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.
Jacob G. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom
Foundation. He was born and raised in Laredo, Texas, and received his B.A. in
economics from Virginia Military Institute and his law degree from the
University of Texas. He was a trial attorney for twelve years in Texas. He
also was an adjunct professor at the University of Dallas, where he taught
law and economics. In 1987, Mr. Hornberger left the practice of law to become
director of programs at the Foundation for Economic Education. He has
advanced freedom and free markets on talk-radio stations all across the
country as well as on Fox News' Neil Cavuto and Greta van Susteren shows and
he appeared as a regular commentator on Judge Andrew Napolitano's show
Freedom Watch. View these interviews at LewRockwell.com and from Full
Context.
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