Cunning Pretexts for War:
Lincoln, Roosevelt and 9/11

by

Morgan Reynolds
December 16, 2015

“War is the health of the state.”
–Randolph Bourne

On December 7, 2015 I addressed the Hot Springs Village Civil War Roundtable on “The Cause of the American Civil War.” Only one cause? Complex though the world is (what a revelation), everything is simple at base. The aim of analysis, after all, is to cut to the chase, clear the clutter, penetrate to the heart of the matter. This is easily done in the case of the misnamed American Civil War although rare since the historian usually is “a camp follower of the successful army” (Hummel, p. 351). New Left historian William Appleman Williams, a very popular teacher in his tenure at the University of Wisconsin (1957-1968) while I studied there, was an exception: “Put simply, the cause of the Civil War was the refusal of Lincoln and other northerners to honor the revolutionary right of self-determination—the touchstone of the American Revolution” (Hummel, p. 351).

Overwhelming evidence places the burden of launching the horrors of total war, fratricidal at that, entirely on the shoulders of the calamitous Mr. Lincoln and his retinue rather than on southerners who merely wanted to peacefully secede from Lincoln’s mystical, sacred and perpetual “union.” The South had every legal and moral right to politically separate from the national government and seek its own way (Browne, DiLorenzo, Sale, Ward, Williams). The voluntary union of sovereign States was born of secession, “How, then, can secession legitimately be called ‘un-American’?” asks Michael Hill, League of the South.

Since my talk occurred on December 7—seventy-four years after the “surprise” attack by the “empire of Japan” on Pearl Harbor—I naturally discussed Mr. Franklin Delano Roosevelt too. As Lord Acton said, the historian should be a hanging judge, the avenger of innocent blood and I was there to hang Lincoln and Roosevelt. Historians, by contrast, fawn over these two war presidents, statists of the first rank, ranking them among the three greatest presidents of all time. Celebrated less is the fact that each maneuvered a foe into “firing the first shot” so he could get the war he wanted.

Is that incredible or what? War is mass murder and destruction, a racket too as Marine General Smedley Butler warned, somebody makes money while others enjoy blowing stuff up and killing people. The biggest government boondoggle of all, many die “for their country” and both military dead and alive “enjoy” accolades as heroes while civilian dead go uncelebrated. Victimhood via deception “unites” the country and blesses the entire enterprise with the moral high ground of the “just war” nonsense against dastardly aggressors.

At the Nuremburg trials Hitler’s Hermann Goering clarified this phenomenon:

 

Of course the people don’t want war. But after all, it’s the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it’s always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it’s a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger.

 

Stated in a more amusing way, a 19^th century Illinois politician who had opposed the War of 1812 said he would not oppose Polk’s Mexican war, explaining: “No, by God, I opposed one war and it ruined me and henceforth I am for War, Pestilence, and Famine” (Denson, p. 279). Reminds me of the current candidates for the Republican party’s presidential nomination, all foursquare for endless War. Not that Hillary Rodham Clinton is any different.

The manufactured first shot may be real like Fort Sumter and Pearl Harbor, imaginary like the Gulf of Tonkin non-incident, an abortive plan like Operation Northwoods or a staged-for-television production like 9/11. What matters is that it works as a psychological operation. Operation Northwoods, by the way, proves that CIA and Pentagon planners have no qualms about killing their own troops or citizens (Tarpley 97-8). The end justifies the means for these sociopaths.

For proof beyond reasonable doubt that Lyin’ Lincoln—America’s first dictator—maneuvered Jefferson Davis and the South into firing the first shot at the federal customs house for import tax collection called Fort Sumter, read John V. Denson’s superb article (pp. 231-288). Lincoln deceived the South in his various promises to evacuate the forts, especially through his Secretary of State Seward, and ultimately sent military reinforcements to Fort Sumter because he wanted war. By contrast, Jeff Davis reasoned that “it was not he who had forced the issue but Lincoln, and this the world would see and know, along with the deception which had been practiced” (Shelby Foote cited by Denson, p. 266). The world would see and know? The deception? Not so fast my friend, the victors write the history. Lincoln never ceased blaming the South for causing the war. For example, in his State of the Union address on December 6, 1864, he said, “…the war will cease on the part of the Government whenever it shall have ceased on the part of those who began it.” And the press and history establishments do not challenge the Big Lie.

As for Roosevelt, despite government censorship Robert B. Stinnett has the goods in spades on FDR’s treachery at Pearl Harbor. Stinnett’s irrefutable book published in 2001 on the 60^th anniversary of Pearl Harbor and ironically the same year as the “new Pearl Harbor,” was the product of 17 years of interviews, FOIA requests and digging, especially in the naval archives. Stinnett proves that the Roosevelt cabal provoked Japan and made sure the attack was more than a military “pin prick” (like Fort Sumter) to maximize public outrage.

 

Consider a few key facts Stinnett uncovered about how the set up worked: Lt. Commander Arthur H. McCollum (Office of Naval Intelligence and an expert on Japan) submitted an eight-step plan to provoke the Japanese into firing the first shot and Roosevelt put it into practice (Stinnett Appendix A, Denson p. 499); U.S. cryptographers broke the Japanese military codes by October 1940 yet all crucial messages were denied to the commanders at Pearl (U.S. Navy Admiral Husband E. Kimmel whose father was a Major with the Confederate States of America and U.S. Army Major General Walter C. Short); the “Vacant Sea” policy was put into effect on November 25, 1941, to empty the north Pacific of commercial traffic as Admiral Yamamoto’s fleet departed for the attack point 200 miles north of Pearl.  

FDR (chief planner of the attack) appointed his “Roberts Commission” chaired by Associate Supreme Court Justice Owen J. Roberts to investigate the facts (sure) about the Pearl Harbor attack. Seven weeks later (!) it reported its findings to Congress, accusing Admiral Kimmel and General Short of “errors of judgment” and “dereliction of duty.” Admiral James O. Richardson, the previous Pacific fleet commander whom FDR fired because Richardson objected to placing the fleet in harm’s way at Pearl (FDR was a naval expert), commented,

 

It is the most unfair, unjust and deceptively dishonest document ever printed by the Government Printing Office.  I cannot conceive of honorable men serving on the commission without greatest regret and deepest feeling of shame.

 

Admiral William Harrison Standley, who was a member of the Commission, later disavowed the report, maintaining that “these two officers were martyred” and “if they had been brought to trial, both would have been cleared of the charge.” General Short had petitioned a court martial but was denied. This resembles CSA president Jefferson Davis charged with treason but never brought to trial because the federal prosecution had no legal case! Following a 52-47 Senate vote in 1999 exonerating Kimmel and Short, Senator William V. Roth Jr. (R-DE) said, “They were denied vital intelligence that was available in Washington,” adding that they had been made scapegoats by the Pentagon. Senator Strom Thurmond (R-SC) termed Kimmel and Short “the two final victims of Pearl Harbor.”

And the 9/11 Commission? Traitors learn from history. Reluctantly appointed by Bush/Cheney under political pressure for over a year after 9/11, the Commission headed by former New Jersey governor Tom Kean did not seek “to assign individual blame” found no one responsible for 9/11. Surely that was convenient because without scapegoats and their descendants, fewer fair-minded people keep the wound open by pursuing the truth. Even so the 9/11 report has suffered withering criticism from the likes of Kean and his Vice Chair Lee Hamilton who claim the commission was “set up to fail” and John Farmer, Jr., senior counsel to the commission: “At some level of the government, at some point in time, a decision was made not to tell the truth…” Quelle surprise!

Let us be more precise about why treason by Roosevelt and Lincoln matter for 9/11. As Alan Stang explains :

One of the official elements of Nine Eleven says federal collusion in that enemy attack is unthinkable, because to think it would logically enmesh many of the highest officials in our government. Well-paid Washington mouthpieces have used that fact to ridicule any hint of collusion. Treason on such a scale is inconceivable, we are told.
 But at Pearl Harbor we have the incontrovertible, undeniable fact, even applauded by their supporters, that top government officials — from the President of the United States on down — conspired to attack the United States. When you know that, it becomes perfectly thinkable that a future President could have participated in another such attack. Rather than a reason for derision, it becomes a speculation worth considering if the facts lead in that direction.

The facts “lead in that direction” all right. Consider two pieces of 9/11 “magic” (= physical impossibilities) for Muslim hijackers to achieve:

1. Where did the wreckage from four large airliners go? The four cleanest crash sites in aviation history are supposed to convince us to buy the official narrative about Muslim hijackers? C’mon! Virtually no wreckage was found and no unique serial part numbers for each aircraft were reported to identify specific aircraft in accord with routine crash investigations. Further, aluminum planes cannot disappear into steel/concrete towers without violent collisions and plentiful wreckage below gashes and in the gashes themselves; nor can big Boeings disappear into undersized holes in the Pentagon or in a Pennsylvania landfill.
2. Where did twin towers’ 110 floors x 2 go? The buildings never slammed to the ground in gravity-driven collapses. Almost nothing was left of one million tons of towers because they mostly disintegrated into fine dust via some kind of energized propulsion (Wood, p. 479). Another incredible disappearance.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. Since the days of Lincoln and Roosevelt little has changed aside from shifting the dirty work of engineering the casus belli from the military toward intelligence agencies and private contractors. Remarks Webster Tarpley: “…expert professionals are the persons who can accomplish the amazing feats which the media attribute to the pathetic patsies” (p. 92). Yet www.Antiwar.com founder Justin Raimondo insists allegations that 9/11 was an “inside job” are “routinely (and rightly) dismissed as sheer crankery.” Crankery? Not much different than insurance frauds, the murderous and technically accomplished 9/11 drill followed in the path of a long history of government frauds to produce wars. Raimondo is safely ensconsced among the thousand hacking at the branches of evil to the one striking at the root (Thoreau). Good luck with that.

Additional References:

Denson, John V. Reassessing The Presidency: The Rise of the Executive State and the Decline of Freedom. Auburn: Mises Institute. 2001.

Hummel, Jeffrey Rogers. Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men: A History of the American Civil War. Chicago: Open Court. 1996.

Stinnett, Robert B. Day of Deceit: The Truth about FDR and Pearl Harbor. New York: The Free Press. 2001.

Tarpley, Webster Griffin. 9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA. Joshua Tree: Progressive. 2005.