Another President Hanging from a Cross of Iron

Article by WorldNews.com Correspondent Dallas Darling.

In 1953, eight years before his farewell address and in front of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, President Dwight Eisenhower cautioned his listeners about a "cross of iron."(1) He believed the potential for a just and peaceful post World War Two society was being squandered by the Cold War and Arms Race. President Eisenhower claimed, "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."(2) He also warned nations about maintaining powerful militaries and producing enormous weapons systems. He alleged they were "spending the sweat of their laborers, the genius of their scientists, and the hopes of their children." President Eisenhower then said, "This is not a way of life at all...it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron."(3)

Last week, President Barack Obama announced plans to send 34,000 more troops to Afghanistan. This act will immediately cost American taxpayers over thirty billion dollars. In the long-run, how many more human lives and resources will it expend? U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has already announced the 2011 deadline to begin withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan was "just an estimate." Other military-minded strategists are heralding an "elongated" pullout taking several years. Armed escalation and perpetual use of force and violence to subdue Afghanistan will only bring more deaths and destruction. It is obvious President Obama heeded the advice of his military generals. It is clear too he succumbed to the Pentagon and military-industrial complex. Sadly, will Obama's legacy be another president hanging from a cross of iron?

When President John F. Kennedy refused to provide air support for the failed 1961 Cuban Bay of Pigs Invasion, he made many enemies within the military establishment. Although he appeared to be tough on Communism-forcing the Soviet Union to back down during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, an agreement to remove nuclear weapons from Turkey (pointing at Russia) angered many reactionaries. When President Kennedy signed a treaty to never again attack Cuba, U.S. corporations and ultra-conservatives in Florida became incensed. When Cold War Warriors and CIA militants (who wanted to halt Kennedy's moves towards detente) found out he was going to meet with Joint Chief of Staff General Earle Wheeler and Secretary of the Army Cyrus Vance to discuss troop withdrawal from Vietnam,(4) President Kennedy never returned from Dallas, Texas, alive.

President Kennedy's predecessor, Lyndon B. Johnson, was also impaled on a cross of iron by the national security state and military establishment. President Johnson was ill-advised concerning the Gulf of Tonkin incident. Even though the U.S. provoked the first attack on August 2, 1964, and even though the second attack on August 4 never occurred, a group of admirals, generals, and Pentagon officials kept Commander Herrick's "revised" report from reaching President Johnson.(5) The report stated no attack ever occurred by North Vietnamese PT boats. Regrettably, and once he was cornered, President Johnson misled Congress and the American people by claiming two American destroyers were attacked. President Johnson also requested "any means necessary" to fight a brutal and prolonged war costing millions of lives. He ordered massive retaliatory bombing campaigns too.

Much like President Johnson, who was always concerned of being portrayed as too soft on Communism by the military-industrial complex and its mass communications network, Jimmy Carter was manipulated and used by military elitists and war-minded policy makers. Not only did ultra-conservatives and CIA militants withhold vital intelligence reports about the seriousness of Iran's Islamic Revolution, but right-wing ideologues transferred jurisdiction of covert operations from Secretary of State Cyrus Vance-who prioritized diplomacy over war and wanted to reduce nuclear armaments-towards the conservative anti-Soviet Team B's agenda. President Carter's Administration had little knowledge of the secret wars in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran.(6) Instead of being suspended on a cross of iron, other presidents, like Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush, went about crucifying humanity on crosses of iron.

Resembling the Pax Roman's cross and crucifixion, America's ominous military-industrial complex (cross of iron) is filled with systematic and redemptive acts of violence. It is America's ultimate national weapon. It dispenses of those the imperial authorities brand as rebels, traitors and the enemies of so-called democracy. Others who have internalized the ideologies of this system have become passive and obedient. Like Roman soldiers on crucifixion detail who became numb to the violence against the rebellious that they nailed up their victims in different postures as a grim joke,(7) some are thrilled by the cross of iron's humiliation and tortuous deaths displayed on foreign hills and along foreign roads, U.S. embassies, electronic coliseums, and yes, grassy knolls. For others who try and resist a managed reality and its psychological and physical warfare, including a system where the labor and dedication of the Many are supported by the arrogance of the Few(8), they have tragically become recipients of unspeakable pain and horror.

In 1953, President Eisenhower's speech was directed at the Soviet Union. He wanted the world to declare a new kind of war, where monuments would be "roads and schools, hospitals and homes, and food and health."(9) (Perhaps President Obama should have walked among these sites before making his decision!) By 1961, he was admonishing the U.S. of "an immense military establishment and a large arms industry."(10) President Eisenhower pleaded with Americans to understand its "grave implications and to guard against the acquisition of the military-industrial-complex's unwarranted influence-whether sought or unsought," and "warned of the potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power."(11) When President Eisenhower said, "Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery for defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together"(12), he could have added "presidents" alongside citizenry.

President Obama contextually misconstrued President Eisenhower's farewell speech by saying, "Each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration: the need to maintain balance in and among national programs"(13), and then speaking of only Afghanistan. He failed to inform Americans how President Eisenhower quickly ended the Korean War and passed one of the largest public works programs in history. Neither did President Obama mention the 1 trillion-dollar-a-year military-industrial complex's price tag, that could have funded universal health care and bettered the lives of millions. Nor did he remind people (as Eisenhower did) how an "immense military establishment and large arms industry is felt politically, economically, even spiritually," and that "in holding scientific research and discovery in respect...we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific technological elite."(14) The total influence of the Cross of Iron is experienced in "every city, every state house, every office of the federal government,"(15) and every church! God is replaced with deadly Strykers, cluster bombs, and the Beast of Kandahar.

But the Cross of Iron is much larger than Afghanistan. It consists of almost 1,000 armed bases around the world, including 7,000 in the U.S. It consumes more in expenditures than the top 25 nations do combined. This is why President Obama can say "right makes might,"(16) and why he does not have to worry about the next military raid (or does he?), drone assassination, or violent white phosphorous attack. Afghanistan is symptomatic of a much deeper malaise. Who will undermine the power of collectivized public executions in foreign nations? Who will super-cede the Pentagon and military-industrial complex that permeates every aspect of life? Who will resist the iron law of empire and transform the Beast of Kandahar? Who will rise against this Imperial Ideology? Until that day, another president hangs from a cross of iron, and so does another nation and humanity.