Iraq-Nam: John Birch Society founder Robert Welch discerned early on how the global Power Elite stage-manages contrived conflict to accomplish their subversive agenda.

This writer recalls President Richard Nixon mistakenly referring to Vietnam as Korea twice during a live press conference in the 1970s. Given the fashion in which America's foreign policy establishment repeatedly uses the same game plan--with only the names of the players and locations changing--it was an easy slip of the tongue to make, even for someone as plugged-in to the Establishment as Mr. Nixon.

Several years earlier, when John Birch Society Founder Robert Welch drew a parallel between Korea and Vietnam, his references were deliberate, and his prescience remarkable. Welch knew the character and intentions of the foreign policy elite--individuals such as George C. Marshall, John Foster Dulles, Dean Rusk, Robert McNamara, Henry Cabot Lodge and Henry Kissinger--and the track record of the cabal that spawned them, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). He was thus able to predict, early in our Vietnam misadventure, that the war would follow the same tragic course as the Korean conflict.

"Have we so soon forgotten Korea?" asked Mr. Welch in The John Birch Society Bulletin for August 1965, published at a time when our military involvement was just beginning to escalate. He then posed a series of pointed questions:

* "Does anybody doubt that we could have wiped the North Vietnam Communists out of South Vietnam within three months, at any time during the past several years, and made them glad to stay out, if we had really wanted to do so?"

* "Does anybody really think that there has been any lessening of the power or ruthlessness of the Communist influences in Washington since 1953? Or that the Communists do not use so successful a formula again and again?"

* "Why on earth should this Vietnam operation not turn into a larger and longer and more infamous Korea?"

The conspicuous lack of enthusiasm displayed by Mr. Welch in August 1965 may be surprising to those old enough to remember the JBS's subsequent cooperation with the great patriotic actor--and Vietnam War supporter--John Wayne. Mr. Welch strongly recommended Wayne's film The Green Berets, and JBS staff and members frequently presented a documentary narrated by John Wayne entitled No Substitute for Victory. Weren't conservatives supportive of the war in Vietnam? And wasn't opposition to the war led by the radical Left? Why, then, does it appear that Robert Welch opposed U.S. involvement in 1965, then changed his mind later on?

Establishment Role-playing

There is a difference between opposing an American foreign entanglement beforehand, and supporting victory and the safe return of our troops once they have been committed. Mr. Welch underscored this point in his 1967 essay, The Truth About Vietnam: "In this writer's opinion, we should never have become involved in Vietnam at all. But, regardless of how we got there, or who put us there, we are too deeply involved today to have any honorable way out except through victory." Mr. Welch was also astute enough to recognize--and warn the public--that our perfidious political elite had no intention of permitting us to win in Vietnam, any more than it had permitted a victory over Communism in Korea.

Just as the wars in Korea and Vietnam were fought on phony premises, the domestic debates those wars provoked were phony as well. The Establishment, it must be understood, controls not only our nation's foreign policy but also most of its dominant media--and thus can stage-manage the contrived conflict between supporters and opponents of a war.

In both Vietnam and Iraq, the anti-war position has been portrayed as the exclusive domain of the Left, particularly the hard-core, anti-American Left; the pro-war position, of course, has been depicted as the Right's territory. This corresponds to the general tendencies that lead people to ally with those respective sides. It is much easier to convince conservatives than Leftists that it is their "patriotic" duty to support a war effort; conversely, hard-core Leftists are easily incited to wage violent demonstrations in opposition to military operations. For the most part, conservatives are inclined to assume that any military action abroad serves our national interest, while Leftists generally believe that the revolutionary agenda dictates opposition to such engagements.

This puts the informed American--best described as a constitutionalist--in a difficult situation. During undeclared, pointless engagements such as Vietnam or Iraq, it is difficult for him to oppose the war without being denounced as a "hate-America Leftist"--or, graver still, of giving "aid and comfort" to the enemy. And this dilemma is hardly accidental.

As Mr. Welch pointed out in 1965, the Establishment needed only employ the services of "a relatively few thousand beatniks [hippies] and half-baked college brats" to discredit all legitimate opposition to the war. This tactic continues today as the Looney Left--Communists, Anarchists, Greens, cause-of-the-week celebrity chameleons, Tinseltown Leninists such as filmmaker Michael Moore--is regularly presented as the sole, authentic voice of opposition to the Iraq War.

The rigged choice is between a self-proclaimed conservative, Christian Republican president rallying the nation against the "evildoers," and the "hate-America" crowd that perversely abets the terrorist campaign to destroy our nation. This false dichotomy is incessantly invoked by the White House, amplified by Fox News, and spoon-fed to the masses by shameless partisan radio shills such as the uncivil Michael Savage, the bombastic Rush Limbaugh, and the unimpressive Sean Hannity. Criticism of President Bush's policies, we are told, amounts to a betrayal of our troops in the field--the only force that stands between us and the forces of international terrorism.

Supporting the Troops--or Exploiting Them?

Decades ago, Mr. Welch pointed out that "The American people always have been, and still are, willing to make more sacrifices, and to put up with more demands by their government, for the sake of fighting Communism, than for any other purpose." In the post-9-11 era, that statement applies to the "war on terrorism." Understandably, Americans are united in the desire to punish those responsible for the hideous attack on our country, and deprive them of the ability to commit similar atrocities in the future.

But as Mr. Welch warned long ago, the foreign policy elite shamelessly exploits our support for the military in order to insulate from criticism those policymakers whose actions precipitate such tragedies as 9-11. During the Vietnam War, for instance, relatively few Americans understood how U.S. aid and trade with Communist nations materially supported the Communist drive to conquer Vietnam.

In similar fashion, relatively few Americans are aware that the same CFR brain trust presiding over the Iraq War helped bring Saddam to power and created his war machine. * Even fewer are aware of the material support given to international terrorism by the "former" Communists in power in Russia, including particularly President Vladimir Putin, a veteran of the KGB (and whom President Bush regards as a soul mate). Russia and Communist China are treated as strategic allies in the "war on terrorism," despite their abundant --and continuing--support for international terrorism, particularly in the Middle East.

In his 1967 essay about Vietnam, Mr. Welch asked rhetorically if it were possible "that any war carried on against the Communists by [Secretary of Defense] Robert Strange McNamara or [Secretary of State] Dean Rusk is going to be any different from the one they sponsored in the Congo--or more recently in the Dominican Republic--where the net result was the destruction or demoralization of as much as possible of the native anti-Communist strength?"

We could as easily ask the same about the current crop of CFR elitists presiding over the "war on terrorism." Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld visited Baghdad as a presidential emissary in 1983 and 1984, offering to provide Saddam with valuable military and economic aid. During the late 1990s, future Vice President Dick Cheney was CEO of Halliburton, a taxpayer-subsidized conglomerate that made huge sums doing business with Iraq and Libya. L. Paul Bremer, the Bush administration's colonial viceroy in Baghdad, was a prominent player at Kissinger Associates, the international consulting firm that arranged many of the deals that built Saddam's arsenal in the 1980s.

Taking a page from Mr. Welch, we should ask ourselves if any war against international terrorism conducted by this cast of characters would result in U.S. victory.

America Falters, UN Prospers

The Korean War was the first American military conflict not to end in victory. (In fact, that war technically continues to the present day, even as our troops are being reassigned from the Korean theater to the Middle East--and North Korea builds an expanding nuclear arsenal.) It was also the first in which Americans fought, died and were buried under the pale blue UN flag.

It is not widely understood that the Vietnam War was also fought under UN authority by way of a regional affiliate called the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, or SEATO. The U.S. State Department, in a March 26, 1966 Bulletin, asserted that SEATO's Collective Defense Treaty "authorizes the President's actions" in conducting the Vietnam War: "The Southeast Asia Treaty Organization was designed as a collective defense arrangement under Article 51 of the UN Charter.... The United States has reported to the Security Council on measures it has taken in countering Communist aggression in Vietnam."

In both Korea and Vietnam, our military efforts were nullified by UN support for the Communist side. All key military decisions during the Korean War were made known to the UN's Military General Staff Committee, which was headed by a Soviet official who promptly made them available to Communist forces in Korea. During the Vietnam War, the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) provided millions of dollars in aid to Communist Vietnam, much of which was given directly to the Viet Cong guerrilla forces.

In nearly identical fashion, our war in Iraq is being fought through, and on behalf of, the UN, even amid accumulating revelations about the world body's corrupt partnership with Saddam's regime.

As President Bush has publicly stated on scores of occasions, the war in Iraq like previous conflicts in Korea and Vietnam--was "authorized" by the United Nations, rather than a congressional declaration of war. On November 8, 2002, the day UN Security Council Resolution 1441 was issued, President Bush stated: "America will be making only one determination--is Iraq meeting the terms of the Security Council resolution or not? ... If Iraq fails to comply, the United States and other nations will disarm Saddam Hussein."

Behind all of the shifting and self contradictory justifications offered by the administration for the war lies one consistent, unambiguous purpose: The war was fought to enforce UN disarmament decrees, thereby enhancing the world body's power and credibility. As noted elsewhere in this issue, the UN's role in Iraq has been growing, as has the Bush administration's open reliance on the UN. And as noted in the article beginning on page 21, this is happening despite growing revelations of the UN's corrupt role in the "Oil-for-Food" scandal, in which Saddam Hussein plundered billions of dollars from UN "humanitarian" relief while kicking back huge sums to top-ranking UN officials.

No Substitute for Victory!

What course of action should our nation now follow? As Robert Welch said of Vietnam, "regardless of how we got there, or who put us there, we are too deeply involved today to have any honorable way out except through victory."

As it happens, all of the putative objectives of the Iraq war have been achieved. Saddam himself is in custody. Since no trace of the dreaded weapons of mass destruction has been found, the supposed Iraqi threat to our nation has been addressed. There's no reason why we couldn't wrap up the mission in Iraq and turn power over to the Iraqis themselves within a matter of weeks. Yet Americans continue to kill and die in Iraq, our leaders continue to deepen our military, economic, and diplomatic role in that country, and President Bush has warned that instability and chaos will probably increase in the months ahead. Already the Bush administration is making overtures toward opening additional military fronts in the region against Syria and Iran.

There is no substitute for victory. In this case, victory means leaving Iraq and getting our nation out of the UN before we find ourselves embroiled in endless foreign conflicts that do nothing to enhance our national security.

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