Most everyone in Washington, especially those who feed at the warfare-state trough, is overly pleased with Mad Dog Mattis, President-elect Trump’s nominee for Defense Secretary. That’s because Mattis’ testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee fell squarely within the acceptable parameters established by the U.S. national-security establishment.
Russia is bad. Putin is worse. Good relations with Russia are impossible. Russia is a rival. Russia is an enemy. Americans must reject Russia.
It all brings to mind the Cold War and the conversion of the federal government to a national-security state, the same type of governmental apparatus that characterizes totalitarian regimes. In fact, the current controversy over Russia helps to show young people what many of us had to endure during the Cold War I years.
As soon as World War II was over, U.S. officials did not skip a beat. While Nazi Germany had been defeated in the war, Americans were told that the United States now had a new official enemy — the Soviet Union, which, ironically, had been America’s partner and ally in the war against Germany.
This new official enemy, U.S. officials said, was just as big a threat to the United States as Nazi Germany, if not bigger. It was coming to get us, just like Nazi Germany supposedly was, even if it wasn’t even able to cross the English Channel to invade England.
Americans were told that there was a worldwide communist conspiracy to take over the world and that it was based in Moscow. If America didn’t fight back with the same weapons the communists were using, all would be lost. The dominoes would fall, the federal government would end up in the hands of the communists, the Reds would be running the IRS and the Social Security Administration, and everyone would soon be speaking Russian.
There could never be peaceful coexistence with the commies, Americans were repeatedly told. A communist could not be trusted. This was a fight to the finish, one that almost assuredly would result in nuclear war between the two powers. But America would win that war, U.S. officials said, because we would lose only 40 million people while the Reds would lose everyone.
To counteract this new official threat, U.S. officials said, it was necessary for America to abandon its constitutional concept of a limited-government republic and become a national-security state. That meant an enormous and ever-growing standing army, a secretive international paramilitary agency with omnipotent powers (the CIA), and a secretive surveillance agency (the NSA). Few bothered to notice that that was precisely the governmental structure of Nazi Germany (e.g., the Gestapo), the Soviet Union (e.g., the KGB), and every other totalitarian regime.
But that was the point. We had to become like them in order to defeat them, U.S officials said. If we didn’t become like them, they said, the Reds would win.
But the conversion, they said, would be only temporary. As soon as the Cold War was over, they steadfastly maintained, the national-security state would be dismantled and the American people could have their constitutional republic back.
Oh, there was one other thing: ever-increasing tax monies being doled out to the ever-growing army of contractors and subcontractors who began feeding at the public national-security state trough.
And that’s the way it went after 1945—overarching fear of the commies drummed into the minds of the American people, including children who were receiving their Cold War indoctrination in America’s public (i.e., government) schools.
President Truman was the president who presided over the conversion from 1945-1952. From 1952-1960, President Eisenhower watched it grow in terms of power and influence.
Ironically, at the end of his term, Ike pointed out the magnitude of the change and how the “military-industrial complex,” as he termed the national-security state, posed a grave threat to the freedoms and democratic processes of the American people. Equally ironic, in December 1963—thirty days after the assassination of President Kennedy, Truman told the American people that the CIA had become a sinister force in American life and had gone far beyond the mere intelligence-gathering agency that he had intended.
Neither Truman nor Ike, however, questioned the official narrative: That the Reds were coming to get us. Both of them accepted the official notion that the Russians were coming and that peaceful coexistence with communists would always be impossible.
And then came President John F. Kennedy. Coming into office as pretty much a standard Cold Warrior, he was the one post-World War II president who ever rejected the official narrative. After the CIA’s disastrous invasion of Cuba, the Pentagon’s recommendation to initiate a surprise nuclear attack on the Soviet Union, and the Pentagon’s and CIA’s advice to attack and invade Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy achieved a “breakthrough,” one that enabled him to see the entire Cold War for the crock it was.
In his famous Peace Speech at American University on June 10, 1963 — just four months before he was assassinated, Kennedy called for an end to the Cold War. He said that it was entirely possible for the United States and the Soviet Union to peacefully coexist, notwithstanding the differences in ideology. Kennedy engineered a nuclear test ban with the Soviets. He ordered a partial withdrawal of troops from Vietnam and told close associates that he would pull them all out after he defeated Barry Goldwater in the 1964 presidential election.
The fascinating aspect to this was that Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev and Cuban leader Fidel Castro were on precisely the same page. What many Americans still don’t realize today is that Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro began conducting secret negotiations, ones in which JFK intentionally and secretly (he thought) bypassed the Pentagon and the CIA.
All this, needless to say, was anathema to the national-security establishment. In their eyes, Kennedy just didn’t get it. Russia is bad. The Reds are bad. They are coming to get us. There can never be peace with Russia. War is inevitable. You can always trust a communist to be a communist. Kennedy, they said, was naive and incompetent. Some of them accused him of being traitor.
Kennedy, however, had no illusions about the nature of communism. He simply held that no matter how bad, how brutal, and evil that ideology might be, it was still possible to peacefully exist with communist regimes, much like the United States does today with, say, Vietnam.
Needless to say, Kennedy’s vision, if fulfilled, constituted a grave threat to the enormous, ever-growing national-security establishment. Lots of money and lots of power and influence over succeeding years and decades were at stake.
Kennedy’s vision for world peace came to an end on November 22, 1963. Since his vice-president, Lyndon Johnson, was on the same page as the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA, the Cold War was continued ramped up, hundreds of thousands of troops were sent to Vietnam, where 58,000 plus American men lost their lives for nothing, and the tax monies flooded into the coffers of the warfare-state contractors and subcontractors.
Ever since November 22, 1963, every single president has fallen within the acceptable parameters set forth by the national-security establishment. It’s okay to question a particular intervention overseas (like Iraq, Libya, or Syria) or to complain about the excessive costs of a Pentagon hammer or airplane.
But no president is permitted to ever question the official narrative — that the national-security establishment has now become a permanent part of America’s governmental structure and that Americans will never be permitted to have their constitutional republic back.
And that’s where the official enemies come into play. First, the Soviet communists, who were America’s partners and allies in World War II. Then came anti-American terrorism, which U.S officials produced with their military interventionism in the Middle East. And now we’ve come full circle, once again focusing on Russia-bad in what amounts to Cold War II.
For a time, it seemed like Trump was going to question and challenge the official narrative. With his selection of Mad Dog Mattis as Defense Secretary, it seems like Trump might already be placing himself within the acceptable parameters of the national-security states’ establishment.
For more information, see:
JFK’s War with the National Security Establishment: Why Kennedy Was Assassinated by Douglas Horne
The Kennedy Autopsy by Jacob Hornberger
Regime Change: The Kennedy Assassination by Jacob Hornberger
The CIA, Terrorism, and the Cold War: The Evil of the National Security State by Jacob Hornberger
CIA & JFK: The Secret Assassination Files by Jefferson Morley
