The Lamp of Experience

I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know no way of judging of the future but by the past.

Patrick Henry, Speech at the Second Virginia Convention at St. John’s Church in Richmond, Virginia (23 March 1775)

As an old history teacher I suffer a curse endemic to my profession. As someone who can read the historical archival record and make causal connections and analytical evaluations or judgments, I am beset with seeing repeated patterns of duplicitous behavior, particularly in the pretexts and spurious manufactured origins leading up to American intervention in war and armed conflicts.

These deadly patterns have been going on for well over two hundred years, from the War of 1812, the policies regarding the coercive removal of the Five Civilized Tribes from the Eastern US to Indian Territory, the Mexican War, the actions of the Lincoln administration regarding Fort Sumter and the War for Southern Independence, the genocidal wars against the Plains Indians, the annexation of Hawaii, the Spanish-American War and the Filipino Insurrection, the Wilson administration’s duplicitous policies directed toward Mexico during the contentious days of revolution there, American intervention into World War I and pre/post revolutionary Russia, the egregious policies and behavior directed toward countries in Latin and South America (the Banana Wars) spanning over several presidential regimes, American intervention into World War II, the spurious manufactured pretexts behind the Truman Doctrine and the creation of the national security state, Truman’s unconstitutional intervention into the Korean War, over thirty years of extra-constitutional intervention and war in Indo China through six administrations, the events surrounding the USS Liberty incident, and the various “forever wars” and interventions in the Middle East and Southwest Asia from Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Syria, or Afghanistan,

Perhaps the most dangerous period was early in John Kennedy’s term as president in 1961, where he felt entrapment, that he had been misled by his military and intelligence advisors regarding the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. Because of this betrayal he was determined to constantly be on guard regarding subsequent strategic advice issued to him.

After his confrontational June 1961 Vienna Summit meeting with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, later that year in September Kennedy under took a bold initiative and introduced at the Sixteenth General Assembly of the United Nations a Program for General and Complete Disarmament in a Peaceful World.

Conversely the national security establishment (particularly the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs of Staff and CIA) believed, not in disarmament but in a nuclear first strike policy against the Soviet Union, and that JFK was naive and lacked determination and resolve in his opposition to this apocalyptic doomsday scenario. On March 13, 1962 the JCS submitted Operation Northwoods as a pretext for a Cuban Invasion.

This war between JFK and the military intensified following the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962. Pentagon leaders such as Air Force chief of Staff General Curtis LeMay believed the peaceful resolution of the Crisis was not Kennedy’s finest hour but had been appeasement of the Soviets and the worst disaster in American history.

JFK proceeded to embark on secret back channel peace efforts with Nikita Khrushchev and Fidel Castro and was determined to get out of Vietnam despite intense opposition inside his own government.

“The Peace Speech” — JFK Commencement Address at American University, June 10, 1963.

To the deep state, this was treason.

It all came to an end on November 22, 1963, when an insidious coup d’état by Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson and the highest echelons of the National Security State was accomplished with the brutal murder of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas.

When will the American people wake up from their willfully ignorant slumber of dwelling in the United States of Amnesia and start asking the hard pointed questions about the world around them? 

Contemporary events and the persons involved in them are not isolated random or static occurrences. There is a crucial backstory or history to them, the actual story behind the spurious or propagandist accounts put forth by the establishment “fake news” regime media or court academia.

Understanding the dynamics and interplay of power relationships is often not easy for it requires diligence and tenacious research in order to seek authoritative and definitive answers to what is going on in these events.

Fortunately, there are dedicated scholarly researchers who trace the often arcane and internecine networks and interlocking relationships of these actors – their backgrounds, conspiratorial action, mentors and criminal associates, who flesh out these events.

But it takes perspicacious work in order to discover the truth before one is enveloped in tragic and often unforeseen consequences yet again.

Particularly now that there are strident voices calling for unleashing the dogs of war against China.

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4:05 pm on April 19, 2020