Are You Proud of Your Country? I'm Not
By Timothy V. Gatto
This article has been torturing me for the last five years. I know I should have written it a long time ago, but either the World situation wasn't right, or I was was daunted by the thought of writing this narrative that I knew would bea task that I didn't really want to start. I take the blame for not writing this sooner, but we are all human and beset by inadequacy.
I have been writing for at least seven years now about our nation. I have alluded to some of the things I'm going to mention in this article. I haven't been completely remiss, but the situation our nation is faced with deserves more that writing about it's evils. We must start with how this nation got the way it has become.
Most people know about the Eisenhower goodbye speech when he warned about the Military-Industrial-Complex. The truth of the matter was that he was a day late and a dollar short. The real truth was that the Pentagon and the defense contractor already were calling the shots in Washington. Ike only wanted to secure his place in history by seeming to be against it. In reality, he allowed them to co-opt the government of the United States. I'm sure he didn't do it willingly but the forces around him were much too persuasive and had too much power.
When John F. Kennedy was elected, he and his brother Robert saw what they were up against. They played the game for a few months until The Bay of Pigs Invasion started to take fruit. Kennedy wanted no part of that invasion and let his opinion known. The CIA and the Pentagon went ahead with preparations anyway. This was an act of treason, but since it was the CIA and the Pentagon, who do you pick to stand charges and would the American people, scared out of their wits about the Soviet Union be silent?
The CIA and the Pentagon launched the Bay of Pigs. They needed Presidential authority to launch American air strikes in support of the rebels. To his credit, the President refused. This was one decision that he had power over.
The CIA never forgot this. In Dallas they exacted their revenge. The President was killed and a more compliant President was sworn in. One who knew how Washington worked. He realized that American steel was overpriced and American good were losing ground to overseas makers that could make the cheaper. He needed an industry that would put people to work, and since we were still on a war economy since the end of World War II, why not ratchet up the hostilities in Southeast Asia?
One thing LBJ didn't count on was the will of the Vietnamese and the backlash against the war here in the United States that was initially started by draft age Americans. When he used the false-flag operation in the Gulf of Tonkin, not many people in the peace movement took it seriously,I was in the peace movement and the idea that North Vietnamese would attack a Destroyer was a little outlandish.
Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
4
3
3
