[Peace-discuss] "Celebrate America" & Americans' opposition to war

[C. G. Estabrook]

The theme of this year’s July 4 parade in C-U is “Celebrate America.” 
I suggest we celebrate Americans’ historic reluctance to fight wars. 
They have had to manipulated - and lied - into it from the beginning:

AMERICAN ‘WAR OF INDEPENDENCE’ 1775-83
American leaders encourage separation from Britain not for ‘liberty’ but to protect the slave economy from British threats to abolish it

AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 1860-65
Lincoln and the Republicans attack the South not to free the slaves but to bring the whole country’s economy under Northern control (“a house divided”)

WORLD WAR I 1917-18
Pres. Wilson is re-elected in 1916 on the slogan, “He kept us out of war!” - while he is scheming with NY banks to get the U.S. into the First World War (cf. Creel Commission)

WORLD WAR II 1941-45
Pres. Roosevelt uses Pearl Harbor (probably known in advance) to get an anti-war public to continue the fight for US economic control of the Pacific

KOREA 1950-53
Pres. Truman, having used the atomic bombs to show US military superiority to the post-WWI world, uses Russia & China to “scare hell out of the American people” & continue war economy

VIETNAM 1962-75
Pres. Kennedy carpet-bombs & sends troops to deter “the threat of a good example” - a post-colonial society developing outside US world economic control (‘domino theory’)

TERROR WARS I: CENTRAL AMERICA 1981-96
Pres. Reagan plans to do in Central America what Kennedy did in SE Asia but is prevented by post-Vietnam anti-war sentiment; instead sponsors proxy wars throughout the region

TERROR WARS II: MIDEAST 1991-ongoing
Pres. Bush I attacks Iraq in 1991 to “kick the Vietnam syndrome” [= the public’s aversion to war] & begin a generation of US attacks on the Mideast to control its energy resources. 
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"The middle third [of the white male US population is] composed principally of the Yeomanry, the soundest part of the Nation and always averse to War.” --President John Adams, 1813

—CGE