After JFK’s assassination in November, Lyndon Johnson quickly expanded the war in Vietnam, and the result was a dramatic escalation of state power that eventually included the government’s refusal to redeem foreign-held dollars for gold, what journalists called Nixon Shock — “a new prosperity without war,” the president announced with a straight face.
Kennedy’s phrase gripped by forces we cannot control still looms today as Congress refuses to exercise its war powers. The State tolerates no threats to its power. With war, social power all but disappears, as was tragically exemplified in the First World War. Leftist historian Howard Zinn narrates:
Senator James Wadsworth of New York suggested compulsory military training for all males . . . ”We must let our young men know that they owe some responsibility to this country.”
The supreme fulfillment of that responsibility was taking place in Europe. Ten million were to die on the battlefield; 20 million were to die of hunger and disease related to the war. And no one since that day has been able to show that the war brought any gain for humanity that would be worth one human life.
As I wrote in an earlier essay,
Even with Britain imposing a starvation blockade against Germany that eventually killed 750,000 German civilians, the Allies were in danger of losing the war. Using a fleet of newly developed submarines, Germany was destroying Allied shipping at the rate of 300,000 tons per week. By war’s end the U-boats had sunk over 5,700 ships. In early 1917, the Allies were facing the prospect of asking Germany for peace terms.
For Wall Street [and the Morgan empire], peace was not an option. With the possibility of Allied bonds going into default, investors would incur a loss amounting to $1.5 billion. Commissions, as well as the profits from selling war materials, would be lost. The Treasury could make direct grants to the Allies, but only if the US abandoned its “neutrality” and entered the war. Following Wilson’s address to Congress, it did so officially on April 6, 1917.
The Morgan cash flow was thus saved.
And the state killed over 100,000 American men to save it, prompting marine Major General Smedley D. Butler, two-time Medal of Honor recipient, to publish War is a Racket, ironically in the same year Nock’s Our Enemy, the State first appeared, 1935. Though libertarian classics, both books are mostly unknown to the general public. No surprise there.
Today, no one knows what’s really going on with Iran because of the usual MSN controlled coverage and AI fake videos. We do know that people, including children, are being killed, humanitarian crises are spreading, economies are taking a hit, and at this point only if President Trump changes his mind will the war stop.
