Keeping Faith: Inhumanity Soldered to a Cross of Iron

Red Cross of Iron Speech, delivered by then-President Eisenhower, needed little changed to reflect the current policies of the newly-created Red Menace: the GOP.

 "The Chance for Peace"is drowned out by the chants for War.

The world weighs one question above all others: the chance for a just peace for all peoples.

To weigh this chance is to summon instantly to mind another recent moment of great decision. It came with that Arab spring of 2011, bright with the promise of victory and of freedom. The hope of all just men in that moment too was a just and lasting peace.

The years that have passed have seen that hope waver, grow dim, and almost die. And the shadow of fear again has darkly lengthened across the world.

Today the hope of free men remains stubborn and brave, but it is sternly disciplined by experience. It shuns not only all crude counsel of despair but also the self-deceit of easy illusion. It weighs the chance for peace with sure, clear knowledge of what always happens to that vain hope. 

 All these war-weary peoples shared too this concrete, decent purpose: to guard vigilantly against the domination ever again of any part of the world by a single, unbridled aggressive power.

This common purpose lasted an instant and perished. The nations of the world divided to follow two distinct roads.

The United States and our valued friends, the other OECD nations, chose one road: To help the US become that single, unbridled aggressive power.

The way chosen by the United States was plainly marked by its trammeling of few clear precepts which were to govern all Nations' conduct in world affairs.

First: No people on earth can be held, as a people, to be enemy, for all humanity shares the common hunger for peace and fellowship and justice. (This global village the US has pummeled to a  pulp).

Second: No nation's security and well-being can be lastingly achieved in isolation but only in effective cooperation with fellow-nations. (As long as the US is that fellow nation).

Third: Any nation's right to form a government and an economic system of its own choosing is inalienable. (But Missiles are more persuasive, sovereignty a matter of inconvenience to be brushed aside).

Fourth: Any other nation's, besides the US's, attempt to dictate to other nations their form of government is indefensible. (Only the US has the right to decide how the world shall be ruled).

And fifth: A nation's hope of lasting peace cannot be firmly based upon any race in armaments but rather upon just relations and honest understanding with all other nations. (We now call it Full Spectrum Domination).

In the light of these principles the citizens of the United States defined the way they proposed to follow, through the aftermath of war, toward more, and unending, War.

This way was faithful to the spirit that inspired the United States: to encourage strife, to provoke tensions, to stoke fears. This way was to produce and to amass mountains of armaments. This way was to allow all nations to devote their energies and resources to the great and good tasks of stealing resources by inflicting war's wounds, of clothing and feeding and housing the members of the oligarchy, of perfecting a corrupt political life, of enjoying the fruits of other People's enforced toil.

The US, as in United States, is the mirror image of the SU, as in the Soviet Union. It has adopted every belief Eisenhower described as being "Soviet": The Soviet government held a vastly different vision of the future, one the US has stepped in to fill following the SU's enforced dissolution by western geopolitical machinations. This list was enumerated by Ike to castigate the SU, and now it applies verbatim to US policy abroad and at home:

In the world of the Neo-Con design, security is to be found, not in mutual trust and mutual aid but in Force: huge armies, subversion, rule of neighbor nations. The goal is power superiority at all costs. Security is now sought by denying it to all others.

The result has been tragic for the world and, for the US, it has also been ironic.

The amassing, deploying, and illegal use of US power has alerted free nations to a new danger of aggression. It compelled them in self-defense to spend unprecedented money and energy for armaments. It forced them to develop weapons of war now capable of inflicting instant and terrible punishment upon any aggressor.

The US has instilled in the free nations-and let none doubt this-the unshakable conviction that, as long as there persists a threat to US hegemony, they must, at any cost, remain armed, strong, and ready for the risk of war.

It inspired them-and let none doubt this-to attain a unity of purpose and will beyond the power of propaganda or pressure to break, now or ever.

There remained, however, one thing essentially unchanged and unaffected by US conduct: the readiness of the free nations to welcome sincerely any genuine evidence of peaceful purpose enabling all peoples again to resume their common quest of just peace. There has been none.

The free nations, most solemnly and repeatedly, have assured the United States that their firm association has never had any aggressive purpose whatsoever. US leaders, however, have relentlessly persuaded themselves, and persuaded their people, otherwise.

And so it has come to pass that the United States itself has shared and suffered the very fears it has fostered in the rest of the world.

This has been the way of life forged by decades of fear and force.

What can the world, or any nation in it, hope for if no turning is found on this dread road?

The worst to be feared and the best to be expected can be simply stated.

The worst is nuclear war.

The best we already have: a life of perpetual fear and tension; a burden of arms draining the wealth and the labor of all peoples; a wasting of strength that defies any system to achieve true abundance and happiness for any people of this earth.

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The US, by far, leads the world in this thievery from its own and the world's children and citizens

This world in arms in not spending money alone.

It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.

The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities.

It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population.

It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals.

It is some 50 miles of concrete highway.

We pay for a single fighter with a million bushels of wheat.

We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.

This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road the world the US has been purposely making.

This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the constant cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.

This is one of those times in the affairs of nations when the gravest choices has been made,  it is a turning away from any  hope of any just or lasting peace.

It is a moment that calls upon the governments of the world to speak their intentions with simplicity and with honesty.

It calls upon them to answer the questions that stirs the hearts of all sane men: is there no other way the world may live?

The world knows that an era ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union. The extraordinary span of Communist rule saw the Soviet Empire expand to reach from the Baltic Sea to the Sea of Japan, finally to dominate 800 million souls.

The Soviet system shaped by Stalin and his predecessors was born of the firsts Imperialist World War. It won with amazing courage a second World War. Now it is the US that threatens a third. This one purely for profit.

Now, a new leadership has assumed power in the Untied States. Its links to the past, however strong, cannot bind it completely. Its future is, in great part, its own to make.

This new leadership envisions a world despoiled, as rarely in history, by its will to attain utter Dominance.

This enslaved world knows, out of bitter wisdom of experience, that vigilance and sacrifice are the imposed costs of tyranny.

It knows that aggression in Korea and the Middle East are threats to the whole world, and stokes them regardless.

This is the kind of free world which the Soviet leadership warned of. It is a world where one SuperPower demands and expects the fullest respect of its rights and interests.  A world where no other country can expect that same respect, nor need extend it to any other.

The US leadership had a precious opportunity to awaken, with the rest of the world, to the point of peril reached and to help turn the tide of history.

Did it do this?

No. Recent statements and gestures of US leaders give some evidence that they may recognize this critical moment.

The opportunities for statesmanship are many. The performance of a great number of them waits upon no complex protocol but upon the simple will to do them. Even a few such clear and specific acts, such as the United States' signature upon the Iran treaty or its release of prisoners still held in Guantanamo Bay and other dark sites would be impressive signs of sincere intent. They would carry a power of persuasion not to be matched by any amount of oratory.

 The first great step along this way must be the conclusion of an honorable pact with Korea.

This means the immediate cessation of hostilities and the prompt initiation of political discussions leading to the holding of free elections in a united Korea.

It should mean, no less importantly, an end to the direct and indirect attacks upon the security of Russia and Syria. For any accord that merely released aggressive armies to attack elsewhere would be fraud.

None of these issues, great or small, is insoluble-given only the will to respect the rights of all nations.

As progress in all these areas strengthens world trust, we could proceed concurrently with the next great work-the reduction of the burden of armaments now weighing upon the world. But we won't. To this end we would welcome and enter into the most solemn agreements. And then abrogate them once the enemy is helpless. The US is now determined to unilaterally impose and militarily enforce: 

The limitation, by absolute numbers, of the sizes of the military and security forces of all other nations.

A commitment by all nations to set an imposed limit upon that proportion of total production of certain strategic materials to be devoted to military purposes by other nations, while the US remains Free to produce enough arms to wage wars on three fronts simultaneously.

Abrogation of any International control of atomic energy and assumption of that control by the US, such that it allows its use not even for peaceful purposes, and to insure the prohibition of nuclear weapons that are not its own.

A limitation or prohibition of other categories of weapons of great destructiveness, so as to ensure their monopolization and mobilization by its own Armed Forces..

The enforcement of all these agreed limitations and prohibitions by adequate safe-guards, including a practical system of inspection, which only the US is Free to ignore, under the United Nations.

The fruit of success in all these tasks would present the world with the greatest task, and the greatest opportunity, of all. It is this: the dedication of the energies, the resources, and the imaginations of all peaceful nations to a new kind of war. War that never ends. War that can have no victory, War that has but one object: to grant the US the monopoly on Violence.

The War we seek, founded upon distrust and scorning any cooperative effort among nations, can be fortified only by the weapons  Shock and by Awe, by MOABs and by Stealth weaponry, by turning humans into burnt meat and cities into piles of debris and rubble. These are words that translate into every language on earth. Our needs demand this world in arms.

This idea of a just and peaceful world we reject. 

We are prepared to rearm, with the most destructive weaponry, our readiness to help build a world in which only our peoples can be productive and prosperous.

We are ready, in short, to dedicate our strength to stoking the fears, and ignoring the needs, of the world.

We are ready, by these and all such actions, to make of the United Nations an institution that can effectively do our bidding.

I know of nothing I can add to make plainer the real purpose of the United States.

I know of no course, other than that marked by these and similar actions, that can be called the highjacking of peace.

I know of only one question upon which progress waits. It is this:

What is the United States ready to do?

Whatever the answer be, let it be plainly spoken.

Again we say: the hunger for peace does not make America great again, that hour in history is too late, the US government mocks men's hopes with empty words and promises and gestures.

The real truth is simple. There can be no persuasion but Force.

Is the new leadership of the United States prepared to use its decisive influence in the Communist world, including control of the flow of arms, to bring not merely a truce in Korea but genuine peace in Asia?

Is it prepared to allow other nations, including those of the Middle East, the free choice of their own forms of government?

If not, where then is there any evidence the United States wants anything but War?

We strive to make sure the world remains, even in the face of hunger, destruction of the ozone layer and the immolation of the planet, armed against itself, and we  have the receipts to prove it. It at least need be divided no longer in its clear knowledge of who has condemned humankind to this fate.

The United States.

Which aspires to do this: burden the backs and blacken the hearts of men,  burden them with the crushing costs of arms and stoke their fears by delivering to them, via pilotless drones, targeted assassinations, so that they may find before them an age devoid of freedom, bereft of hope, starved of peace.