< PREVIOUS ] [ 2003 Index ] [ Ed Quillen HOME ] [ SEARCH ] [ NEXT >
During the presidential campaign, George W. Bush did not enjoy a reputation for intellectual brilliance. Although this bothered some people, I was not among them. The main thing we want from a President is good judgment, not high SAT scores, and those are entirely different matters.
Further, Bush comes off well in comparison to his immediate predecessors. He has been smart enough not to get caught with his pants down in the Oval Office. He seems to know about supermarket scanners. Nobody has revealed, or even hinted, that his wife's astrologer sets his schedule.
But Bush the Younger does seem to be having trouble persuading the American public to go to war with Iraq, and I suspect that's because he hasn't consulted any historians about the best way to rouse a substantial majority into the same rabid frenzy that has infected State Sen. John Andrews and U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo.
There is only one guaranteed method for successful American warmongering: Provoke the other guy into firing the first shot. And if the provocation doesn't work, pretend the shot was fired anyway.
Consider the 1964 congressional authorization for a major war in Vietnam, with bombers and hundreds of thousands of soldiers, as opposed to a few advisers.
That authorization was known as the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. President Lyndon B. Johnson told Congress that two American warships, the Maddox and the C. Turner Joy, had been attacked by North Vietnamese torpedoes while they were innocently steaming in international waters, 65 miles from shore.
In fact, they were much closer, and they were supporting
South Vietnamese naval raids on North Vietnamese coastal
installations. Neither American vessel was damaged. Capt.
John Herrick, who commanded the operation, reported that
Review of action makes recorded contacts and torpedoes
appear doubtful. Freak weather effects and overeager sonar
man may have accounted for many reports. No actual visual
sightings by Maddox. Suggest complete evaluation before
further action.
In other words, there was no good evidence that U.S.
ships had been victims of an unprovoked attack. That didn't
bother Lyndon Johnson, though, who used this to persuade
Congress to give him the power to wage war, since there was
open aggression on the high seas against the United
States of America.
We could go back to 1898, when there was a newspaper war in New York City, and the editors discovered a public eager for stories about Spanish atrocities in colonial Cuba. This led to some public demand for a war to liberate the rebellious Cubans, and the battleship U.S.S. Maine was dispatched to Havana harbor, where it supposedly sat ready to evacuate American citizens in case Spanish authority collapsed.
In fact, it was there to supply a provocation, which
came when the Maine exploded, probably from gases that had
accumulated in its coal bunker. But Spain got blamed for
sinking the ship, and America went to war while shouting
Remember the Maine.
In 1861, as southern states passed ordinances of secession, Abraham Lincoln knew he had to act. Lincoln also knew that it would best if the rebels fired first. And so Lincoln patiently maneuvered until an impatient Jefferson Davis ordered Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard into firing at Fort Sumter.
Lincoln was wise to this because he had served in the U.S. Congress during the 1845-1848 Mexican War. President James Polk wanted to go to war with Mexico, and he knew the Mexicans should fire first. The U.S. had annexed the Republic of Texas, and the territory between the Nueces River and the Rio Grande was in dispute. The U.S. sent soldiers.
According to Ulysses S. Grant, a young lieutenant who
distinguished himself in that war, We were sent to
provoke a fight, but it was essential that Mexico should
commence it.... Mexico showing no willingness to come to
the Nueces to drive the invaders from her soil, it became
necessary for the 'invaders' to approach to within a
convenient distance to be struck.
Back in Washington, the gangly Whig congressman from
Illinois became know as Spotty Lincoln
because he
kept demanding to know the exact spot (he believed it was
not on American soil) where the first shots were fired that
led to the declaration of war. Since he opposed the war,
his patriotism was questioned and he was not
re-elected.
By now it should be obvious that the Bushites need to provoke Iraq into firing the first shots at American personnel. Maybe some joint maneuvers with Kuwait along the border? Send some torpedo boats up the Euphrates? Persuade the northern Kurds to invite an American air base? There's got to be something that will work, and we should be confident that the Bushites are smart enough to come up with a plausible provocation.
< PREVIOUS ] [ 2003 Index ] [ Ed Quillen HOME ] [ SEARCH ] [ NEXT >