Unjust and Undeclared Wars
Politics / US Politics Jan 25, 2015 - 04:00 PM GMTBy: Submissions
Raymond Matison writes: The history of the human race and war seem inseparable. For as long as history has been written, starting with etchings on clay tablets, recording and depiction of war has been an important part of it. Indeed, ancient and modern history books alike generally focus mostly on rulers and their conquests of lands and people. With this long history of warlike behavior, it is easy to believe that war is an endemic part of humans and our society.
Evolution of the Tools of War.
War has evolved dramatically over time. Thousands of years ago war was fought mano a mano, where soldiers confronted each other individually and quite personally one on one, and the victorious lived to see another battle. With man’s ingenuity, the bow allowed soldiers to distance themselves somewhat from their enemy, which increased still further with the advent of the rifle. As scientific development continued, it was possible to fire artillery inflicting damage miles away from the origin of this instrument of destruction; and the soldier detonating the charge was no longer even visible to his opponent. In the last century with development of rockets, cruise and ballistic missiles, it is possible to target an enemy half-way around the world. Today the “pilot” of a drone may sit in a bunker in Colorado and fire a rocket at the selected target in Afghanistan, without any risk or fear of direct, personal retaliation.
While current military conflicts in the world are still settled largely by bullets and explosives, continued scientific development and financial evolution have brought about a new softer, but not necessarily a kinder war. The development of globalized financial markets, with the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency, allows the transfer of money and leveraged derivative financial instruments worldwide with the click of a computer button, thereby allowing for a very destructive war that is conducted without a single bullet being fired. It can also be a stealth war, for if the perpetrator does not announce his intentions starting a financial war, or hides its actions, it could be difficult or nearly impossible for the recipient of this destruction to confirm who is responsible for the economic devastation. In addition, since the destruction from financial warfare can take place months after this kind of attack is initiated, it is easy simply to blame the markets and our globalized interdependence, and thereby further conceal the aggression. Individual perpetrators implementing this destruction cannot be identified, and feel safe and secure in their attack.
Today the U.S. is able to implement and enforce sanctions on countries with respect to items that they may import or export, and control the ability of a country to use the SWIFT system to pay or get paid for international trade. In addition, a financial warfare aggressor can dump currency derivatives on the markets driving down the value of any foreign currency creating widespread in-country devastation. As an example, within the last several years a currency war with Iran caused it to lose more than half its value, which makes purchases of international and imported items twice as expensive. This kind of manufactured inflation in the last few years has caused food riots and revolutions in many undeveloped countries. Russia’s ruble in a very short period of time, due to a combination of real global recession and strategically aligned alliances affecting market oil supply, together with currency manipulation, has lost over 40% of its value compared to the dollar, creating havoc in its economy. These latter observations are not to make moral judgments regarding countries which are friends or foes, but simply to show the dramatic effects of this new and powerful warfare.
Philosophical Issues Related to War.
One question worth considering is whether the old warfare of blood and bullets is harsher than the new financial warfare. It is clear that bullets kill and main, whereas a currency war seems benign. However, in the old type of war soldiers suffered most direct casualties, whereas in our new financial war a whole country or region including noncombatants, women and children are made to suffer. It is debatable whether some number of soldiers dying by a bullet is not more humane than large segments of a population dying from financially induced pestilence.
Another basic question which needs to be answered is who should suffer most from a conflict, its initiators, combatants or the population? After all, we must reflect on the fact that the common people aren’t the ones who initiate conflict or war. The Japanese, German, Russian, people didn’t want nor started the great wars of the last century – it was their leaders. The American people didn’t want to participate in the last two world wars, nor the Korean, Vietnam, Iraqi, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and other conflicts – our leaders did. The anecdotal solution would be to have the leaders of opposing sides face each other in a duel to the death eliminating millions of military and civilian casualties.
The one thing that has not changed much over millennia of wars is that those attacked and fighting off invaders, in defense of their people and borders are seen as conducting a just war. Colonialists and aggressors are universally labeled as conducting an unjust war. King George of England during the 1770’s became an oppressor to the American colonists, and in conducting his war to maintain control of the people in the new world he was fighting an unjust war. The king also had used financial warfare by decreeing colonists to use gold and eliminate colonial scrip for trade, which caused a depression in the Colonies. According to some historians this was the real or underlying cause of our war of independence. Financial warfare was destructive hundreds of years ago, since then it has become much more devastating.
With the incredibly large disparity in cultural, religious and social development among countries of the world, organized religion has always had an important role in the precipitation of war. Recorded history shows us that many wars were started over religious differences. Many recent wars in the Middle East are driven by differences in religious conviction or dogma. Institutionalized religion and government, when connected, have been a reliable source of oppression and frequent source of war - making it a quite useful tool of rulers. Its symbiosis, when fully developed into a theocracy, has the consequence that humans are still killing each other today over ancient, questionably holy writings.
Unjust and Undeclared Wars.
Most countries have used false flag operations whereby they create an attack against themselves, blame the targeted country and use the contrived event as a basis for starting a war. An example of such a false flag operation relates to Soviets bullying Finland into moving its border back from Leningrad. When the Finns refused to shift the border, the Russians faked a Finnish attack on Russian territory and attacked Finland in “retribution” on November 30,1939 (John Koster, Operation Snow, 2012).
Another fascinating example relates to the alleged North Vietnamese gunboat attack on the destroyer USS Maddox patrolling the Gulf of Tonkin on August 4, 1964, which was the U.S. pretext for conducting the Vietnam War. In his book “Secret Sentry” by Matthew M. Aid published in 2009 he writes: “It was no secret that, wanting to “look tough” Johnson administration officials were looking for a casus belli for attacking North Vietnam.” And “on the basis of over one hundred NSA reports…Gulf of Tonkin incident never happened.”
Another subtle form of war is by subversion, whereby a small group of people with one common goal infiltrate or otherwise influence government organizations over a long period of time in order to promote policy, programs and legislation favorable to its perpetrators. An example of this is what Soviet intelligence had code-named “Operation Snow”.
“For the Soviet Union to be able to fend off a German attack from the west, the Japanese threat from the east would have to be neutralized. A war between Japan and the United States would achieve that goal nicely. Pavlov’s job was to find a friend in the U.S. government with enough influence over American policy to subtly but effectively provoke that war. Harry Dexter White (birth name Weit or Weiss), a trusted assistant to Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s close friend and secretary of the Treasury, Henry Morgenthau, Jr. had just bought Vitali Pavlov lunch. White had also accepted a written NKVD order on behalf of Joseph Stalin to protect the Soviet Union’s Pacific flank. He had agreed to provoke a war between the United States and Japan.”
Another example is the WWII negotiations between Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin at the Yalta Conference in 1945. This conference dealt with the division of Europe and its borders, whereby Alger Hiss an advisor to President Roosevelt (but in reality a committed communist) participated in drafting the “Declaration of Liberated Europe” and influenced Roosevelt to give half of Europe to Stalin.
“The accumulating intercepts of Russian traffic from 1943 on would yield one of the greatest U.S. COMINT (communications intelligence) ever – the program named Venona….teams of code breakers on both sides of the Atlantic accomplished an astounding series of cryptanalytic breakthroughs that … gave the leaders of the United States and Great Britain unparalleled access to what was going on inside the Soviet Union… the Venona decrypts allowed the FBI and its counterparts in England and Australia to identify a large number of Soviet spies during the late 1940’s and the 1950’s … Declassified FBI documents show that only 15 of the 206 Soviet agents identified in the Venona decrypts were ever prosecuted, in large part because the secrecy of these decrypts prevented them from being used in an American court of law.”
A more recent example of subversion would be to look at the evolved socialists and their organizations in the U.S. According to Wikipedia, members to the Communist Party USA peaked in 1941 at approximately 75,000 members – a surprisingly large number. That this number declined afterwards is not surprising. As government agencies restricted activities of registered communist organization members, they reinvented themselves by eliminating the unacceptable name of communists and socialists with more acceptable sounding names such as progressives or democrats establishing organizations such as Democratic Socialists of America, Progressive Democrats of America, New Democratic Movement, and U.S. Peace Council, influencing elections of U.S. representatives and senators to achieve their goals in undermining America. Trevor Loudon, in his book entitled “The Enemies Within” published in 2013 states: “The problem is that for more than 50 years, U.S. radicals, many of them allied to hostile foreign powers, have been systematically infiltrating sympathizers and “useful idiots” in the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate.”
Public support for wars is won over by effective, government sponsored propaganda.
During WWII there were investigative reporters and later historians who suggested that America goaded the Japanese to attack the United States. This assertion becomes more credible with the now known treachery of Harry Dexter White. They suggest that the president knew about the coming attack of Pearl Harbor but allowed it to happen in order to win public support for a war. Public support was also needed for the U.S. to fight the Nazis. Most governments maintain propaganda machinery that is turned on to win the hearts and minds of citizens for our participation of every war.
Were we not bombarded by government’s unswerving conviction that we must attack Iraq because they owned weapons of mass destruction that could be used against us? But no such weapons have been found. In the book “Secret Sentry” it states: “In late September 2002, NSA director Michael Hayden signed off on a CIA-produced National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq’s WMD program that not only turned out to be wrong in almost all respects, but also served as the principal justification for the Bush administration to lead the United States to war with Iraq.” Completely explaining this “intelligence collection error” are clarifying statements in the book “The Tyranny of Oil” authored by Antonia Juhasz, in 2008.
“Oil Daily and Petroleum Intelligence Weekly, estimated Iraq’s reserves at as much as 300 to 400 billion barrels. If that is accurate, Iraq’s reserves would be larger than Saudi Arabia’s…. From World War I until approximately 1973, British, French, and American oil companies owned and controlled Iraq’s oil under the concessionary system. In 1973 Iraq fully nationalized its oil and kicked the corporations out…. In 1990 President Bush declared “Our jobs, our way of life, our own freedom and the freedom of friendly countries around the world would all suffer if control of the world’s great oil reserves fell into the hands of Saddam Hussein.”
The president’s war initiation is even more understandable due to Hussein’s declaration and activity to sell Iraq’s oil for Euro’s rather than dollars. Such sales would have undermined the Petrodollar, and U.S. dollar hegemony globally, which had to be defended.
An Alternative Future
Were these just wars? Using a narrow definition of national security, meaning the invasion of America by foreign soldiers, it is clear that no country can cross the thousands of miles of ocean with enough resources to invade or conquer us. We definitely are not fundamentally threatened by Iran’s, Iraq’s, Russia’s nor any combination of military forces actions overseas. We can only be subdued by internal subversion, rot and collapse.
We can never know how the world would be if America had acted differently, namely strictly protecting our national borders, rather than getting involved in the ruinous wars of foreign countries. At the founding of America, Jefferson advised the country to be separate but not isolated, friendly with all, but aligned with none. We could have intercepted Japanese planes heading for Pearl Harbor and destroyed them all, but then not attacked Japan. This would have demonstrated that it is not possible to bring a war to our borders thousands of miles from the supply lines of Japan. Would our country be really worse off today, if we had never sent troops and brought our incredibly devastating war effort to Japan?
It is arguable that the winner of WWII without our participation, either Nazi Germany or USSR, would have collapsed in the fifty year period following that war. So, was our involvement in these wars really needed or desirable? Were our leaders trying to save the world, or just seeking glory for themselves in the pages of history? Were the bankers looking for business and profit from our war participation? Was participation in this war just or unjust from the perspective of the U.S. citizen? Had we not participated in the European conflict would our lives really be in greater jeopardy today? Would Americans have lived more poorly all these years if we had just minded our business?
Leadership and Unchanging Human Weakness
The permanence of human nature suggests that attitude of leaders will not, in fact cannot change. People or countries which have never been fully subjugated or conquered can never understand people’s visceral, long-term hate of an invader. Since we have never been conquered, our leaders lack the empathy to understand the feelings of many people in the rest of the world. The U.S. may have become a bully quite inadvertently, when our leaders believe that we are helping countries in building democracy. For example, our freeing Afghanistan from the Soviets in the 1980’s was understood as helping their people. Staying in the country, even with good intent, changes the liberator over a period of time to the perceived oppressor.
The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939 between Germany and Russia partitioned their spheres of influence, resulting in Russia occupying the Baltic States. The primitive Soviet soldiers were deeply hated for their invasion and savagery. When Germans attacked Russia and drove them out of the Baltics, they were happily received first as cultured liberators. However, as their policies and administration was implemented, they became simply another invader and oppressor. Thus, it would not be surprising that America’s military forces even after freeing half of Europe and Japan have stayed there too long, and will increasingly become unwelcome.
In the period up to WWII, countries also had the openness and forthrightness to declare war against another country, but starting with the Korean War our leaders have taken the less arduous route to military conflict without consent of Congress by their declaring police action. People are further removed from a war commitment than previously, but they are committed for the taxes, injuries and deaths of the conflict. In addition, when we subsidize one country or some military force with money or armaments, even without sending our own troops (as in Ukraine and Syria), those costs also fall on the back of the citizen who had no say in this decision. To the extent that we are involved in a conflict just subsidizing some foreign power – are we really not at war?
Current State of Warfare
Recent sanctions, particularly when implemented jointly by the US and its European allies, have demonstrated to be highly effective in dramatically reducing the GDP and ruining the economy of any country being at the brunt end of that action. It undermines the internal workings of that economy creating a severe recession in the target country. In addition, since almost all the countries of the world have sold some debt in the international markets, which by necessity are denominated in dollars, such sanctions makes it more difficult for that country to service and repay its debt. Then the increased risk of such debt default, and dumping of financial derivatives on the global markets, drives down its local currency and amplifies the economic destruction. Is this not war? In the last century governments were truthful enough to call them trade wars; while blockades (sanctions) were recognized as the equivalent of an undeclared war.
Today leaders are more capable than ever utilizing mass media and social networks in the use of propaganda to convince their citizenry that a leader-desired or “necessary” war is just. In order to achieve such propaganda goals sometimes a false flag aggression is necessary. But the development of war by other means is the important story. Sanctions, blockades, financial futures use in foreign currencies, commodities such as oil and precious metals, fixed income and equity markets, the printing of money to reduce the value of one’s currency for the purpose of increasing exports and increasing inflation abroad, are now all weapons in global warfare and foreign policy agenda. This new warfare is more powerful than horrifying atomic weapons. A hydrogen bomb could destroy a city, but financial warfare can destroy whole countries, and bring its citizens to ruin. The recent rapid decline in the price of oil, and various dollar-competing currencies in a very short period of time underscore broad market manipulation which will bring more economic destruction on a global scale.
The Most Unjust and Undeclared War
In the last few decades another important yet undeclared war is taking place much closer to home. The consequences of this war include the loss of domestic jobs and the transfer of manufacturing plants to foreign countries. We have a government policy that has allowed violation off our national borders, flooded millions of illegal aliens to enter our country and displace domestic workers. Citizens cannot get jobs and are forced to depend increasingly on welfare subsistence. Government borrowing for these programs is increasing public debt, which only the taxpaying portion of the population must pay for. It is a massive transfer of wealth from workers to non-workers and illegal immigrants.
When the financial crisis of 2008 required the bailing out of the nation’s banks, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, General Motors, AIG, Goldman Sachs, et al, it was accomplished by the Federal Reserve’s creation of trillions of dollars. In the intervening years, government debt has increased from $9 trillion to $18 trillion dollars. Who is responsible for the payment of this debt? Is it the government or the Fed? No, it is us the taxpaying citizens. Who asked citizens whether they were willing to take on this debt? No one, the public was solidly against it. When politicians oppose the will of the people this becomes taxation without representation, and the debt is unenforceable as odious debt. It is another example of our leaders conscripting its people in an unjust and undeclared war directed against its own citizens.
Most government debt is built up from expenditures related to wars. If we take our current national $18 trillion of debt, and divide it by approximately 100 million families in the U.S. - that comes out to $180,000 per family. If government had not incurred these debts on our behalf, then arguably every family would be responsible for less debt, meaning less current and future taxation and other forms of financial repression. Or, if such sums were spent instead for the benefit of its citizens, everyone’s mortgage in the country could be paid off by this government debt. Would the citizens not derive more benefits this way as opposed to these sums being spent on war?
Over the last century inflation has reduced the value of a dollar to just three cents. People save over decades to provide for their adequate retirement years. When a policy of stated inflation is implemented, it nullifies the self-imposed hardship of people to provide for their future. If none of the people can have a comfortable retirement due to the destruction of value of currency over those same decades, is this not more than just bad policy? Does this not depict a proactive intent to destroy savings and security? Is this then also not a long-term war with injury to every citizen? Since it is hardly noticeable in the short term, is this also not subversion?
There are trillions of dollars invested in bonds and stocks on behalf of pension funds which are to provide retirement income to millions of citizens. Interest rates of the last decade have been historically low, and do not provide for an adequate investment return to fund those pension liabilities. The low interest on bank deposits, savings accounts, and CD’s deprives responsible savers from a fair return on their funds. This has been accomplished by financial repression of the Fed forcing low interest rates in order to allow our mountainous debt to simply be serviced. Millions of citizens have been, are and will be adversely affected - for decades in the future. Is this not another unjust and undeclared war against the American citizen?
Our leaders, bureaucrats and politicians have made provisions in law that now would allow the next failure of banks to seize depositor funds as a means to bail out the banks. This is to be called a bail-in. With this provision bankers have clearly defined for us what our fiat money really is. Deposits are just the junior liabilities of banks, and as such in a bankruptcy they would not have to be paid to the depositors. So banks speculate spectacularly on derivatives and other exotic securities, leveraging depositor funds, rather than lending to promote business growth. And of course leveraged speculation, when it works, can bring profits multiples of those from honest lending, which explains why it is the preferred activity of banks.
If we accept the approximate value of the global economy at $70 trillion, and value of outstanding notational amount of derivatives at about $1000 trillion, we see the incredible level of speculation by financial institutions beyond any responsible hedging operations required by industry. Since for every derivative contract there must be a seller and a buyer, half of the derivative position holders will lose. While the winners will make spectacular profits (if they are able to collect), the losses equally large will be sufficient to destroy banks, financial institutions, and the global economy. Speculative trading, of course, is even more compelling when loses of banks may be now paid by depositor life savings. Is this not repression, or an unjust and undeclared war against American citizens?
Congress forced through a stealth healthcare law without reading its contents, against the wishes of its citizenry. The government has not been listening to its constituency. Politicians surely know and understand that the country was bankrupt before the passage of Obamacare, and as such, no new health care law should have even been considered. Politicians should have been working on determining how to deliver the promises they have already made over the past decades – promises which have already mostly been compromised, partially defaulted upon, or unlikely to be received. If one specific program, from the multitude of social welfare programs such as Social Security or Medicare fails, it could be attributed to poor planning, implementation or bad management. However, when almost all such programs are underfunded and at risk of failure, one needs to consider actual intent. Was this another means of war against the citizen?
It seems that all these arguably well-intended programs implemented by politicians of supposedly sincere intent simply have gone astray. But, may this not be another surreptitious way to undermine America? Can it be stealth subversion by groups focusing solely on their own interests? Corporations may provide significant funds to a politician for a successful election campaign - that is clearly both fair and legal. However, when it is consciously done with the expectation of receiving political favors, at what point does it become a form of subversion simply for the benefit of the corporation? Where proactive political lobbying ends and subversion begins can be a huge grey area. When does the special interests of the banking, energy, pharmaceutical, defense, agricultural, and other industries drive legislation that becomes injurious to the common citizen, simultaneously and unwittingly undermining the strength of this nation?
Our politicians, bureaucrats, and government with its multitude of agencies are supposed to protect citizens against such abuse. But instead of being protected, citizen rights, liberties, savings and wealth are being eroded. Thomas Jefferson, in his “A Summary View of the Rights of British America” written in 1774 states: “Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of a day; but a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished period, and pursued unalterably thro’ every change of ministers, too plainly prove a deliberate, systematical plan of reducing us to slavery”.
All of these adverse and failing policies taken together bring one to the only possible, uncomfortable conclusion – that our government, together with the actions of the Fed, by not stopping abuses against citizens is and has been, abetting or conducting an undeclared financial war against its own citizenry for at least the last several decades. This clearly is not a just war. It is an unjust war.
It is unthinkable that our leaders and elected politicians would wage intentionally such a war against its own citizenry. Therefore, the only reasonable explanation for such prolonged and persistently perverse action is that our political process has been subverted. That subversion has been an undeclared war by forces of like-minded people living in this country. This process includes the special interests of large corporations, elites, radical socialist groups inimical to America, and the U.S. government bureaucracy itself. Overall, since this process has had a decidedly socialist leaning we would be safe to surmise that these groups have been complicit or active in this subversion. And finally, because these socialist ideas are accepted almost as mainstream today, we can conclude that this subversion with effective propaganda has taken place consistently over many decades. We are not being conquered from the without, but undermined from within.
Winning the Domestic War
To maintain our cherished way of life, citizens hoping to maintain liberty must meet this long-implemented subversion with decisive unity of purpose, courage with the knowledge that providence is on their side. They must win this undeclared war with determination and a finality that brings these groups to retreat and unconditionally surrender to “we the people”.
The fundamental change of our nation promised by our current president unfortunately has already taken place, for without it he could not have been elected. For the sake of this once exceptional nation, and for it to remain a beacon of hope for the world, as well as for our future generations, people must take their rights and liberty back from these corporate special interest groups, elites, socialists, and other groups subverting and undermining the country. The very maintenance of our Western Civilization and our way of life is at stake. As a first step, the abetting politicians and bureaucrats must be tossed out of government, and must be replaced with true representatives of the people who will work honestly in following the Constitution, bringing back individual responsibility.
Thomas Jefferson, the author of our country’s founding document had made many insightful observations. He is well known for the following quotes which our citizens, leaders, bureaucrats, and politicians all need to remember:
“My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.”
“The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give
to those who would not.”
“It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on
would save one-half the wars of the world.”
“If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation,
then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the
people of all property – until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers
conquered.”
“The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to
protect themselves against tyranny in government.”
Those who forget these admonitions do so at their peril, for they will be at risk of Jefferson’s ultimate insight: “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”
Raymond Matison
Mr. Matison is a U.S. patriot who immigrated to this country in 1949. With a B.S. in engineering physics, an M.S. in Actuarial Science, work in the actuarial field, and as a financial analyst at Legg, Mason Inc., Lehman Brothers, and investment banking at Kidder Peabody, and Merrill Lynch provides a diverse background for experience. First-hand exposure to fascism, socialism, and communism as well as the completion of a U.S. Army military intelligence course in the 1960’s have inspired a continuing interest in selected topics in science, military, and economics.
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