Peter R. Quiñones wrote the following brief reflection recently, and it mirrors my own sentiments as well. As an idealistic youth I voluntarily joined the peacetime US Navy just after Vietnam in 1976, in the hopes that America had learned her lesson about fighting wars abroad that had nothing to do with keeping America “safe”.
The greatest message you can communicate to anyone you encounter on Memorial Day is that it is a holiday that should not exist. The excuses for the men and women who have died in “service to this country” are numerous, but only in the rarest of circumstances does it have to do with protecting American lives or liberty on this piece of soil.
I’m only going to address the 20th Century here so we should start with World War 1. Was the United States homeland in danger of being invaded by anyone? Of course not. Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s great book, “Democracy: The God That Failed,” conveys to me that WW1 was fought to destroy any remaining trace of historic monarchies in Europe, and to institute democracy instead. Even the countries that kept their royalty saw them become only symbols in a parliamentary system rather than a one family rule.
What about World War 2? PEARL HARBOR!!! HITLER DECLARED WAR ON US!!! WW2 is the war that is consistently sold as the “good war.” Fortunately, many good historians have shot multiple holes in the assumed fact that the US had to enter WW2 on either front. I interviewed one here.
What about Korea? Vietnam? Iraq War 1, 2, 3 and 3.5? Afghanistan? Somalia? Libya? Syria? I could go on and on (unfortunately). The bottom line for all these is this; the “honorable” and “patriotic” reasons given for American men and women dying on battlefields across the world are strained when you begin to look at them more closely. The hundreds of thousands who sacrificed their lives believing they were fighting for American freedom were mistaken. Overwhelmingly they were duped. But it’s not their fault. With the draft in effect for most of the 20th century (ended in 1973 when the US pulled out of the Vietnam War), many had no choice but to fight. Many others were convinced to enlist by war propaganda.
On Memorial Day I weep for the fallen. Not because of their sacrifice, but because they were sacrificed.
Routinely, the American government has squandered the innocence of our youth to do exactly what Robert E. Lee warned about:
In my previous post I covered a lot of ground towards truths that could (I rarely say “should” as I believe you don’t typically “should” on you real friends 🙂 ) open their eyes to the true character of their evil government. The so-called American Exceptionalism is pure myth. Just ask other people around the world who have experience our “help”.
There is, however, even in these days much to be hopeful for. We can continue to plant the seeds of truth with those who will listen about the lies that seem to bombard us each and every day in our world. This unwrapping of truth could very well lead this nation, or preferably, parts of this nation, to reflect on core truths that might bring about a new season of liberty and freedom in the regions that hold these truths to their hearts.
Maybe this American Government holiday can be used to help people question the very nature of their government, their politicians and the evil cabal that backs an evil agenda in this land all for power and money.
Whether it be a nation or an empire, leaders always know that the fear card can produce unity and an excuse to utilize totalitarian measures against their own people, and the masses will love it, because the feels.
In reading about why the CIA and FBI saw threats with both JFK’s and MLK’s trajectories. Jacob Hornberger states:
Why did they target Kennedy? For the same reason they targeted all those other people for assassination — they concluded that Kennedy had become a grave threat to national security and, they believed, it was their job to eliminate threats to national security.
It has to sound familiar, especially over the past few years and the Russian threats due to Trump’s ‘friendly’ attitude to Russia (as he ramps up the sanctions, sending missiles to bases in Syria that Russian troops are based, etc.). Give me a break.
Although the article specifically attributes these actions as starting after WWII as the OSS operations were then made permanent by Truman’s creation of the CIA, the very psychological mechanism of fear has been a real thing in America since the colonial days.
It was the fear of American Indian raids that had independent and autonomous farmers in the colonies agree to pay takes to raise an army to remove those threats. It was the fear of a free trade zone in the southern United States in 1861 that prompted the northern politicians to “put down the insurrection” in a way that forever altered the US government to be highly centralized and a source of significant tyranny. Many southern states were subject to 12 years of military rule that not only wrecked the south economically, but revealed the desperate measures this totalitarian US government would take to keep itself “safe”.
By the 1890s this fear extended to the world for the US government, using the USS Maine incident in Havana harbor to make war with the failing Spanish Empire and seize lands around the world. By 1918, the progressive thought that the US was to be a power for “good” in this world, to keep the world safe made the people accept that sending millions of men overseas to die in France in WWI “worth it all”. Even Franklin Roosevelt knew that the end game of war was the only way to maintain his and his political party’s power, and used deceptive embargoes and tariffs to manipulate the Japanese Empire to lash out predictably allowing the US to enter WWII.
It was after this war that included the US immorally using nuclear bombs against primarily civilian populations that had little strategic military value that the US added yet another immoral weapon in their suite of tools to keep the world safe for democracy. Assassination. How totalitarian, how Communist!
The US using tactics that their “evil” enemies use are ever apparent these days when it can be argued that the US is the largest exporter of terrorism in the 21st century. It is no accident that securing the largest opium producing area in the world to secretly fund the CIA might be what keeps the politicians in line, with drug money ..
But I digress.
I guess the point of all this is to show how the US has developed into the very totalitarian state that it was fighting against in WWII. In Jacob’s article it points out that the way the nation/empire fights abroad always comes home. The domestic “fight” to retain power will start to use tactics that were only used in “war” or in classified CIA operations:
State-sponsored assassinations to protect national security were among the dark-side practices that began to be utilized after the federal government was converted into a national-security state. As early as 1953, the CIA was developing a formal assassination manual that trained its agents in the art of assassination and, equally important, in the art of concealing the CIA’s role in state-sponsored assassinations.
In 1954, the CIA targeted the democratically elected president of Guatemala for assassination because he was reaching out to Russia in a spirt of peace, friendship, and mutual co-existence. In 1960-61, the CIA conspired to assassinate Patrice Lumumba, the head of the Congo because he was perceived to be a threat to U.S. national security.
So inside of a decade, the CIA developed the tools that the FBI could assist them with in these domestic threats ..
After the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy achieved a breakthrough that enabled him to recognize that the Cold War was just one great big racket for the national-security establishment and its army of “defense” contractors and sub-contractors.
That’s when JFK announced an end to the Cold War and began reaching out to the Soviets and the Cubans in a spirit of peace, friendship, and mutual coexistence. Kennedy’s Peace Speech at American University on June 10, 1963, where he announced his intent to end the Cold War and normalize relations with the communist world, sealed President Kennedy’s fate.
This deep state action over 50 years ago has served to keep a reign on US presidents ever since. This also was extended to other leaders that threatened the deep state:
… one day after his Peace Speech at American University, Kennedy delivered a major televised address to the nation defending the civil rights movement, the movement that King was leading.
What better proof of a threat to national security than that — reaching out to the communist world in peace and friendship and then, one day later, defending a movement that the U.S. national-security establishment was convinced was a spearhead for the communist takeover of the United States?
You now know why US media is the lapdog for deep state propaganda, to keep the narrative alive that the US is perpetually fighting terror and fighting to keep itself and the world safe while the US government has developed a ..:
… totalitarian-like governmental structure that has led our nation in the direction of state-sponsored assassinations, torture, invasions, occupations, wars of aggression, coups, alliances with dictatorial regimes, sanctions, embargoes, regime-change operations, and massive death, suffering, and destruction, not to mention the loss of liberty and privacy here at home.
No one should be surprised here in 2020 when we can see clearly how things are done, especially with Soleimani’s assassination.
The US has evolved into the very thing it was created to avoid.
The illusion of safety remains, but the reality of despotism is already here.
So back in 2003, this SWAT team busted down my door because they claimed I had a very dangerous illegal weapon. In the process, the house was almost totaled, many of my family died, but as time went on they kept claiming they were making our family safe and free. Sure they bought an oven and then a fridge BUT they are the ones that use those appliances the most. The electrical is still flaky as we lose power for seconds or minutes a few times a week. There was a time when they claimed they left in 2007 or so but by 2014 they were back using the oven and fridge again. It seems they have a thing for our neighbor too, swearing at them at every opportunity and robbing them of their Amazon packages off the porch. They have also claimed that they were bad people so that others would not deal with them, and would not sell them things they need to them and their kids.
Just last week was the icing on the cake. They not only killed our uncle right in our house, but killed the next door neighbor’s uncle who happened to be in our home too! That was the last straw, we told them to leave but they said F*** Y**, we want to renegotiate our “partnership”.
Are you kidding me? Stay in this abusive relationship where no one knows who will get killed next and the house never gets fixed to the point it was in 2003? I don’t think so. Look at my house back in the day:
Look at my relatives in my home:
I hope you know by now this is not MY house, but the nation of Iraq.
The SWAT team that has stayed in control in this abusive one-sided relationship is the US Empire. They flat out refuse to leave!
Iraq’s caretaker prime minister asked Washington to start working out a road map for an American troop withdrawal, but the U.S. State Department on Friday bluntly rejected the request, saying the two sides should instead talk about how to “recommit” to their partnership.
Main stream media (MSM – propaganda arm of the US Empire), specifically the Associated Press (AP) got it all wrong then they claimed:
… the move was “stoked by the American drone strike on Jan. 3 that killed top Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani”. The move was stoked five days earlier when the U.S. killed 31 Iraqi security forces near the Syrian border despite the demands by the Iraqi prime minister and president not to do so. It was further stoked when the U.S. assassinated Abu Mahdi al-Muhandes, the deputy commander of the Popular Militia Forces and a national hero in Iraq.
No s**t .. confusing Iran and Iraq again .. just like their confusion between Shia and Sunni .. but I digress.
The [US] State Department issued a rather aggressive response to Abdul-Mahdi’s request:
America is a force for good in the Middle East. Our military presence in Iraq is to continue the fight against ISIS and as the Secretary has said, we are committed to protecting Americans, Iraqis, and our coalition partners.
Notice the order, just like the police protect themselves 1st, the US Empire also protects itself 1st .. and that is where the partnership is not nor will ever be equal. The US Empire is not “protecting” Iraq, they are projecting through Iraq in this region to continue to interfere in Iran and Syria.
Iraq continues to be used and abused in this relationship. Trump implies that when he thought that extending NATO to the Middle East .. oh yeah, what the Middle East “needs” is another dysfunctional “partner”.
Epic BS on the part of the war party in DC who all love the profits and lobbyists money from MIC and job security for the CIA while keeping the CIA black budget funded from Afghanistan poppy fields.
From my last post lamenting the benefits of small nations or federations of small republics and city-states, it became rather obvious that the formation of the Articles of Confederation which linked thirteen colonies together to fight against the British Empire was a noble effort, and that Switzerland decided early on to retain this focus unlike the United States:
After the revolutionary war, many founders abandoned the Swiss model as being too week and opted again towards the large-state model..
In today’s post, I use primarily an article from Darius Shahtahmasebi that explains the impact that many of the US Empire’s wars have had on Muslims over time. Darius does a great job of balancing the fact that it is not that the Muslims were targeted, but like the American Indians, it has more to do with the content their lands have for potential empire resources or disruptions in trade routes.
There are then several phases of the US Empire’s history that I hope to unpack today as a lesson we can all learn from so we can better understand the true character of the empire’s endeavors.
The first phase happened when the united States, having been victorious in its quest for independence from the British Empire, was potentially left unprotected in world trade. The source I chose for this was an article that helps to identify what really might have gone town in the tension between the US (which many consider to be a Christian nation) and the Barbary Powers (that happened to be primarily Muslim in religious terms). The truth is that these Barbary ‘corsairs’ were not only Muslim but also included English privateers and Dutch captains who exploited the changing loyalties of an era in which friends could become enemies and enemies friends with the stroke of a pen.
In the Barbary ‘pirate’ era, these entrepreneurs were not content with attacking ships and sailors, the corsairs also sometimes raided coastal settlements in Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, England, Ireland, and even as far away as the Netherlands and Iceland. They landed on unguarded beaches, and crept up on villages in the dark to capture their victims. This did not begin with these powers that ended up enslaving over one million Europeans, but was preceded by Christian pirates, primarily from Catalonia and Sicily, that dominated the seas, posing a constant threat to merchants in the 13th and 14th centuries.
Back to the Barbary powers of the Ottoman Empire of the 15th century:
During the era of the American colonies, American merchant vessels received protection by virtue of being of being British; the British were among the countries that paid tribute. Then, during the American Revolution, an alliance with France protected American ships. But full independence brought an end to that.
Initially, the United States decided to pay tribute. But American leaders, including Jefferson, seethed at having to do it, saying it would only inspire more and more outrageous financial demands. On July 11, 1786, Jefferson wrote to John Adams, “I very early thought it would be best to effect a peace thro’ the medium of war.” The following month, he wrote to James Monroe that the Barbary powers “must see the rod; perhaps it must be felt by some one of them.”
Jefferson truly believed that the sea trade routes should be free. However, during the George Washington and John Adams administrations, the tribute was paid as was done by all the European powers, in fact, the rift was identified as economic in nature and not seen as religious:
As early as 1797, the United States made clear in a treaty with Tripoli that “as the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion, as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen (Muslims) and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan (Mohammedan or Muslim) nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.”
Once Jefferson became the US President, he decided that enough was enough:
After Jefferson became president in 1801, he rejected Tripoli’s demand for payment. The pasha of Tripoli countered by declaring war on the United States. Jefferson sent forces to the Mediterranean, and after sporadic combat, hostilities ended four years later with a negotiated settlement in which the United States paid a smaller tribute than had initially been demanded.
The era of Barbary corsairs effectively ended a decade later, when, after the U.S. Navy, battle-hardened from the War of 1812, won a quick victory against Algiers, effectively ending all tribute payments.
By 1815, after the US’s war against the British Empire, the US flexed its muscles and used force to protect US shipping going forward. Shortly after this, the US found itself in a war with Mexico in the late 1840s and by 1860, fought an attempt to split the United States into two confederations. By this time there were powerful elites who saw that the economies of scale incentivized a violent end to the effort to have an adjacent federation have in effect a free trade zone.
The trend in hindsight becomes clear as the United States, in its second phase, turns its eyes to the Plains Indians after successfully placing the South in military districts, as this article explains:
In an attempt at peace in 1851, the first Fort Laramie Treaty was signed, which granted the Plain Indians about 150 million acres of land for their own use as the Great Sioux Reservation. Then, 13 years later, the size was greatly reduced to about 60 million acres in the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868, which recreated the Great Sioux Reservation boundaries and proclaimed all of South Dakota west of the Missouri river, including the Black Hills, solely for the Sioux Nation.
As part of the treaty, no unauthorized non-Indian was to come into the reservation and the Sioux were allowed to hunt in unceded Indian territory beyond the reservation that stretched into North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Nebraska, and Colorado. If any non-Indian wanted to settle on this unceded land, they could only do it with the permission of the Sioux.
That was until 1874, when gold was discovered in South Dakota’s Black Hills. The treaties that were signed between the Native Americans and the U.S. government were ignored as gold rushers invaded Indian Territory and issues arose, such as the Battle of the Little Bighorn.
As time went on, the American Indians continued to be pushed into smaller territories and their lives began to diminish. In 1889, the U.S. government issued the Dawes Act, which took the Black Hills from the Indians, broke up the Great Sioux Reservation into five separate reservations, and took nine million acres and opened it up for public purchase by non-Indians for homesteading and settlements.
The Native Americans were squeezed into these smaller territories and didn’t have enough game to support them. The bison that had been a staple to their way of life were gone. Their ancestral lands that sustained them were no longer theirs. The resistance was over. They were no longer free people, living amongst themselves, but “Redskins” confined by the “white man” in reservations they had been forced to, many against their will.
At this point, one might logically think that the US is done with its expansion as it now is in total control of all the lands from the east to the west coast of North America. However, there were plenty of elites that were very willing in their agenda for:
… capitalizing on a national tragedy to push through an unrelated agenda. The explosion of the Maine in Havana’s harbor — killing some 260 sailors — was the immediate catalyst for the invasion of Cuba and then the Philippines.
Y’all do know that the USS Maine was NOT sabotaged by the Spanish in Cuba, right?
The result was a third phase in this trend toward empire.
Again, you have a list of critical thinkers that understand the down-side of empire, called the Anti-Imperialist effort in 1898, outlined in this article:
“We hold that the policy known as imperialism is hostile to liberty and tends toward militarism, an evil from which it has been our glory to be free. We regret that it has become necessary in the land of Washington and Lincoln to reaffirm that all men, of whatever race or color, are entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We maintain that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. We insist that the subjugation of any people is ‘criminal aggression’ and open disloyalty to the distinctive principles of our Government.
“We earnestly condemn the policy of the present National Administration in the Philippines. It seeks to extinguish the spirit of 1776 in those islands. We deplore the sacrifice of our soldiers and sailors, whose bravery deserves admiration even in an unjust war. We denounce the slaughter of the Filipinos as a needless horror. We protest against the extension of American sovereignty by Spanish methods…”
.. to your typical statist media b*llshit we still see today:
Today, the medium from which most Americans get their news, television, plays much the same role as the “yellow press” of William Randolph Hearst — cheerleading for war. Then, as now, the argument justifying war started as a matter of self-defense, then morphed into a war for “freedom,” and finally stood naked as a political and economic power grab
So on and on it goes, the US Empire emerges well in advance of WWII, already using shady ways to promote its power on the world’s stage.
The latest chapter is probably not that last, but the character of this empire will be remembered for generations:
U.S.-led wars in the Middle East have killed some four million Muslims since 1990. The recently published Afghanistan papers, provided an insight into the longest war in U.S. history and revealed how U.S. officials continuously lied about the progress being made in Afghanistan, lacked a basic understanding of the country, were hiding evidence that the war was unwinnable, and had wasted as much as $1 trillion in the process.
This parallels a little known previous ‘longest war’ that was initiated a century before:
.. the U.S. waged a war from 1899 to 1913 in the southernmost island of the Philippines. Known as the Moro War, it was the longest sustained military campaign in American history until the war in Afghanistan surpassed it a few years ago. As a result, the U.S. and the Philippine governments are still embroiled in a battle with Islamist insurgents in the southern Philippines, which takes the meaning of “forever war” to a whole new level
.. the U.S. military was not welcome in the Philippines, much as it is not welcomed by Afghanistan or any other Muslim-majority nation which has to duel with the U.S. Empire. After the U.S. defeated the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay and annexed the Philippines under the 1898 Treaty of Paris, the Moro population were not even consulted. The U.S. then sought to “pacify” them using brute force.
“I want no prisoners,” ordered General Jacob Smith on Samar Island during the war in 1902. “I wish you to kill and burn, the more you kill and burn the better you will please me.”
The tactics remain the same, total war from Sherman and Sheridan used in the so-called Civil War, to the war on the American Indians, to the war in the Philippines, to Afghanistan and beyond is somehow construed to be “American Exceptionalism”.
I hate lies. I love truth. Friends don’t let friends believe in lies .. but they also allow someone that process .. towards truth .. it is a different timeline for everyone .. everyone is unique and ultimately have to own their own beliefs, values, mission, etc.
Along these lines, once I found out what “Honest Abe” did to the much more honorable Robert E. Lee, I had my suspicions that Lincoln was not everything the state says he was, Father Abraham to the freed Blacks, a saint that ended slavery, and the list goes on and on to this deified man. The very fact that the “state” does this should make everyone suspicious!
I detest the way the Lincoln administration chose to bury their dead on an honorable man’s private property .. a man who had 100x the character of Lincoln himself when it came to principles. Lincoln’s words in 1848 about a very Jefferson idea about the consent of the governed would have been something that Robert E. Lee would have agreed with .. and when Lee acted on this belief, Lincoln made sure Lee could never return to his home.
16,000 Union solders buried in Lee’s garden
Obviously, Lincoln was all words (typical politician) and Lee was principles and character, not moved by conditions or time.
The quote Lee and Lincoln would agree to:
“Any people, anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right, a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people, that can, may revolutionize, and make their own of so much of the territory as they inhabit. More than this, a majority of any portion of such people may revolutionize, putting down a minority, intermingled with, or near about them, who may oppose their movements.” ~ Lincoln January 12 1848, expressing the near-universally held Jeffersonian principle
Anyway, Jacob Hornberger at FFF (The Future of Freedom Foundation) shared this article a few years ago about Memorial Day, but I thought that as 2019 wrapped up it was good to reflect on the nation we find ourselves a part of, and its real history, including a good dose of truth!
Today, Memorial Day, Americans across the land will hear the same message: that U.S. soldiers who have died in America’s foreign wars and foreign interventions have done so in the defense of our rights and freedoms. It is a message that will be heard in sporting events, memorial services, airports, churches, and everywhere else that Memorial Day is being commemorated.
There is one big thing wrong, however. It’s a lie. None of those soldiers died protecting our rights and freedoms. That’s because our rights and freedoms were never being threatened by the enemy forces that killed those soldiers.
Yes, lets look at how the US military defended our rights and freedoms … it should not take long and you will see that it has been a LONG time since they actually did that:
Syria. The Syrian government has never invaded the United States and tried to take away our rights and freedoms. Therefore, any U.S. soldier who has died in Syria was not killed protecting our rights and freedoms.
Niger. The Niger government has never invaded the United States and tried to take away our freedoms. Therefore, any U.S. soldier who has died in Niger was not killed protecting our rights and freedoms.
Iraq. The Iraq government never invaded the United States and tried to take away our rights and freedoms. Therefore, any U.S. soldier who has died in Iraq was not killed protecting our rights and freedoms.
Afghanistan. The Afghan government never invaded the United States and tried to take away our rights and freedoms. Therefore, any U.S. soldier who has died in Afghanistan was not killed protecting our rights and freedoms. Even al-Qaeda never invaded the United States and tried to take away our rights and freedoms. Its terrorist attacks, including the one on 9/11, were retaliation for U.S. interventionism in the Middle East.
Panama. The Panama government never invaded the United States and tried to take away our rights freedoms. Therefore, any U.S. soldier who died in Panama was not killed protecting our rights and freedoms.
Grenada. The Grenada government never invaded the United States and tried to take away our rights freedoms. Therefore, any U.S. soldier who died in Grenada was not killed protecting our rights and freedoms.
Vietnam. The North Vietnam government never invaded the United States and tried to take away our rights and freedoms. Therefore, any U.S. soldier who died in Vietnam was not killed protecting our rights and freedoms.
Korea. The North Korean government never invaded the United States and tried to take away our rights freedoms. Therefore, any U.S. soldier who died in Korea was not killed protecting our rights and freedoms.
World War II.
The Japanese government never invaded the United States and tried to take away our rights and freedoms. Therefore, any U.S. soldier who died in the Pacific theater in World War II was not killed protecting our rights and freedoms. The Japanese attack on U.S. Naval forces on Hawaii was intended solely to prevent the U.S. Navy from interfering with Japanese attempts to acquire oil in the Dutch East Indies in response to President Roosevelt’s oil embargo, whose aim was to provoke the Japanese into attacking the United States so that the U.S. could get into the European part of war.
The German government never invaded the United States and try to take away our rights and freedoms. Therefore, any U.S. soldier who died in the European theater in World War II was not killed protecting our rights and freedoms. Germany wasn’t even able to cross the English Channel to invade England, much less the Atlantic Ocean to invade the United States. In fact, the last thing that Germany wanted was war with the United States, as reflected by Germany’s refusal to react to President Roosevelt’s repeated provocations to get Germany to attack the United States. Germany only declared war on the United States after FDR successfully provoked the Japanese into attacking the U.S. Navy fleet at Pearl Harbor, in the hope that this would provide a back door to entry into the war in Europe.
World War I. The German government never invaded the United States and tried to take away our rights freedoms. Therefore, any U.S. soldier who died in World War I was not killed protecting our rights and freedoms, especially given the ridiculous aims of U.S. intervention into the war: to “end all wars” and to “make the world safe for democracy,” a word that isn’t even in the U.S. Constitution. In fact, it is perversely ironic that it was U.S. interventionism into the conflict that contributed to the rise of Nazi Germany and World War II.
The Spanish-American War. The Spanish government never invaded the United States and tried to take away our rights freedoms. Therefore, any soldier who died in the Spanish-American War was not killed protecting our rights and freedoms.
I will add the following:
The War Against Southern Independence (of seven states originally, wrongly called a civil war, wrong because the southern states did not want any other territory, PERIOD).
The South Carolina militia in Dec 1860 to April 1861 never invaded the United States and try to take away the rights of those in other states. As a sovereign entity (reclaiming what it had before the Constitution and the Articles of Confederation) it said LEAVE US ALONE.
The Confederate States of America from Feb to April 1861 never invaded the United States and try to take away the rights of those in other states. While after the US Army detachment in Fort Moultrie violated the agreement in place since Dec 1860 when it agreed NOT to take any action in Charleston Harbor and remained at peace in what was now South Carolina territory (seceded from USA), Gen. Anderson, in the cover of night moved his troops to Fort Sumter. When Lincoln attempted to resupply the fort with provisions AND troops was when the forces around Charleston Harbor chose to fire on Fort Sumter .. KILLING NO ONE.
The Confederate States of America (now 11 states) from April – July 1861 never invaded the United States and try to take away the rights of those in other states.
So why celebrate Memorial Day when the reason for its existence is based on lies .. it is yet another government piece of propaganda that when repeated enough get into the heads of the sheep!
Bottom line is that while the defense of the United States in the War of 1812 was ‘honorable’, even that war was entered into under questionable circumstances and outright lies. Know that by 1814 the NORTH was ready to secede from the United States (peacefully) .. you might want to research the “Hartford Convention of 1814”
“… the Hartford Convention began a three-week debate about the relationship between the then 18 states and the federal government. The meeting was held in secret by New England members of the Federalist Party and there were nationwide fears that the Hartford Convention would call for New England’s secession from the Union …”
New Englanders were unhappy over political concerns that they were being badly treated by the Union. Since Thomas Jefferson’s election in 1800, the president had been a Southerner chosen by an electoral system that allowed the slave-holding Southern states to count each slave as 60 percent of a free person for their allocation of congressional seats and the number of presidential electors…”
Did the southern states invade the north to keep this from happening? No! As early as 1804, sensing that New England was not happy with things (this time it was the Louisiana Purchase, another time when secession was discussed in the North.):
“Whether we remain in one confederacy, or form into Atlantic and Mississippi confederacies, I believe not very important to the happiness of either part. Those of the western confederacy will be as much our children & descendants as those of the eastern, and I feel myself as much identified with that country, in future time, as with this; and did I now foresee a separation at some future day, yet I should feel the duty & the desire to promote the western interests as zealously as the eastern, doing all the good for both portions of our future family which should fall within my power.”
–Letter from President Thomas Jefferson to Dr. Joseph Priestly, Jan. 29, 1804
So maybe the American Revolutionary War was really the last time the government’s troops fought for our freedom and for our rights. Think about that!
PS Also, if you think George Washington was really the tactical hero of Yorktown, just know that when the French general Jean-Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, comte de Rochambeau told Washington to move his troops to Yorktown as the French fleet was coming to contain the British troops under Cornwallis there, Washington had a melt-down and at first refused the thought thinking as he had the last few years that the decisive battle HAD to take place against the British in New York harbor.
