Get Ready for ‘Remember the Maine’ Redux

by Ron Holland

Is the US getting ready to start another war, and blame it once again on the victims?

In Latin "redux" means to be brought back or revisited and I fear we are getting ready for another war started once again by an unprovoked attack against peaceful US forces. Dictatorships can attack other nations at will because their controlled citizenry well understand they have no say in the matter and thus the government has little need to justify their military actions.

But for democracies where much of the ignorant public often blindly follow the media establishment propaganda and foolishly believe they can have an impact or even "laughingly" control their leaders or representative bodies instead of powerful special interests, another step is always necessary to guarantee public support.

A false flag operation usually happens at just the right time but it is never ordered by the democracy or empire leaders going to war as they must always be protected by "plausible deniability." This denial of blame at the top is assured when higher leadership levels quarantine the blame to the lower levels and these are often inaccessible, which makes confirming responsibility for the action nearly impossible. This protects a nation’s leadership should the illegal or disreputable and unpopular activities become public thus allowing the top leadership to truthfully deny any awareness of such act or any connection to the agents used to carry out such acts.

Democracies often require a potential adversary to commit a violent action and pretext to generate the necessary public support to begin and justify the war and retaliation. It is important to condition the public for major long-term wars on the necessity for the blood sacrifice, economic costs, wealth confiscation required to fund the war and severe controls on media, communications and neutralize any bygone concern about personal rights and liberties. In the past with almost total control of news and opinion by the establishment media, this was a simple process but today with a powerful alternative Internet based media, their propaganda job is far more difficult.

Americans for some unknown reasons have always had a curious fascination and weakness for wars often started by false flag operations, real enemy attacks or deliberate provocations involving water, ships and harbors. From the World Trade Towers downed on the edge of New York Harbor, to the Gulf of Tonkin attack, to Pearl Harbor, to the sinking of the Lusitania passenger ship secretly carrying over 4 million rounds of ammunition bringing the US into World War One were all water based. As was the battleship Maine, blown up in Havana, Cuba starting the Spanish-American War and of course the Confederate batteries bombarding Fort Sumter in Charleston where only a horse was killed but the establishment press created a war hysteria which ultimately caused the deaths of 600,000 Americans north and south.

False Flag operations are usually covert operations which are designed to deceive the public in such a way that the operations appear as though they are being carried out by other entities. Sometimes the operation has little or nothing to do with the nation needing to wage war and in the case of the need for justification for an air assault and invasion of Iran, there is a real lineup of nations and terrorist groups which would benefit from a new war in the Middle East.

First, the Iranian leadership believes they can survive a bombing of their nuclear facilities and then declare victory thus strengthening the regime in power from domestic opposition and giving Shia minorities around the region reason to support Iran. Israel has real concerns about Iran’s nuclear ambitions and no Israeli government would survive an announcement that Iran had developed nuclear weapons on their watch hence real domestic political reasons for an air assault. Saudi Arabia governed by a Sunni majority is the political leadership and nation most threatened by a Shia Iran and they desperately want the US or Israel to attack Iran.

Therefore how will the war likely start? The US Navy has positioned the Harry S. Truman (CVAN-75), a super carrier near the coast just offshore from Iran’s naval commando units while the other carriers are positioned further out and away from the mainland. Any nation, black ops unit or rogue elements from Iran, Israel, Saudi Arabia, other terrorist groups or even the US could easily attack carrier Truman and the entire world would immediately assume the government of Iran was behind the attack.

The immediacy of communications and video today means an international incident and cause for retaliation and war could result from just a single missile or torpedo attack with substantial smoke, some damage and a few causalities and wounded. The carrier does not need to sink nor suffer severe loss of lives to start the beginning of a major war in the Middle East.

For the Washington establishment, much of our population would be seduced by the media manufacturing a frenzy of outrage, calls for revenge and super patriotism to help the public forget about the double-dip recession/depression, support bringing back the draft, substantially higher taxes and wealth confiscation plus "temporary war emergency" regulations curtailing the opposition internet press and views. A major war would also help silence those of us who warn about the Fed, fiat money and the ballooning national debt and unfunded liabilities as unpatriotic and security risks all the while the elites can blame all of the economic problems they created and wealth and liberties they will have stolen on the Iranian War.

Don’t say this can’t happen here because a close review of our history shows this is the norm rather than the exception when war is necessary for the survival and expansion of the Washington Empire. I hope freedom-loving Americans will wake up to this real risk or else get in practice shouting "Remember the Truman" when our wealth is taken, remaining freedoms curtailed and our sons and daughters are marched off to the Third World War in the Middle East.

Hoping I’m wrong on this.

July 17, 2010

Ron Holland [send him mail] is a contributing editor to the Swiss Mountain Vision Newsletter and Swiss Confidential published by Appenzeller Business Press.