Casus Belli, Cause of War Quotes
The Polk Administration wanted War with Mexico but felt it would not have public support if the Unites States was the aggressor. So the Army was sent to the border to provoke the Mexicans to attack first. The strategy worked and President Polk had much more support since he claimed that Mexico had attacked American Soldiers and retaliation was necessary. In the aftermath of the Mexican War, the United States obtained much new territory including the Southwestern States and Mexico was destabilized.
Water has always been in short supply in the Middle East. For thousands of years in the past water rights and possession was the cause of many conflicts. The rapid increase in fertility and population in the Muslim countries of the Middle East has placed even more stress on the water supply while waste is common. Fortunately Israel and Turkey have developed many techniques of using water efficiently. However, the rest of the Middle Eastern nations are slow to adopt these methods of water conservation, water generation and production, and agriculture that requires much less water than in the past. Politics, religion, and culture can be barriers or facilitators.
Churchill saw the American Civil War as inevitable as it placed two huge forces in opposition. The moral force to eliminate slavery was up against the economic force of the entire Southern economy. The Southern slaves were worth more than all the factories, railroads, stores, real estate, farms and goods of the entire South. If slavery ended, the upper class Southerners would all be economically ruined. If slavery did not end, the United States would contain the most evil and immoral institution then known to the world.
Tesla was one of the great American immigrant scientists. He found in America the kind of intellectual and operational freedom that did not exist in the rigid, monarch-controlled, Austro-Hungarian Empire. He developed patents and techniques that formed the technological bases of radio, telephone long distance, TV, cell phones, Wi Fi, just to name a few. Most important he was Thomas Edison’s great nemesis. Edison invented DC electric generators that could power factories or entire streets in a neighborhood. Tesler invented and developed AC electrical technology which could power entire cities and he could move electricity over long distances which Edison could not. Tesler was one of the first scientists to conceive of and try to implement “Big Science” where there were huge capital investments to develop machines and systems to do what had never been done before—philosophically like the CERN Hadron Collider. Tesler even convinced a large corporation to finance the construction of a massive building and tower so he could experiment with the wireless transmission of electricity. However, as the industrial democracies have learned, Big Science can only be funded by governments and it often takes sever working in consort to afford the huge investment that is required. In Tesler’s era, the federal and state governments did not fund scientific research so his work was not only technically ahead of his time but also conceptually. He anticipated most of the problems and need for a national power grid that was challenging America even at the beginning of the 21st century.
She was testifying about the atrocities of the Iraqis in their invasion of Kuwait. However, this was completely fraudulent and deliberated orchestrated, the result of a huge campaign orchestrated by the Kuwait Embassy and Hill & Knowlton, America’s largest PR firm. She was actually the daughter of the Kuwaiti Ambassador to the United States. When she testified, she was only identified by her first name “Nayirah” with the explanation that if her last name were disclosed, her family in Kuwait would be the victims of Iraqi reprisals. She appeared all over America whipping up support for the First Iraq War. The image of the Kuwaiti babies being left to die on the hospital floor became the icon for support for the war. Ironically, there was more than ample justification for America’s role in the war without making up fictions like this. However this quotation to many is an example of the fraudulent schemes and lies that war advocates will resort to in order to manipulate public opinion.
A false flag operation is one where a country’s covert operatives attack some asset of the nation and blame it on a foreign enemy—often to consolidate political power or gain public support for a war. For example, the Nazi’s secretly burned down the German parliament and blamed it on the Russian communists.
This happened to be the famous Colored Regiment depicted so well in the movie, Glory. However, these sentiments were also given to other soldiers in the state. Fighting against slavery was not only the patriotic thing to do, not only the humane thing, not inly the civilized thing to do, but it was a Christian Religious duty. Similar sendiment can be seen much in speeches and literature of the time. The words of the Battle Hymn of the Republic is another example. Ending slavery was a Holy requirement of God.
When he referred to "the noose" he was connoting one of the major ways the Southern Segregationists and racists maintained white supremacy and Jim Crowe after the Civil War: Lynching. They terrorized blacks and whites who had different views by kidnapping their victims, torturing them, hanging them, and often mutilating their bodies after the murder. They never were convicted because the Southern law enforcement officers were often part of the lynch mob, the judges were usually themselves racist segregationists, and if jurors voted to convict in the few cases that went to trial, they themselves were risking lynching. From 1882-1968, 4,743 lynchings occurred in the United States. Of these people that were lynched, 3,446 were black.
The “rupture and revolution” was Southern secession and the Civil War. This quotation is very important because it so clearly states the cause of the Civil War—the threat of the abolition or change of the institution of slavery. During the late 19th century and the first half of the 20th, many historical revisionists—in an effort to promote national unity—began stating and teaching that the cause of the rebellion was a philosophical difference over State’s rights and not something so banal as the greed for and immorality of the benefits of slavery. See {621370} for another Southern quotation illustrating this point.
Like many Americans who thought it bad policy to go to war in Iraq in the early 21st century and then became ardent military supporters to win the war rather than lose, Scott maintained that victory in WWI was crucial even though he had opposed entry into the war.
1914 was the outbreak of WWI in which all the belligerents had very different interests and reasons for war—even allies on the same side greatly differed as to their motivation for fighting.
