Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Undeclared & Unconstitutional Wars


So I'm in the midst of reading None Dare Call It Conspiracy, the aforementioned book in my last post, and I've come across something in Chapter 6: The Rockefellers and the Reds, that suddenly clicked a missing puzzle piece into place in my own mind.

One of the things I used to struggle with as a pro-War, Dubya voting RepubliNeo-Con, was the fact that even though I used to think the Iraq war was necessary, justified and righteous...I was always puzzled by Bush and the GOP refusing to put forth a motion on the floor of Congress to ask for an official declaration of war, as required by the US Constitution.

Of course, in hindsight, the fact that Dubya didn't bother to adhere to the Constitution is certainly not a big surprise, only now do I finally see the hidden picture within the picture, regarding the reason why our country has engaged in a number of military actions without that Constitutionally mandated declaration by congress: to declare war officially, would mean any American corporations or firms selling arms, and goods that can be used for military purposes, would have to immediately cease doing business with an officially declared enemy or be considered treasonous and subject to the harshest penalties under the law.

Is it starting to make a little more sense now?

From pp. 68-69 of None Dare Call It A Conspiracy (note that this book was published in 1971 - the Vietnam War was still ongoing, hence the present tense references):

On October 7, 1966, President Lyndon Johnson, a man who had appointed a C.F.R. {Council on Foreign Relations} member to virtually every strategic position in his administration, stated:

"We intend to press for legislative authority to negotiate trade agreements which could extend most favored-nation tariff treatment to European Communist states. We will reduce export controls on East-West trade with respect to hundreds of on strategic items…"


The New York Times reported one week later on October 13, 1966:

"The United States put into effect today one of President Johnson's proposals for stimulating East-West trade by removing restrictions on the export of more than four hundred commodities to the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe…Among the categories from which items have been selected for export relaxation are vegetables, cereals, fodder, hides, crude and manufactured rubber, pulp and waste paper, textiles and textile fibers, crude fertilizers, metal ores and scrap, petroleum, gas and derivatives, chemical compounds and products, dyes, medicines, fireworks, detergents, plastic materials, metal products and machinery, and scientific and professional instruments."


Virtually every one of these "non-strategic" items has a direct or indirect use in war.

Later, items such as rifle cleaning compounds, electronic equipment and radar were declared "non-strategic" and cleared for shipment to the Soviet Union. The trick simply is to declare almost everything "non-strategic." A machine gun is still considered strategic and therefore may not be shipped to the Communists, but the tools for making the machine guns and the chemicals to propel the bullets have been declared "non-strategic."

Meanwhile, nearly 50,000 Americans have died in Vietnam. The Viet Cong and North Vietnamese receive 85 percent of their war materials from Russia and the Soviet bloc nations. Since their economies are incapable of supporting a war, the Communist arm of the conspiracy needed help from the Finance Capitalist arm. The United States has been financing and equipping both sides of the terrible Vietnamese war, killing our own soldiers by proxy. Again, the landscape painters in the mass media have kept the American public from learning this provable fact.

Not surprisingly, the Rockefellers have been leaders in championing this bloody trade. On January 16, 1967, one of the most incredible articles ever to appear in a newspaper graced the front page of the Establishment's daily, the New York Times. Under the headline "Eaton Joins Rockefellers To Spur Trade With Reds" the article stated: "An alliance of family fortunes linking Wall Street and the Midwest is going to try to build economic bridges between the free world and Communist Europe. The International Basic Economy Corporation, controlled by the Rockefeller brothers, and Tower International, Inc., headed by Cyrus S. Eaton Jr., Cleveland financier, plan to cooperate in promoting trade between the Iron Curtain countries, including the Soviet Union…"

International Basic Economy Corporation (IBEC) is run by Richard Aldrich, grandson of Federal Reserve plotter Nelson Aldrich, and Rodman Rockefeller• (CFR), Rocky 5 son.

On October 20, 1969, IBEC announced that N M Rothschild & Sons of London had entered into partner ship with the firm.

Cyrus Eaton Jr. is the son of the notoriously pro Soviet Cyrus Eaton, who began his
career as secretary to John D. Rockefeller. It is believed that Eaton's rise to power in finance resulted from backing by his mentor. The agreement between Tower International and IBEC continues an old alliance. Although Eaton's name does not appear on the CFR's membership rolls, the Reece Committee which investigated foundations for Congress in 1953, found that Eaton was a secret member.

Among the "non-strategic" items which the Rockefeller Eaton axis is going to build for the Communists are ten rubber goods plants, including two synthetic rubber plants worth $200 million. Mr. Eaton explains in the Times article: "These people are setting up new automobile plants and know they have got to have tire factories." Under the Nixon Administration which, contrary to campaign promises, has multiplied trade with the Reds tenfold, American concerns are building the world's largest truck factory for the Communists. Trucks are necessary for a nation's war machine and truck factories can be converted to the production of tanks as was done during WWII.

The U. S. will provide the Soviets with both the facilities to build the trucks and the tires (or tank treads) for them to roll on.

In addition, the Rockefellers and Eatons are constructing a $50 million aluminum producing plant for the Reds Aluminum for jet planes is considered "non-strategic under Johnson-Nixon doctrine.


See how this works? Like the venerable USMC General Smedley Butler wrote, War is a Racket.

The US has been involved in 6 official "military engagements" since the last official declaration of War as required by the Constitution...or, as Wikipedia calls them: "Authorized by Congress."


What a neat little trick! So now our American based, military-industrial complex need not worry about "treason" while selling military wares to both the US taxpayer as well as the governments of those countries our congress has "authorized" our military to "engage!"

As a caption from a picture from None Dare Call It A Conspiracy points out:

The Rockefeller and Eaton families have now joined forces to build war production plants behind the Iron Curtain so that the Communists can become a bigger threat to U. S. survival. America spends $70 billion a year ostensibly on defense and then the Rockefellers build aluminum mills for the Communists. Only the absence of a formal declaration of war in Vietnam keeps the Eatons and Rockefellers from being actionable for treason. They have the blood of nearly 50,000 American servicemen on their hands.

Ahh, it's all so clear now.

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

Was any US company doing significant business with the Taliban in 2001? With Saddam in 2003? I can't think of any US companies that were selling anything to those losers, let alone "arms and goods that can be used for military purposes". The fact is that the US was never a major arms supplier to either country. We never wound up fighting "our own weapons" in either war. So whatever the reason not to declare war, that wasn't it.

In Afghanistan in 2001, the problem was additionally muddled by the fact that our beef was with al Qaeda, not Afghanistan. Declaring war on Afghanistan made no sense... and I'm not sure how much sense it would make to declare war on a terrorist group, either. What does that do for you that you can't do without such a declaration?

Anonymous said...

'Was any US company doing significant business with the Taliban in 2001?'

Probably Blackwater/Xe and a bunch of CIA front companies were passing money and arms and drugs around.

The Bush family has a lot of "interesting" business connections.

Anonymous said...

Probably Blackwater/Xe and a bunch of CIA front companies were passing money and arms and drugs around.

Uh huh. Evidence?

Hate to break it to you, but Blackwater is a small, small company. It is not even in the Fortune 1000, let alone the Fortune 500. The idea that they drive US policy towards Iraq and Afghanistan is stupid.

jfr said...

Anon,
Take a look at Bremer's 100 Orders: The True scale of Iraq's Rape & Distruction.

http://www.uruknet.info/?p=42948

Iraq has been a corporate bonanza.

Anonymous said...

jfr, that may be so, but it is not relevant to the original argument, which is that we didn't declare war in Vietnam because certain companies were "trading with the enemy". No such companies were doing business with Saddam (2003) or the Taliban (2001) - certainly not on a scale to influence US government policy - so this does not explain why the US did not declare war on Afghanistan or Iraq.

A better explanation for not declaring war is the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928, to which the US is a signatory, and which proclaims that "the renunciation of war as an instrument of national policy".

http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/kbpact.asp

What about WW2? The Pact did not apply then, because Germany, Italy, and Japan declared war on us. Our declarations of war against them simply ratified what already existed as a matter of law and reality, i.e. we were at war with Germany, Italy, and Japan.

K said...

If you like this stuff you should join the John Birch society. Most of what you quote is either irrelevant or the product of kooks e.g. Gen Butler.

The "arms dealers and bankers start wars so they can make a profit even if it kills millions" theory has an interesting history and was quite common in Germany after WW1. Since most of the bankers and arms merchants were jewish, you can make the next step for yourself.

dienw said...

IIRC the Congress passed an Authorization of the Use of Force against Iraq and other terrorist states. The Constitution does not say that a declaration of war be worded in a standardized format.

Also, the democrats went out of their wsy to make sure their votes were known to be supporting the authorization. The left and then the Demoncrats began to oppose th3e war two weeks later; no, I take it back, the Left was against the U.S defending itself after the attack. You should also remember that the Twin Tower scenes were not replayed after the first week "lest'" the liberals believed, " the American people become bellicose."

Anonymous said...

Leave "right" and "left" out of it. The Democrat-Republican, conservative-liberal, left-right divide is an intermural scrimmage designed to distract the public.

Follow the money. Maybe no American company was doing business with the Taliban or Iraq in 2001, but you can bet a whole lot of them were planning to move in once the military did the dirty work and cleared the way.

When the big money wants something badly enough, the politicians and media will make it happen. Just spew a lot of emotionally-charged rhetoric, tie some yellow ribbons on SUVs, and the public will eat it up with a spoon.

Keoni Galt said...

Precisely correct Anonymous. An official "declaration of war" would perhaps make it Constitutionally more difficult to deploy Blackhawk/KBR private contractors in combat operations like what's been going on for the past 4 years in Iraq.

Anonymous said...

Follow the money. Maybe no American company was doing business with the Taliban or Iraq in 2001, but you can bet a whole lot of them were planning to move in once the military did the dirty work and cleared the way.

All I can say is, if you think these guys have enough clout to cause the war - as opposed to take advantage of it once it happens - you are seriously deluded.

An official "declaration of war" would perhaps make it Constitutionally more difficult to deploy Blackhawk/KBR private contractors in combat operations like what's been going on for the past 4 years in Iraq.

I don't see how it would make it more difficult. And again, these companies are small potatoes in the grand scheme of the American economy and even in terms of the military-industrial complex. They cannot and do not call the shots.

Anonymous said...

HL,

Funding both sides predates the Vietnam war.

Major Jordan documents the fraud of the lend lease act with the soviets during WWII.

http://www.sweetliberty.org/issues/wars/jordan/01.html

Kamal S. said...

1. I typically find that most critics of ideas like these, have never even taken the time to think about the issues in any depth, and certainly expend no real effort researching them apart from a casual search for materials "debunking conspiracy theories"

2. Most proponents of such theories also are pretty shallow, very few on either side really dig deeply.

3. There is something to all of this, I keep coming across, in used bookstores, books like "War is a Racket" and other similar ones, some going back to the early 1900s on the topic of elites profiting from war and deliberately instigating conflicts. There's actually a large body of literature out there, it seems each generation produces this stuff and it gets forgotten real quick.

4. Dave, you mentioned "None Dare Call it Conspiracy".

Well, I have some problems with the book. I first read the book years ago, but wasn't aware that it had some serious issues with a lot of the sources cited. I'm discovering the same with Burnham's "The Web of Subversion" - these guys would cite things like editorials and conflate unsubstantiated rumors with more serious matters.

This doesn't mean that they weren't onto something, somewhere.

I still think they are getting to the mark on some things. The problem with the sort of old John Birch circles was that they lacked any rigor in their research, and tended to read everything in light of what they wanted to see. The "Right Wing Conspiracy" milieu had some real serious source problems.

Which is a shame because they really were on to something in a way.

Anthony Sutton's works are much more rigorous. His "Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler" and the follow-ups really can't be argued against much. Which is why most people just ignore them.

Both of Carol Quigley's books, in spite of lacking proper sources, are less problematic.

The Reese Commission materials were interesting.

etc.