On war, don't trust presidents

In March 2007, U.S. Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada defended his 2003 vote for war in Iraq. “That was an easy vote for me,” Reid told Las Vegas editor Steve Sebelius, citing the Bush administration’s flawed intelligence. “Based on that, I knew I’d done the right thing.”

It would have been nice then, and would be very nice now, if Reid and his colleagues studied history. They might have assumed Bush was lying instead of assuming he was telling the truth. And as another president now tries to edge us into another Middle East war under the guise used in Vietnam (“weapons and ammunition”), it would be nice if they would learn the history they ignored last time.

On matters of war and peace that can put our troops in harm’s way, presidents always lie in favor of war. Always. It’s a fact of nature.

When he announced the first use of the atomic bomb, President Truman said, “The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of civilians.” Hiroshima was a city and most of the victims were civilians. The city, not a nearby base, was targeted.

President Eisenhower’s administration engineered the overthrow of the government of Iran and installed a dictator—but denied complicity. When a U.S. spy plane was shot down over Russia, his administration said it was a weather plane.

The Kennedy administration denied Cuban charges that it was trying to overthrow the Cuban government and even assassinate Fidel Castro. The denials were lies. A Kennedy official named Arthur Sylvester actually defended the right to lie to the public.

The Johnson administration said U.S. ships in Tonkin Gulf were attacked by Vietnamese craft. In fact, one ship was never attacked and the other was a target of retaliation, not provocation.

President Johnson said a U.S. ship captured by North Korea was not a spy ship. It was.

Richard Nixon. Enough said.

The Ford administration lied about the U.S. ship Mayaguez, captured by Cambodia.

Jimmy Carter, who supposedly championed human rights, lavishly and falsely praised the record of Iranian dictator Reza Pahlavi, alienating Iranians from the U.S.

The first George Bush administration called the Iraq military the fourth most powerful army in the world. That army then crumbled in a few days.

Ronald Reagan said he would never negotiate for the lives of hostages. He did—and also traded arms for hostages.

Bill Clinton bombed what he claimed was a bomb factory in Sudan. It was a pharmaceutical factory.

Now President Obama says the use by the government of Syria of gas weapons calls for the U.S. to get involved.

On gas warfare, it’s useful to recall that the second President Bush justified war against Iraq not only with the false information on weapons of mass destruction, but also by claiming that at Halabja in 1988, Saddam Hussein had “gassed his own people.” But there was no evidence of that. Indeed, the Reagan administration concluded that it was Iran that gassed Halabja.

President Obama now wants us to get involved in Syria. The burden of proof should be on Obama. Congress should check his story to the last comma. On war, presidents cannot be trusted.