THREE:
Cold War 1945-1995
On the eve of the Cold War with Russia the mood was grim and the evaluation of the American military was summed up in the worlds of General Doolittle.
"It is now clear that we are facing an implacable enemy whose avowed objective is world domination by whatever means and at whatever cost. There are no rules in such a game... if the United States is to survive, long-standing American concepts of "fair play" must be reconsidered. We must develop effective espionage and counterespionage services and must learn to subvert, sabotage and destroy our enemies by more clever means than those used against us. It may become necessary that the American people be made acquainted with, understand and supprt this fundementally repugnant philosophy."
General Doolittle stated the post war envirnment between the US and USSR when he declared that a dirty war was going to be waged using the most un-American of methods to achieve victory over the USSR at any cost. The American public, should they examine these methods would repudiate them, so these methods must be kept from them, the alternative being risk of losing the war against Communism. In short a secret war had begun between desprate men who would stop at nothing to wim. The most obvious result of the 50 year war were the tens of thousands of nuclear warheads aimed at US and USSR population centers and military installations and the trillions of dollars spent to create the stategy of Mutually Assured Destruction. The most important legacy of this undeclared war are the patriotic crimes carried out in our name without knowledge of the American people, and the erosive effect of a sustained war on democratic institutions.
The declaration by Barry Goldwater that, "extermism in defense of liberty is no vice" may have been a bit premature in it's conclusion. The nature of these patriotic crimes are largely unknown due to the cult of secrecy created by US intelligence agencies, but certain crimes against the American people and crimes against humanity can be identified, namely, the subversion of democratic institutions and the race to control the human mind. A revolution in military affairs has occured that has driven a mini-Manhattan Project in the quest for total domination of our enemies. Using human beings as guinea pigs has been a fallout of all modern weapons development, from the radiation studies, biological weapons, chemical weapons, all necessitated their testing on unwitting human beings to understand how they kill and how to apply them. The race to create mind control, the ultimate weapon, what one scientist involved referred to as "more dangerous than atomic destruction", has led to thousands of human beings again being used as one uses laboratory animals.
McCarthyism:
A climate of incredible fear was instilled in Americans during the McCarthy hearings that sought to root out communist infiltration of American government and society. This witch hunt that ruined the lives of thousands of loyal Americans was in essence a counterinsurgency operation waged against elements of society that were deemed as disloyal, or "red". The anti-Communist hysteria was whipped up in a time of uncertainty and fear of the USSR. Loyal Americans who held dissident or "leftist" leanings were targeted for destruction, in affect an "American purge" in the style of the show trials and purges in the USSR during the 1930's. State Department employees and progressive writers in Hollywood were primary targets of public and private smear campaigns that painted moderate and liberal personalities as disloyal and treasonous. High profile personalities like actors and directors, as well as loyal progressive citizens trying to promote positive change in society were singled out and accused of being communist agents engaged in an effort to subvert Democracy. Society was filled with the fear of being singled out as disloyal or of being perceived as insufficiently anti-communist in attitude. Loyalty oaths were mandatory for many people to sign in order to keep their jobs. The conformity of thought demanded by the anti-communist purges were eerily similar to those imposed on communist Totalitarian societies that the US was in opposition to. Senator Joseph R. McCarthy was a little-known junior senator from Wisconsin until Febuary 1950 when he claimed to possess a list of 205 card-carrying Communists employed in the U.S Department of State. From that moment Senator McCarthy became a tireless crusader against Communism in the early 1950's. a period that has been commonly refeered to as the "Red Scare." As chairman of the Senate Permanent Investigation Subcomittee, Senator McCarthy conducted hearings on communist subversion in America and investigated alleged communist infiltration of the Armed Forces. His subsequent exile from politics coincided with a conversion of his name into a modern English noun "McCarthyism",or adjective, "McCarthy tactics", when describing similar witch hunts in recent American history.
The dictionary gives the definition of McCarthyism as: 1. The political practice of publicizing accusations of disloyalty or subversion with insufficient regard to evidence. 2. The use of methods of investigation and accusation regarded as unfair, in order to suppress opposition.
Senator McCarthy was censured by the U.S Senate on December 2, 1954 and died May 2, 1957.
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