These little kids are like damn mountain goats.

We have three branches of government, with ‘checks and balances,’ as we were taught in junior high school.  But one branch of government (the presidency) gets us into wars and the other two (Congress and the Supreme Court) go sheepishly along.

- Howard Zinn – Declarations of Independence

Wondering what has changed? Read about it here.

Using the atomic bombs on populated cities was justified in moral terms by American political leaders.  Henry Stimson, whose Interim Committee had the job of deciding whether or not to use the atomic bomb, said later it was done “to end the war in victory with the least possible cost in the lives of the men of the armies.”  This was based on the assumption that without atomic bombs, an invasion of Japan would be necessary, which would cost many American lives.

- Howard Zinn – Declarations of Independence

Wondering what has changed? Read about it here.

For a prince, a dictator, or a tyrant national power is an end unquestioned.  A democratic state, however, substituting an elected president for a prince, must present national power as benign, serving the interests of liberty, justice, and humanity.  If such a state, which is surrounded with the rhetoric of democracy and liberty and, in truth, has some measure of both, engages in a war that is clearly against a vicious and demonstrably evil enemy, then the end seems so clean and clear that any means to defeat that enemy may seem unjustified.

Such a state was the United States and such an enemy was fascism, represented by Germany, Italy, and Japan.  Therefore, when the atomic bomb appeared to be the means for a quicker victory, there was little hesitation to use it.

- Howard Zinn – Declarations of Independence

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Kissinger approved the bombing and invasion of Cambodia, an act so disruptive of the delicate Cambodian society that it can be considered an important factor in the rise of the murderous Pol Pot regime in that country.  After he and the representatives of North Vietnam had negotiated a peace agreement to end the war in late 1972, he approved the breaking off of the talks and the brutal bombardment of residential districts in Hanoi by the most ferocious bombing plane of the time, the B-52.

Kissinger’s biographers describe his role:  “If he had disapproved of Nixon’s policy, he could have argued against the Cambodian attack.  But there is no sign that he ever mustered his considerable influence to persuade the President to hold his fire.  Or that he ever condisered resigning in protest.  Quite the contrary, Kissinger supported the policy.”

- Howard Zinn – Declarations of Independence

Wondering what has changed? Read about it here.

But intimidation of Schlesinger-as-adviser went beyond silencing him in the other cabinet room – it led him to produce a nine-page memorandum to President Kennedy, written shortly before the invasion of Cuba, in which he is as blunt as Machiavelli himself in urging deception of the public to conceal the U.S. role in the invasion.  This would be necessary because “a great many people simply do not at this moment see that Cuba presents so grave and compelling a threat to our national security as to justify a course of action which much of the world will interpret as calculated aggression against a small nation.”

The memorandum goes on, “The character and repute of President Kennedy constitute one of our greatest national resources.  Nothing should be done to jeopardize this invaluable asset.  When lies must be told, they should be told by subordinate officials.”  It goes on to suggest “that someone other than the President make the final decision and do so in absence – someone whose head can later be placed on the block if things go terribly wrong. “  (Cesare Borgia again, only lacking the blood-stained knife.)

Sleshinger included in his memo sample questions and lying answers in case the issue of the invasion came up in a press conference:

Q: Mr. President, is CIA involved in this affair?

A: I can assure you that the United States has no intention of using force to overthrow the Castro regime.

The scenario was followed.  Four days before the invasion, President kennedy told a press conference, “There will not be, under any conditions, any intervention in Cuba by U.S. armed forces.”

- Howard Zinn – Declarations of Independence

Wondering what has changed? Read about it here.

Then there were the lies of President John Kennedy and Secretary of State Dean Rusk when they told the public the United States was not responsible for the 1961 invasion of Cuba, although in fact the invasion had been organized by the CIA.

The escalation of the war in Vietnam started with a set of lies – I n August 1964 – about incidents in the Gulf of Tonkin.  The United States announced two “unprovoked” attacks on U.S. destroyers by North Vietnamese boats.  One of them almost certainly did not take place.  The other was undoubtedly provoked by the proximity (ten miles) of the destroyer to the Vietnamese coast and by a series of CIA-organized raids on the coast.

The lies then multiplied.  One of them was President Johnson’s statement that the U.S. Air Force was only bombing “military targets.”  Another was a deception by President Richard Nixon; he concealed from the American public the 1969-1970 massive bombing of Cambodia, a country which we were supposed to be at peace.

- Howard Zinn – Declarations of Independence

Wondering what has changed? Read about it here.

One of the important biographies of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, is titled Roosvelt: The Lion and the Fox. Roosevelt deceived the American public at the start of World War II, in September and October 1941, misstating facts about two instances involving German submarines and American destroyers (claiming that the destroyer Greer, which was attacked by a German submarine, was on an innoscent mission when in fact it was tracking the sub for the British navy).  A historian sympathetic to him wrote, “Franklin Roosevelt repeatedly deceived the American people during the period before Pearl Harbor …. He was like the physician who must tell the patient lies for the patient’s own good.”

- Howard Zinn – Declarations of Independence

Wondering what has changed? Read about it here.

Machiavelli’s advice for the prince has been followed in our time by all sorts of dictators and generalissimos.  Hitler kept a copy of The Prince at his bedside, it is said.  (Who says? How do they know?)  Mussolini used Machiavelli for his doctoral dissertation.  Lenin and Stalin are also supposed to have read Machiavelli.  Certainly the Italian Communist Gramsci wrote favorably about Machiavelli, claiming that Machiavelli was not really giving advice to princes, who knew all that already, but to “those who do not know,” thus educating “those who must recognize certain necessary means, even if those of tyrants, because they want certain ends.”

The prime ministers and presidents of modern democratic states, despite there pretensions, have also admired and followed Machiavelli.  Max Lerner, a prominent liberal commentator on the post-World War II period, in his introduction to Machiavelli’s writings, says of him “The common meaning he has for democrats and dictators alike is that, whatever your ends, you must be clear-eyed and unsentimental in pursuit of them.”  Lerner finds in Machiavelli’s Discourses that one of its important ideas is “the need in the conduct even of a democratic state for the will to survive and therefore for ruthless instead of half-hearted measures.”

Thus the democratic state, behaving like the lion, uses force when persuasion does not work.  It uses it against its own citizens when they cannot be persuaded to obey the laws.  It uses it against other peoples in the act of war, not always in self defense, but often when it cannot persuade other nations to do it’s bidding.

For example, at the start of the 20^th century, although Columbia was willing to sell the rights to the Panama Canal to the United States, it wanted more money than the United States was willing to pay.  So the warships were sent on their way, a little revolution was instigated in Panama, and soon the Canal Zone was in the hands of the United States.  As one U.S. senator described the operation, “We stole it fair and square.”

- Howard Zinn – Declarations of Independence

Wondering what has changed? Read about it here.

In 1988, a story in a Beirut magazine led to information that Ronald Reagan’s administration had been secretly selling arms to Iran, the declared enemy of the United States, and using the proceeds to give military aid to counterrevolutionaries (the “contras”) in Nicaragua, thus violating an act passed by Congress.  Regan and Vice President Bush denied involvement, although the evidence pointed very strongly to their partipations.  Instead of impeaching them, however, Congress put their emissaries on the witness stand, and later several of them were indicted.  One of them (Robert McFarland) tried to commit sicide.  Another, Colonial Oliver North, stood trial for lying to Congress, was found guilty, but not sentenced to prison.  Reagan was not compelled to testify about what he had done.  He retired in peace and Bush became the next president of the United States, both beneficiaries of plausible denial.  Machiavelli would have admired the operation.

- Howard Zinn – Declarations of Independence

Wondering what has changed? Read about it here.