ZGram - 11/9/2004 - "The Danger of Historical Lies"

[zgrams at zgrams.zundelsite.org]

  Zgram - Where Truth is Destiny:  Now more than ever!

November 9, 2004

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

An appropriate Zgram for an historical date - November 9th.  Consult 
your history books!

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The Danger of Historical Lies

  by Mark Weber /  Spring of 1997

  http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v16/v16n3p-2_Weber.html

  On January 20, 1997, Bill Clinton began his second term as President 
with a  swearing-in ceremony at the White House followed by an 
inaugural address.  During the first few minutes of this speech, 
Clinton briefly surveyed the history  of the past ten decades:

  "What a century it has been. America became the world's mightiest 
industrial  power; saved the world from tyranny in two world wars and 
a long Cold War; and  time and again, reached across the globe to 
millions who longed for the  blessings of liberty."

  Not only do these proud, even boastful words contain historical 
lies, they  manifest an arrogance that lays the groundwork for future 
calamity. In truth, in  neither the first nor the second world wars 
did the United States "save the  world from tyranny."

  World War I

  In April 1917, President Woodrow Wilson called for America's entry 
into World  War I by proclaiming that "the world must be made safe 
for democracy." On  another occasion, he declared that US 
participation in the conflict would make it  a "war to end war." To 
secure support for this crusade, newspapers and  political leaders, 
and an official US government propaganda agency, portrayed  Germany 
as a power-mad tyranny that threatened the liberty of the world.

  However, within just a few years after the November 1918 armistice 
that ended  the fighting, this wartime propaganda image was widely 
recognized as absurd.  Today no serious historian regards Wilhelmine 
Germany as a "tyranny," or  believes that it posed any kind of threat 
to the United States, much less "the  world."

  Ironically, America's principal allies in World War I -- Britain and 
France  -- were at the time the world's greatest imperial powers. (A 
sore point for  many Americans of Irish background was Britain's 
control of Ireland.) Many in the  United States regarded Britain, not 
Germany, as the foremost threat to world  liberty, recalling that 
Americans had waged a bitter, drawn-out war for  independence from 
British rule (1775-1783), and that during a second war with the  same 
country (1812-1814) British troops had sacked and burned down the US 
capital.

  World War II

  President Clinton's distortion of history is even more glaring with 
regard to  the Second World War. America's two most important 
military allies in that  conflict were the foremost imperialist power 
(Britain) and the cruelest tyranny  (Soviet Russia).

  During both world wars, Britain ruled a vast global empire, 
subjugating  millions against their will in what are now India, 
Pakistan, South Africa,  Palestine/Israel, Egypt and Malaysia, to 
name but a few. America's other great wartime  ally, Stalinist 
Russia, was, by any objective measure, a vastly more cruel  despotism 
than Hitler's Germany.

  If the US had not intervened in World War II, Germany and its allies 
might  have succeeded in vanquishing Soviet Communism. A victory of 
the Axis powers  also would have meant no Communist subjugation of 
eastern Europe and China, no  protracted East-West "Cold War," and no 
"hot wars" in Korea and Vietnam.

  In fact, and contrary to Clinton's version of history, during the 
Second War  the United States helped substantially to preserve the 
world's most terrible  tyranny. In cooperation with the Soviet Union, 
the United States helped to  oppress "millions who longed for the 
blessings of liberty."

  Today's political and intellectual leaders seem eager to whitewash 
or forget  the Soviet role in the World War II, or America's cordial 
wartime alliance  with Soviet Russia and its leader. To solidify the 
Allied coalition -- formally  known as the "United Nations" -- 
President Franklin Roosevelt, British Prime  Minister Winston 
Churchill, and Soviet premier Joseph Stalin met together in  person 
on two occasions: in November 1943 at Teheran, Iran, and in February 
1945  in Yalta, Crimea.

  In a joint declaration issued at the conclusion of the Teheran 
meeting, the  three leaders expressed "our determination that our 
nations shall work together  in war and in the peace that will 
follow." The "Big Three" continued:

   "We recognize fully the supreme responsibility resting upon us and 
all the  United Nations to make a peace which will command the good 
will of the  overwhelming mass of the peoples of the world and banish 
the scourge and terror of war  for many generations.

  "We shall seek the cooperation and active participation of all 
nations, large  and small, whose peoples in heart and mind are 
dedicated, as are our own  peoples, to the elimination of tyranny and 
slavery, oppression and intolerance. We  will welcome them, as they 
may choose to come, into a world family of  democratic nations.

  "... Emerging from these cordial conferences we look with confidence 
to the  day when all the peoples of the word may live free, untouched 
by tyranny,  according to their varying desires and their own 
consciences." 

  To emphasize the trusting nature of their alliance, Roosevelt, 
Churchill and  Stalin concluded their joint statement with the words: 
"We came here with hope  and determination. We leave here, friends in 
fact, in spirit and in purpose."

  The wartime leaders of the United States, Britain and Soviet Russia 
accomplished precisely what they accused the Axis leaders of Germany, 
Italy and Japan  of conspiring to achieve: world domination. At the 
Teheran, Yalta and Potsdam  conferences, and in crass violation of 
their own loftily proclaimed principles,  the US, British and Soviet 
leaders disposed of millions of people with no  regard for their 
wishes (most tragically, perhaps, in the case of Poland). To  insure 
the rule of the victorious Allied powers after the war, the "Big 
Three"  established the United Nations organization to function as a 
permanent global  police force.

  Lessons

  Many Americans recall their country's role in the Vietnam war, and 
other  overseas military adventures since 1945, with embarrassment 
and even shame. But  most Americans -- whether they call themselves 
conservative or liberal -- like  to regard World War II as "the good 
war," a morally unambiguous conflict  between Good and Evil. So 
successfully have politicians and intellectual leaders,  together 
with the mass media, promoted this childish, self-righteous view of 
history, that President Clinton could be confident that it would be 
accepted  without objection.

  The President's distortion of history is all the more remarkable 
considering  that in this same inaugural speech he proclaimed the 
dawning of an  "information age" in which "education will be every 
citizen's most prized possession."

  How a nation views the past is not a trivial or merely academic 
exercise. Our  perspective on history profoundly shapes our actions 
in the present, often  with grave consequences for the future. 
Drawing conclusions from our understanding of the past, we make or 
support policies that greatly impact the lives of  millions.

  During the late 1960s and early 1970s, for example, political 
leaders,  journalists and scholars often rationalized and justified 
America's ill-fated role  in the Vietnam war on the basis of a badly 
distorted understanding of Third  Reich Germany, drawing faulty 
historical parallels between Ho Chi Minh and  Hitler, with erroneous 
references to the September 1938 Munich Conference.

  The hubris of Clinton's portrayal of history is not merely an 
affront against  historical truth, it is dangerous because it 
sanctions potentially even more  calamitous military adventures in 
the future. After all, if the United States  was as righteous and as 
successful as the President says it was in "saving the  world" in two 
world wars, why would anyone oppose similar world-saving  crusades in 
the future? 

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