eyes to the horizons of business’, he told American salesmen, ‘and with the inspiration of the thought that you are Americans and are meant to carry liberty and justice and the principles of humanity wherever you go, go out and sell goods that will make the world more comfortable and more happy, and convert them to the principles of America.’ [10] In a campaign address of 1912, he declared: ‘If I did not believe in Providence I would feel like a man going blindfolded through a haphazard world. I do believe in Providence. I believe that God presided over the inception of this nation. I believe he planted in us the visions of liberty.’ A ‘divine destiny’ was furthermore in store for America: ‘We are chosen and prominently chosen to show the way to the nations of the world how they shall walk in the paths of liberty’. [11] The route might be arduous, but the bourne was clear. ‘Slowly ascending the tedious climb that leads to the final uplands, we shall get our ultimate view of the duties of mankind. We have breasted a considerable part of that climb and shall presently, it may be in a generation or two, come out upon those great heights where there shines unobstructed the light of the justice of God’. [12] After sending US troops into more Caribbean and Central American states than any of his predecessors—Mexico, Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua—in 1917 Wilson plunged the country into the First World War, a conflict in which America had ‘the infinite privilege of fulfilling her destiny and saving the world’. [13]
> 
> If US entry into the war made victory for the Entente a foregone conclusion, imposing an American peace proved more difficult. Wilson’s Fourteen Points, a hurried attempt to counter Lenin’s denunciation of secret treaties and imperialist rule, were distinguished mainly by their call for a global Open Door—‘the removal, so far as possible, of all economic barriers’—and ‘impartial adjustment’, not abolition, of ‘all colonial claims’. Contrary to legend, self-determination appears nowhere in the enumeration. Wilson’s bulletins of democratic deliverance were treated with disdain by his partners at Versailles. At home, the League he proposed to avert future conflicts fared no better. ‘The stage is set, the destiny disclosed’, he announced, presenting his arrangements for perpetual peace in 1919, ‘the hand of God has led us into this way’. [14] The Senate was unmoved. America could dispense with Wilson’s ambitions. The country was not ready for an indefinite extension of regenerative intervention into the affairs of the world at large. Under the next three presidents, the United States concentrated on recovering its loans to Europe, otherwise limiting its operations outside the hemisphere to ineffectual attempts to get Germany back onto its feet and restrain Japan from overdoing expansion into China. To many, capsizal to the pole of separation—in the vocabulary of its opponents, ‘isolationism’—seemed all but complete.
> 
> The reality was that American entry into the First World War had answered to no determinable national interest. A gratuitous decision by its president, enforced with sweeping ethnic persecution and political repression at home, it was the product of a massive excess of US power over any material goals procurable by it. The rhetoric of American expansionism had typically projected markets overseas as if they were an external frontier, with the claim that US goods and investments now required outlets abroad that only an Open Door could assure. Yet the American economy, with its abundant natural resources and vast internal market, continued to be largely autarkic. Foreign trade accounted for no more than 10 per cent of GNP down to the First World War, when most American exports still consisted of raw materials and processed foodstuffs. Nor, of course, was there any Open Door to the US market itself, traditionally protected by high tariffs with scant regard for the principles of free trade. Still less was there the remotest threat of attack or invasion from Europe. It was this disjuncture between ideology and reality that brought Wilson’s millenarian globalism to an abrupt end. The United States could afford to dictate the military outcome of war in Europe. But if the cost of its intervention was small, the gain was nil. Neither at popular nor at elite level was any pressing need felt for institutional follow-through. America could look after itself, without worrying unduly about Europe. Under the banner of a return to normalcy, in 1920 Harding buried his Democratic opponent in the largest electoral landslide of modern times...
> 
> --PERRY ANDERSON, "IMPERIUM"
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