{"id":47767,"date":"2024-05-21T14:38:04","date_gmt":"2024-05-21T22:38:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=47767"},"modified":"2024-05-21T14:38:04","modified_gmt":"2024-05-21T22:38:04","slug":"war-secrecy-and-lies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2024\/05\/21\/war-secrecy-and-lies\/","title":{"rendered":"War, Secrecy, and Lies"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reprinted from Bracing Views<\/a> with the author\u2019s permission.<\/i><\/p>\n

I heard yesterday that H. Bruce Franklin<\/a> had died at the age of 90. Bruce and I never met, but we corresponded and talked on a few occasions. An Air Force veteran and cultural historian, he was a principled and consistent opponent of war.<\/p>\n

In his honor, here\u2019s an article I wrote in 2019 on Bruce and his book, Crash Course<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Wars, Secrecy, and\u00a0Lies
\n<\/strong>W.J. Astore<\/strong><\/p>\n

You know an American war is going poorly when the lies come swiftly, as with the Afghan War, or when it\u2019s hidden under a cloak of secrecy, which is also increasingly true of the Afghan War.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

This is nothing new, of course.\u00a0 Perhaps the best book I read in 2019 is H. Bruce Franklin\u2019s Crash Course: From the Good War to the Forever War<\/em>.\u00a0 Franklin, who served in the U.S. Air Force in the 1950s before becoming an English professor, cultural historian, and an outspoken opponent of the Vietnam War, is devastating in his critique of the military-industrial complex in this memoir.\u00a0 I recommend it highly to all Americans who want to wrestle with tough truths.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s consider one example: Franklin\u2019s dismissal of the \u201cstab-in-the-back\u201d myth (or Rambo<\/a> myth) that came out of the Vietnam War.\u00a0 This was the idea the U.S. military could have won in Vietnam, and was indeed close to winning, only to be betrayed by weak-kneed politicians and the anti-war movement.<\/p>\n

Franklin demolishes this argument in a paragraph that is worth reading again and again:<\/p>\n

One widespread cultural fantasy about the Vietnam War blames the antiwar movement for forcing the military to \u201cfight with one arm tied behind its back.\u201d\u00a0 But this belief stands reality on its head.\u00a0 The American people, disgusted and angry about the Korean War, were in no mood to support a war in Vietnam.\u00a0 Staunch domestic opposition kept Washington from going in overtly.\u00a0 So it went covertly.\u00a0 It thereby committed itself to a policy based on deception, sneaking around, and hiding its actions from the American people.\u00a0<\/strong> The U.S. government thus created the internal nemesis of its own war: the antiwar movement.\u00a0 That movement was inspired and empowered not just by our outrage against the war [but] also by the lies about the war, lies necessitated by the war, coming from our government and propagated by the media.<\/strong>\u00a0 Although it was the Vietnamese who defeated the United States, ultimately it was the antiwar movement, especially within the armed forces, that finally in 1973 forced Washington to accept, at long last, the terms of the 1954 Geneva Accords, and to sign a peace treaty that included, word for word, every major demand made by the National Liberation Front (the so-called Viet Cong) back in 1969\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

The truth was that for three decades our nation had sponsored and then waged a genocidal war against a people and a nation that had never done anything to us except ask for our friendship and support [during and after World War II].<\/em><\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n<\/picture>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

This is well and strongly put.\u00a0 The American people had no interest in intervening in Vietnam in the 1950s; the Korean debacle had been enough.\u00a0 But the U.S. government intervened anyway, lying about its involvement until it could no longer lie.\u00a0 Then a bigger lie was concocted, the Gulf of Tonkin<\/a> incident, to justify a larger commitment<\/a> of troops in the mid-1960s, which led to near-genocidal destruction<\/a> in Vietnam.<\/p>\n

Wars built on lies are rarely won, especially in a democracy.\u00a0 But even as they are lost (Vietnam in the 1960s, and now Afghanistan), there are always \u201cwinners.\u201d\u00a0 Weapons contractors and other war profiteers.\u00a0 The Pentagon, which from war gains more money and more power.\u00a0 And authoritarian elements within society itself, which are reinforced by war.<\/p>\n

If we wish to take our democracy back, a powerful first step is to end all American wars overseas.\u00a0 This would not be isolationism; this would be sanity.<\/p>\n

Wars, secrecy, and lies are three big enemies of democracy. Maybe the big three. War suppresses thought and supports authoritarianism. Secrecy prevents accountability. Lies mislead the people. And that\u2019s what we have today. Constant warfare. Secrecy, e.g. reports on \u201cprogress\u201d in the Afghan War are now classified and no longer shared. Lies are rampant; indeed, lies are policy. Just look at the Afghan Papers<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Yet wars, secrecy, and lies have been incredibly successful. The Pentagon budget is booming! Weapons sales are exploding! No one is being held accountable for failures or war crimes. Indeed, convicted war criminals are absolved<\/a> and touted as heroes by the president.<\/p>\n

The solution is as obvious as it will be painful. We need peace, transparency, and truth. End the wars, declassify all those \u201csecrets\u201d we the people should know about our military and wars, and reward truth-tellers instead of punishing them.<\/p>\n

William J. Astore is a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF). He taught history for fifteen years at military and civilian schools. He writes at Bracing Views<\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author\u2019s permission. I heard yesterday that H. Bruce Franklin had died at the age of 90. Bruce and I never met, but we corresponded and talked on a few occasions. An Air Force veteran and cultural historian, he was a principled and consistent opponent of war. In his honor, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":290,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-47767","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":"Essay in Honor of Bruce Franklin"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47767","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/290"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47767"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47767\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47773,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47767\/revisions\/47773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47767"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47767"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=47767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}