The War Racket: The Lies, Myths, and Propaganda That Feed the American War Machine

627 Pages·2004·24.98 MB·English

by  Harry Browne

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The War Racket
The Lies, Myths, Promises, & Propaganda
that Have Lured Americans into War after War after War

By Harry Browne

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THE WAR RACKET
2008 By Harry Browne
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without
written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical
articles or reviews.
For information, contact: [email protected]
Website: www.HarryBrowne.org
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Dedicated
to
Charles Beard, Harry Elmer Barnes,
Murray Rothbard, Ralph Raico, Thomas Fleming,
Gabriel Kolko, John V. Denson, Robert Higgs,
Gar Alperovitz, Phillip Knightley,
and the many other historians
who discovered the truth
and kept it alive

&
to
Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr., Margelus Burga
and the others
who have disseminated the truth

&
to
my beloved Pamela
who has rewarded me
for speaking the truth

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Also by Harry Browne

How You Can Profit from the Coming Devaluation (1970)
How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World (1973, 1998, 2008)
You Can Profit from a Monetary Crisis (1974)
The Complete Guide to Swiss Banks (1976)
New Profits from a Monetary Crisis (1978)
Inflation-Proofing Your Investments - with Terry Coxon (1981)
Investment Rule #1 (1985)
Why the Best-Laid Investment Plans Usually Go Wrong (1987)
The Economic Time Bomb (1989)
Why Government Doesn’t Work (1995, 2003)
Fail-Safe Investing (1995, 2003)
The Great Libertarian Offer (2000)
Liberty A to Z (2004)
2,000+ Libertarian Quotes (2007)
Investment Strategy in an Uncertain World (2008)
Freedom The American Way (2008)
The Secret of Selling Anything (2008)

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Table of Contents
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Prologue

1. Lying Us into War………………………………………………. 8

Part I: World War I

2. American ‘Neutrality,’ 1914-1917 ……………………………. 25*
3. American Enters the War ………………………………..……. 42
4. America Fights the War ……………………………….……… 60
5. The Peace Treaty: Prelude to World War II ………….………. 86
6. Woodrow Wilson …………………………………………….. 114
7. Lies, Lies, Lies ……………………………………………….. 127
8. The Consequences of the World War I Lies …………….…… 131

Appendices

A. Recommended Reading ……………………………………… 146
B. About the Author …………………………………………….. 147

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PART I: WORLD WAR I
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Prologue
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1
Lying Us into War
Which American war does the following describe? . . .

• The President tells the people that the nation is in grave danger, menaced
by a foreign country. He recounts the aggressive acts of the foreign
country’s dictator and says there is evidence of more aggressions to come.
• The President says America must go to war to protect itself. But he
promises that the world will be a better place, a safer place, a freer and
more democratic place when the war is over.
• The President promises to liberate the people in the enemy country from
their evil dictator.
• America goes to war, but the war drags on longer than expected. American
casualties and the financial cost exceed prewar estimates.
• Civil liberties are curtailed. The government invades privacy, imprisons
Americans, and generally ignores the Bill of Rights.
• Eventually the war ends. But, except for victory itself, no prewar promise
has been fulfilled. The oppressed people haven’t found freedom; they’ve
found a new oppressor. The world isn’t a safer place, a better place, or a
more democratic place. The American military can’t come home because
new dangers threaten. It becomes apparent that the President exaggerated
the original danger. New enemies emerge from the war’s wreckage —
enemies that a future President will want to suppress by taking America
into war again.

Which American war is this?

If you said the recent war in Iraq, you’d be right.

But you’d also be right if you answered World War I — or World War II — or the
Korean War or the Vietnam War — or the wars in Panama in 1989 and Iraq in 1991 — or
even the Spanish-American War.

It’s amazing how each war resembles its predecessors in so many ways, just like
Hollywood remakes of popular stories. Each plot contains the same elements: America
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threatened, an aggressive enemy, an evil dictator, oppressed people, a war for liberation, the
promise of a new world order with peace and freedom.

Since Americans generally have little interest in history and not much recollection of it,
they tend to assume they’re watching a new drama each time it’s performed. Few people
realize that the claims and promises have all been made before.
And almost all the claims and promises turn out to be false — every time.

Over and over, Americans accept what the politicians say, go to war, pay a horrendous
cost, discover that the claims and promises were worthless, and return to their private lives
where they forget how they’ve been deceived.

Politicians & Virtue

Virtually everyone believes that politicians lie to get ahead — lie in their campaign
promises, lie by faking compassion, lie about their voting records, and lie about their
achievements.

“How can you tell when a politician is lying?” goes the old joke. “His lips move.”

But Americans also seem to assume that when a President says we must go to war, he
must be telling the truth — that he’s put aside his lying ways and his own political interests,
and now is concerned wholly with America’s safety and future.

The contradiction is rarely noticed, but the record is clear. As this book will show,
there’s a long history of politicians shading the truth to promote war — one war after
another. Over and over, politicians have lied about dangers and evil enemies — and
justified killing innocent people by promising that a new and more beautiful world will
come from it.

TYPES OF DECEPTIONS

Politicians rely on four kinds of deceptions:

• Prewar lies — exaggerations, omissions of fact, and outright falsehoods,
generally told before the war — all designed to make us feel that we must
go to war before a foreign enemy does great harm to America.
• Rosy promises — assurances that the costs will be modest and a small
price to pay for the much better world to come.
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• Propaganda — false or highly selective reports of our victories and the
enemy’s atrocities. This is supported by the suppression of bad news — so
Americans don’t hear about battles lost, the gruesome details of what “our
boys” are going through, and anything else that might lessen our eagerness
to continue the violence.
• Myths — the postwar perpetuation of the most universally appealing
wartime lies, rosy promises, and propaganda. Legends persist that, at
various times, America was threatened by evil, compromised by
appeasement and hesitation, and then saved through determined action.
These legends serve as lessons to remind us that it’s better to charge into
future wars without waiting for irrefutable evidence that the danger is real.

Here we’ll look at each type of deception.

Deception #1: PRE-WAR LIES
Politicians judge correctly that the lies are necessary because most people don’t want to
go to war.

In wartime, taxes rise, many consumer goods become unavailable, freedom is curtailed,
and — most important — relatives and friends are maimed or killed.

And despite the superstition that war helps the economy, few people actually profit
from it. (How does producing tanks instead of cars raise our standard of living?)

But politicians profit. War lets them stifle dissent, reward friends with military
contracts, and discourage voters from “changing horses in the middle of the stream.” And
the conflict gives the President the opportunity to intimidate his opponents — by hinting
that anyone questioning his judgment is unpatriotic.

So politicians have an incentive to embellish — even fabricate — reasons for going to
war.

Of course, sometimes politicians are themselves misled. But this doesn’t excuse them
for proclaiming certainties when they have no hard evidence — making reckless assertions
that send people to kill and die.

Whatever the politicians actually believe, the result is the same: they persuade the
public that there’s no alternative to war, and they cause Americans to die unnecessarily.

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