Imperialist Excuses for War

I believe it is informative to compare the excuses for wars of aggression used by the United States with those of Nazi Germany. Hitler was very methodical in how he conquered most of Europe, usually obtaining his objectives one country or a few countries at a time. He first invaded the demilitarized zone of the Rhineland, then annexed Austria and after that Czechoslovakia. Hitler took Czechoslovakia in small steps. He got the Sudetenland from the Munich Agreement. Then, he was able to establish a fascist puppet government in Slovakia and finally invaded Bohemia and Moravia to complete the conquest of Czechoslovakia. He used a couple of different excuses for the invasions. A fabricated telegram asking for German intervention from the government of Austria was used in that case. The Nazis repeated this fabricated telegram excuse for Slovakia also. Terrorism against Germans living in Czechoslovakia was another excuse supposedly justifying intervention and for Austria, Goebbels employed the excuse of communist terrorism and riots. In 1939 the Nazis invaded Poland and a fabricated incident was created there, as well as Nazi propaganda claiming terrorism by Poles against Germans. German SS troops were dressed in Polish uniforms and attacked a German radio station at Gleiwitz on the border. Some concentration camp inmates were killed and left as supposed casualties near the radio station. Then, of course, Germany insisted that they had been attacked by Poland and were only responding defensively.

I was very impressed by all the trouble a brutal dictator like Hitler would go through to create fictitious justifications for invasions. It illustrates that even in a fascist state, where people are under repressive control, those in power are still very concerned about public opinion. In a country like the United States with many democratic institutions, one would think that the leaders would be even more worried about public opinion and create even more elaborate excuses than the Nazis. Here are some of the excuses for wars used by the United States: eliminating weapons of mass destruction, stopping ethnic cleansing, liberating people from oppression, bringing them democracy and free markets, stopping communism, protecting American lives in foreign countries and fighting terrorism. Ostensibly, Panama was invaded to catch a drug dealer. Sometimes, the United States, like the Nazis, uses fabricated incidents like the fictitious Gulf of Tonkin attack by the North Vietnamese, which was concocted to enrage the American public and allow the US to invade South Vietnam. The truth is only permitted to come to light years later, when it no longer matters. Another fabrication was the report of Iraqi troops throwing babies from their incubators during the invasion of Kuwait.

Why would the leaders of capitalist countries lie continuously and prolifically and fabricate incidents to justify wars of aggression? The answer is that they simply cannot tell common people that the real reason for all these wars is to make the world safe for the Fortune 500 and enable corporate control over natural resources and cheap labor. Most people are not willing to have their sons or daughters die or come home disabled for such a goal. Therefore, capitalist governments must use all their imaginative powers to fool the ordinary people into thinking that the war is actually defensive in nature or for some noble purpose like preserving democracy and freedom.