Oswald in the doorway: the blog of the Oswald Innocence Campaign, by Ralph Cinque

This is Memorial Day weekend. so let's look back at U.S. wars. The only time I know of that the U.S. was attacked by another country was by England, in the War of 1812. And when I say "attacked" I mean came here and attacked us.

Some people say that we were attacked on 9/11, but you know that I take my cue from the 3000+ architects and engineers who say that the towers were imploded in a controlled demolition. And, 18 hijackers could not have done that. So, we were not attacked by foreigners or any foreign government on 9/11.

But, let's look at the wars that resulted from 9/11. First, there was Afghanistan, in which we crossed an ocean and two seas to attack a 3rd world country. The immediate purpose of doing 9/11 was to invade Afghanistan. There were other reasons why they did it. They wanted a long "War on Terror" which was really a War of Terror. And they wanted the Patriot Act. But, it started by attacking Afghanistan, and that was the immediate result that they were seeking. And by "they" I mean the neocons who were in control of Bush and his administration.

But now, let's look at the Afghan War in terms of Memorial Day. But first, note that we memorialize our warriors because, supposedly, they did great things. They protected us. They saved us from great evils, including the loss of our freedom. For instance, our World War 2 warriors stopped Hitler from taking over the world and killing every Jew. Isn't that why we call them the Greatest Generation? I'll come back to that. But, what about our veterans and martyrs from the Afghan War? What did they supposedly do for us? What did they supposedly save us from?
They traveled halfway around the world to attack a 3rd world country that hadn't done anything to us. They started a war that has continued for 19 years, killing thousands of Americans, and hundreds of thousands of Afghans, many of whom were women and children, and is still raging to this day. Trump signed a peace deal that recognizes the right of the Taliban to return to power. Would he have done that if he really believed the Taliban had attacked us on 9/11? And right now, as I type, the fighting and dying continues in Afghanistan. In recent days, women and children have died there. One can only hope that at some point, the fighting will end, but if it does, it's because the Taliban is back in power running the country by Sharia law. It's either going to be that, and I think Trump is willing to have that, or perpetual war.

So, on this Memorial Day, what did the American veterans from the Afghan War fight for? What do they have to feel good about? What do we have to thank them for? From having saved us from what? And what did our martyrs who died in that war sacrifice their lives for? And why should any of us think that it was worth it? Why should their loved ones think it was worth it?

Are any of the platitudes going to work on you? Because: they are not going to work on me.

And is it any better for the Iraq War? No, it is not any better. In fact, it's worse because more people died there; more Americans and more Iraqis. Johns Hopkins researchers determined that by 2010, at least 1 million Iraqis had died because of the war, either directly or indirectly. And that was just by 2010. In the 10 years since then, many more have died. And remember: there were no weapons of mass destruction. All the reasons given why we had to attack Iraq proved to be false. How George W. Bush has stayed out of prison after that is a mystery to me. What is wrong with us that we don't hold him accountable?

What about Vietnam? That was essentially a civil war that was none of our business. But there, we killed 3 million and lost 58,000, but what was the result? They won; we lost; but, we left them with an ongoing legacy of birth defects and deformities from Agent Orange. You might say that was America's Zyclon-B.

And that brings us back to the "good war." World War 2, which I want to talk about. But first, since we're looking backward at history, note that Dr. John Quigley, the late History professor at Berkeley, wrote a book, The Ruses for War, in which he destroyed the justifications for all the post WW2 wars, starting with Korea. He devoted 100 pages to demonstrating that it was the South that attacked the North, and it's very persuasive. And, since the government of South Korea, at the time, was our puppet, it means that we (the U.S,) must have told them to do it. It means that we, the U.S., are responsible for starting the Korean War, not the North Koreans or the Chinese.
So, like the Vietnam War, the Korean War was a war of aggression by the United States. And, Harry Truman even violated the Constitution by sending U.S. troops to war without a declaration of war by Congress, as required by the Constitution. But, Truman got away with it, and every President that followed him has done it and gotten away with it. And now, it's widely accepted that it's the President who decides whether to go to war. Truman essentially amended the Constitution, himself.

So, all the post World War 2 wars were bad, where there is nothing to celebrate on Memorial Day. But surely that doesn't apply to World War 2. That was the good war, right?

Sure, all those other wars were just rackets like General Smedley Butler told us, but not World War 2. That was heroic and necessary. It had to be fought because otherwise Hitler was going to take over the world. We had to stop Nazism, and war was the only way to do it. So, let us please honor the Greatest Generation who defeated the Nazis and saved us from a fate worse than death.
Well, are you ready? Are you seated? Maybe you should sit down because I wouldn't want you to faint. But, the truth is that that war was a racket too. It did NOT have to happen. 65 million people were killed in World War 2, and they did not have to die. And guess what? Hitler did not start World War 2, nor did he want World War 2.

As briefly as I can, I'll explain it to you what happened, and I'll try to be as succinct as possible. And first know: I am not a Hitler lover. I think it's abominable that he built a culture around hating Jews and blaming them for everything. But, facts are facts, and the fact is that World War 2 was started by England and France, and with the encouragement and material backing of the United States. They declared war on Germany; not vice versa. England and France, started that whole fucking war! They did it, supposedly, because Hitler invaded Poland.

But, Hitler gave his reasons for invading Poland. The German city of Gdansk was ripped out of Germany and given to Poland at the end of WW1. So, it was a German city being ruled by Poles, and that turned bad; ugly bad. Another big piece of Germany was given to Poland called the Corridor, and Hitler told the Poles that they could keep that, but he wanted Gdansk back. Gdansk was a port city which made it valuable to Poland which was otherwise landlocked, and Hitler told them that they could keep the port. But, the Poles wouldn't budge. And, there were hostilities all along the long German/Polish border, and Hitler said that Germans were being attacked and killed along that border, and that is why he invaded Poland, to stop that.

Now, whether you believe that or not, the fact is that Germany invaded Poland from the west, and then the Soviet Union invaded Poland from the east. England and France not only refrained from condemning the Soviet Union for doing the exact same thing Hitler did, they allied with the Soviets and supported them, as did the U.S.

Do you have any idea how much FDR supported "Uncle Joe"? Before we even got into the war, FDR sent him tons of food (at a time when many Americans were starving due to the Great Depression) fiber, rope, guns, ammunition, and even whole planes. These were sent to a man who killed more human beings than anyone else who ever lived: 40 million. And this was before the U.S. officially entered the war. You simply cannot overstate how pro-Soviet and pro-Communist FDR was. His closest advisors were dyed-in-the wool Communists, such as his Treasury Secretary, Henry Morgenthau, and William Bullitt, his Ambassador to France.
Do you know how many millions of civilians the British and Americans killed in their carpet bombing campaigns in WW2? I am not talking about "collateral damage." I am talking about the deliberate targeting of civilians. And before anyone tries to make excuses for it, realize that TODAY, it would surely be declared a war crime if any nation fought a war that way.

World War 2 did NOT have to happen. Hitler did not want war with the West. It was the West that wanted it, and it was the West that started it.

But, what about the concentration camps? Wouldn't Hitler have killed every Jew in Europe and in the world if he could, had we not gone to war with him? It's true that Hitler was a raving anti-Semite, but the way he intended to solve his "Jewish problem" before the war was not to kill them but to emigrate them out of Germany to other countries, particularly Palestine. Between 1933, when Hitler became Chancellor, and 1939, when the war began, two-thirds of Germany's Jews had left Germany. The Jewish population in Germany had shrunk from 500,000 to 165,000 by the start the war. And that was accomplished without killing any of them. The German Zionist organization cooperated with the Nazi government to bring it about.

For the record, I am not an anti-Semite, and I have Jewish friends whom I love dearly. But, the point is: WW2, like all the other wars, did not have to happen.

I don't claim to know what the true facts of the Holocaust are. I don't doubt that Jews were killed in large numbers. But, honestly and sincerely, and I tell you this without malice, that the number of Jews killed can't be as high as 6 million, and that's because that figure was cited when the number attributed to Auschwitz was 4 million. But, that's been reduced to 1 million, so how can the total still be 6 million?

And realize also that the Holocaust story has been revised and not just by revisionists. At first, it was claimed that there were death camps in Germany, but now it is widely admitted that there were no extermination camps in Germany, but only in Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe. But, if there had been no World War 2, there would have been no German occupation of Eastern Europe.

But, I agree that the whole Nazi mindset and ideology of hating Jews was monstrous, and it had to end. And I think it could have ended without war. The world was right to ostracize Hitler and Germany for hating and persecuting Jews. I am as appalled by it as anyone else. But, I have to think that it could have ended without war, just as I think that slavery in the South could have ended without having a Civil War. We are talking about the possibility of having prevented a war that killed 65 million people. How would that not have been a good thing?

So, what do I have to celebrate this Memorial Day? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.