Sixty-Three Years of Lies

by Anthony Gregory

Sixty-three years ago, on December 7, 1941 , more than three hundred Japanese planes descended upon Pearl Harbor in a horrendous surprise attack. Or, at least it was a surprise for the American servicemen and civilians who resided at the base, some 2,400 of whom perished in the terrible onslaught.  

Despite the difficulties confronted by historians and others who attempted to reveal that Franklin Roosevelt likely had foreknowledge of these attacks, the case is fairly solid now. Robert Stinnett’s groundbreaking book, Day of Deceit: The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor, contains the best argument and evidence, so far. The US government had broken the codes necessary to learn of an imminent threat, and FDR had pursued a deliberate policy of provoking the Japanese – cutting off their oil supply, assisting their enemies in China, ignoring their diplomatic attempts to ensure peace with the United States, and placing US military personnel in harm’s way near Japan – in order to get them to fire the first shot and open a backdoor into a war against Germany. Others have compellingly argued that the US government also wanted to exert US global dominance in the Pacific, which it feared would be undercut by the Japanese.  

Of course, you can expect to hear the establishment media wax patriotic today, drawing similarities between 12/7 and 9/11 as days that the United States was attacked without provocation or warning, simply because out country’s freedom and greatness enrage foreign aggressors and incite them to attack us. Both historical events, say the hawkish American media and intelligentsia, demonstrate that the US government must engage in active military campaigns overseas, and eschew the traditional US foreign policy of military isolation prescribed by so many wise men of America ’s founding generation, lest America will be attacked, anyway, unready to defend itself.  

We fight them there so we don’t have to fight them here. We occupy, terrorize and bomb Iraq to stop 9/11s here, just as we firebombed dozens of Japanese cities to prevent future Pearl Harbors.  

Nearly every one of the US wars has a pervasive, insidious mythology of lies surrounding it. Strangely enough, America was always attacked first. The Maine . The Lusitania . Pearl Harbor , the Gulf of Tonkin and 9/11. These were what convinced so many Americans to follow their government into war, and each time America was portrayed as the unquestionable victim that wished to live peacefully with the world and mind its own business but was tragically forced into war by foreigners who couldn’t mind their own.

Since Pearl Harbor , the government lies have mounted at a disgusting and alarming pace. Nowadays, politicians will lie about anything and everything.  

They will lie about budgets and fiscal solvency, saying we had budget surpluses in the late 1990s, ignoring the Social Security receipts and other “off-budget expenses” that caused the debt to increase continually despite the “surpluses,” and saying that the budget can be cut in half in five years at the current rate of congressional and presidential fiscal irresponsibility.  

They will lie about drugs, saying that marijuana is a “gateway drug” as dangerous and addictive as cocaine, and that the Netherlands has a worse drug problem than America because the Dutch drug laws are insufficiently draconian.  

They will say that the Federal Reserve keeps inflation low, even though central banking constantly devalues the dollar and only appears not to at times because the natural deflation of the market offsets the inflation.  

They will lie about guns, saying that gun control makes us safer and that people are criminals simply for owning certain firearms.  

They will say they respect the Constitution, even though practically every single thing they do violates multiple provisions of the document, even by the most statist, Hamiltonian interpretation of its text. 

They will lie about what produces wealth and from where rights originate, implying and outright saying every chance they get that the government deserves credit for both.

They will lie to children in schools, telling them that the government saved America from the Great Depression, combated racism whenever it was sufficiently empowered to do so, and has protected the land, water and air from greedy businessmen who have always wanted nothing more than a laissez faire economy.

They will lie about war the most, saying the US government has always supported freedom and hasn’t made deals with Iran or Saddam Hussein or the Khmer Rouge or a dozen other corrupt dictators and regimes, when it most certainly has, and saying the government has always supported democracy, when it most certainly has not.

They will say that the US government saved the world from fascism in World War II and from Communism in the Cold War, and is in the process of saving the world from terrorism. They will say that Afghanistan and Iraq are now free countries – and that America is, too.

They will lie about mushroom clouds over Manhattan , aluminum tubes used to enrich fictional uranium from Niger , chemical stockpiles, al-Qaeda-Saddam connections, and whether or not their own fellow government officials warned them that what they were saying was untrue.

The US government’s lies since Pearl Harbor have contributed to, concealed, and helped extend the suffering of millions of victims of US Empire. Remember Pearl Harbor , and all the other atrocities that have been obscured by these lies.  

If we accept the fact that the government lied about Pearl Harbor and allowed thousands of Americans to die for its own purposes – and if there’s contrary evidence, I’d like to see it – this remains one of the biggest lies crying out to be exposed. The more people confront this big lie, the less they will trust the government and the more they will wonder what else they have been lied to about.

Which is why you won’t hear much about the truth behind Pearl Harbor today. Instead, it will be just another day of infamy.