A Layman’S View of Seventy Years of America’S Foreign Policy

By Ben A. Watford

In theory, this treatise should include the more than 115 countries that the United States has military presence and the Central Intelligence Agency has operatives. However, that would be overstating the intention of the treatise. What is endeavored here is an attempt to give the American people a short view of the involvement of America, the National Security Agency, and the Central Intelligence Agency in world affairs.

It is not the intent of this treatise to be a criticism of my homeland, the United States of America. Indeed, in most countries on the globe, I would be arrested, jailed, tortured, and put to death for even attempting such a project. The very fact that I can write this book and still be alive is a testament to Americas unique form of capitalism.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 5, 2012
• ISBN: 9781469169545

Ben A. Watford

Ben A. Watford received his Bachelor of Science Degree in Chemistry from Howard University in 1957 and his master’s degree from Tuskegee University in 1960. He taught chemistry at Smithtown High School in St. James, New York. He taught science techniques and elementary mathematics at Long Island University in the graduate education department as an associate professor. Born in Winton, North Carolina, he now lives in Fairfield Harbor near New Bern, North Carolina, with his wife Barbara. His published works include The Coming of the Comet, You Can’t Fall off the Floor, The Complete Book of Fussing and Nagging, A Man and A Mule, and A Man, A Mule, and A Gun. He is an active potter, making pottery on his potter’s wheel. He has had several one-man shows at art galleries in Eastern North Carolina. He is an avid golfer.

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A DAY OF DECEPTION: PRESIDENT F. D. ROOSEVELT AND WORLD WAR II

During 1942, my family lived far back in the woods near the small town of Winton, North Carolina, in Hertford County.

Yet each weekend, my father’s male friends would come to our house, make a smoke to keep the mosquitoes away, sit outside, and bring out the corn whiskey and tell their tall tales. My father’s corn whiskey was reputed to be the best in Hertford County, North Carolina. My father never sold moonshine or the wine that he made; he made just enough for himself and his friends. Watching my father make corn whiskey was my first encounter with the science of chemistry, which would become my profession.

Occasionally, they would discuss the affairs of the world of which they had no control and could not influence. I would lie on my pallet next to the window and eavesdrop on their conversation. Once, the conversation centered on the war raging in Europe. Hitler’s Germany in September 1939 invaded Poland without warning and started World War II.

One of the men spoke up and stated, It’s a damn European affair, and if those fools want to kill each other, that is their business.

Someone else said, There is no way that I am going to let my sons die in that war. Too many died in World War I, and for what? I do not want to see it happen again.

Another remarked, Let them fight all they want to. We should not get involved. All that we got out of World War I was more Jim Crow laws. Hell, we can’t even use the roadside picnic tables.

Isolationism was a major theme in American’s foreign policy and adhered to by most of the citizens of that period. The view of isolationism expressed by the old men sitting around their smoke (designed to keep the insects away) with their corn whiskey reflected the views held by most of the citizens of the United States during that period.

The isolationist’s opinion of the war raging in Europe was reflected in the general opinion of most Americans: It is not our problem, and we should stay out of it.

Most Americans considered the war in Europe as a European affair, and to use our resources for their war was out of the question. Most felt that we should solve our own problems resulting from the Great Depression and not become involved in another European war. As things stood, there was no way that we would become involved in a war that had no apparent effect on the United States of America. Most people had problems of their own, just trying to feed their families and obtain employment. One has to remember that we were still suffering the effects of the Great Depression, and most people had to struggle just to feed their families and provide housing. People in the United States took to the streets in order to voice their opinion, opposing entering the war.

In the United States of America, there was an anti-war movement meant to make sure that we did not get involved in the war. By 1942, the war had escalated, and the British were taking a terrible beating at the hands of the Germans. Germany’s rockets were continuing to fall on London and other parts of England. England’s only protection was the canal that separated it from Europe. France had fallen to the Germans in that age-old conflict between two tribes, the Franks and the Germans, who have hated each other since the beginning of time. Every time the Germans have gotten on their feet, their first act is to kick France’s butt.

This is not dissimilar to what is happening in Africa today. Countries were established after colonialism with no concern for tribes or tribal differences. Therefore, those tribes that have hated each other since the beginning of time finally got modern weapons and are hell-bent on destroying their age-old enemies, much like the Germans and the French.

There were meetings between President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British prime minister Winston Churchill, and the British prime minister pleaded for the president to get involved. Without the assistance of the United States, Britain would eventually fall to the Germans, and the world would never be the same. President Roosevelt wanted desperately for America to enter the war. Roosevelt’s only problem was how to get America involved with the isolationism sentiment at an all-time high.

President Roosevelt knew that the only way that America could enter the war was to have one of the Axis powers attack America. Germany was more than careful not to attack and sink any of our ships headed for England under the Lend-Lease agreement. The Lend-Lease agreement (Public Law 77-11) gave the power to supply certain nations with vast amounts of war material between 1941 and 1945. It was signed into law during March of 1941 and was designed mainly to help Great Britain; America had not yet officially entered the war. Germany did not want America to enter the war until it was too late for it to be a major factor. The only mistake that Germany made during World War II, which affected the outcome of the war, was its invasion of Russia. Either Hitler was stupid, or he had no knowledge of history.

Napoleon tried the same thing with his grand army in the latter part of the 1800s and was defeated by the Russian winter, and that led to his waterloo. Now that jerk Hitler tried the same thing with the same results. World War II might have had a different ending if Hitler had concentrated on England and honored his agreement with Russia.

On December 7, 1941, the United States of America experienced one of the greatest tragedies in its history. I sat in the chapel at Calvin Scott Brown High School and listened to the address by President Franklin D. Roosevelt as he gave his a date which will live in infamy speech.

In retrospect, he should have said, A date in which I deceived the American people. It has been so long ago that I do not remember whether it was his original speech or a recording, but I remember in every detail the message that he brought to the American people.

The gist of the president’s message was America was now at war.

In a manner that would only be appreciated by the most common criminal elements of American society, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, commander in chief of the armed forces, knowingly sent almost three thousand men to their deaths in order to get the United States of America into World War II. By instigating and inviting the Japanese to attack Pearl Harbor and by not doing anything to remove the men stationed on the battleships. Franklin D. Roosevelt obtained his objective, and America entered WWII, but at what cost? President Roosevelt greatest fear was that someone would learn of his treachery, and he was willing to sacrifice American lives to make sure that that did not happen.

Some of the events surrounding the charade perpetuated by the president and the military centered on the fact that America’s intelligence agencies had broken Japan’s coded messages and knew of Japan’s plans to attack Pearl Harbor. In fact, we had almost forced the Japanese to attack Pearl Harbor. We were aware of the Japanese fleet’s movements and where it was headed.

Perhaps the most damaging evidence of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s deception occurred in October of 1940. It was during this month that Lieutenant Commander A. H. McCollum, who, at that time, was head of the Far East command of the Office of Naval Intelligence, was asked by President Roosevelt to develop a plan that would get the Japanese to attack America. McCollum came up with an eight-point plan that would force the Japanese to attack America. This eight-point plan outlined the steps and the things that the United States could do that would lead to an attack by Japan. The eight-point plan developed by Lieutenant Commander McCollum to get the Japanese to attack the United States:

A.  Make an arrangement with Britain for the use of British bases in the Pacific, particularly Singapore.

B.  Make an arrangement with Holland for the use of base facilities and acquisition of supplies in the Dutch East Indies.

C.  Give all possible aid to the Chinese government of Chiang-Kai-Shek.

D.  Send a division of long-range heavy cruisers to the Orient, the Philippines, and Singapore.

E.  Send two divisions of submarines to the Orient.

F.  Keep the main strength of the U.S. fleet now in the Pacific in the vicinity of the Hawaiian Islands.

G.  Insist that the Dutch refuse to grant Japanese demands for undue economic concessions, particularly oil.

H.  Completely embargo all U.S. trade with Japan, in collaboration with a similar embargo imposed by the British Empire.

One of the eight points in the plan, which Roosevelt approved, was to keep the fleet in Hawaiian Waters. A second part of the plan that proved successful involved China. Japan controlled much of China, and Japan was able to obtain raw materials not found in their own country for their war effort with China. With economic support from America, the Chinese were able to limit or deny supplies from China to flow to Japan. Needless to say, the plan worked flawlessly. By December 7, 1942, all of the steps in the eight-point plan had been implemented, and America went to war.

There were many casualties as a result of President Roosevelt’s plan to enter the war. One was Admiral James O. Richardson, who was upset by the president’s plan to keep the fleet in Hawaiian Waters. At a meeting with the president, Admiral Richardson confronted the president on his decision, and that ended his military career. Admiral Richardson was removed as commander in chief and replaced by Rear Admiral Husband Kimmel.

The major causalities of the plot to have Pearl Harbor attacked were the service members on the battleships. President Roosevelt and his war cabinet sat through the night, knowing that the attack was imminent, and they had to know that the men on the ships were in danger, yet nothing was done. I sometimes wonder if President Roosevelt and his war cabinet ever heard the screams of the dying men. Did they ever hear the banging on the walls of the lower decks created by the dying begging to be saved? Could they have ever envisioned the dismay of the men who used acetylene torches to cut through the hull trying to save the dying, only to realize that they had used up the meager oxygen supply and, in so doing, found only the dead to be rescued? There was no concern for the families of the approximately three thousand men predestined to die on the seventh day of December in 1942.

There is one thing that I would like to make perfectly clear. If I were in the same position as President Franklin D. Roosevelt, considering the conditions of the time, I would have made a similar decision. America had to enter the war in order to save the world. The world would be radically different today if America had never entered the war, as the isolationists had wanted.

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Roosevelt signing the declaration of war against Japan, December 8, 1941

However, there is one thing that I would have done differently. Knowing that the attack was about to take place, I would have had one of my generals order all the men off the battleships. There was really no need for all those deaths except the president was fearful that someone might uncover his secret plot to get the Japanese to attack the United States, a secret that could not be kept forever anyway. It makes President Franklin D. Roosevelt appear to be similar to most of the world’s rulers; they place no value on the lives of their subjects, and most believe that the end justifies the means. Do we really want our leaders to be different from President Franklin D. Roosevelt?

I really do not think so, and recent events support my belief. When we were invaded by Iran (the American embassy in Iran is considered American soil), and Carter was president, he would have won his second term if he had sent a message through the Swiss embassy to Iran, giving them twenty-four hours to release the hostages. If the hostages were not released during that time period, we would go to war against Iran and perhaps kill a million human beings with our bombing of Iran. We might lose a few Americans in the process, no big deal. Yet President Jimmy Carter, most likely, would not be able to sleep at night knowing that he was responsible for the deaths of so many people. President Jimmy Carter was one of the few decent presidents to occupy that office. The sad part of that episode is that Ronald Reagan contacted the Iranians after he found that President Carter would not go to war and got them to hold the hostages until after the presidential election. I am of the opinion that Reagan and his cohorts paid for the upkeep of the hostages in Iran during their captivity. I am convinced that Reagan promised Iran an arms deal if they would hold the hostages until he became president.

Jimmy Carter

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39th president of the United States

In office

January 20, 1977-January 20, 1981

I still find it difficult to believe that Bush and Cheney can sleep soundly at night knowing that they caused the death of approximately one hundred thousand people or more and for no good reason.

There was another macabre saga of World War II that resulted from President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s deception. All of America was horrified when they learned that the Germans had rounded up their German Jewish citizens, confiscated their property, and sent them to concentration camps to become slave laborers. Many were put to death. Yet here in America, land of the free and home of the brave, Americans stood by as our Japanese citizens, some third and fourth generations, were rounded up and sent to concentration camps. Many knew nothing about Japan; they knew only what I know as an African-American, and that is that my forefathers were born in a land far away, of which I have no connection. There was the fear that these American citizens would become spies for a country that they knew nothing about. There were about ten spies convicted during World War II, and all of them were white or Caucasians.

EXECUTIVE ORDER 9066

In February of 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066. This executive order caused some 120,000 people of Japanese descent to be forcefully removed from their homes and sent to internment concentration camps. The fact remains that almost two-thirds were American citizens. More than one-half of those sent to the internment camps were children. Now it begs the question: What harm could they do to the country of their birth?

Life in the internment camps was harsh and severe since the citizens were allowed to bring very few possessions. In many cases, they were given less than three days to pack their belongings and leave their homes. Most were prey to the dishonest, who offered them far less than the fair market price for the possessions that they could not take with them.

It was really cruel and harsh, to pack and evacuate in forty-eight hours was impossibility. Seeing mothers completely bewildered with children crying for want of care and food and peddlers taking advantage and offering a price next to robbery made me feel like murdering those responsible without the slightest compunction in my heart, Joseph Yoshisuke Kurihara said, speaking of the Terminal Island evacuation.

Sadly, the American government had not adequately prepared for the evacuation of so many of the citizens of the United States; the Japanese were housed in barracks, horse stables, and makeshift huts. Communal areas for washing, laundry, and eating were the order of the day. All of this was taking place while tanks and soldiers with bayonets attached to their guns marched them to their destinations. For the Japanese, it must have been a terrifying and horrible time.

The following concentration camps served as interment centers for our Japanese citizens during World War II:

Amanche (Granada), CO—opened August 24, 1942; closed October 15, 1945.

Jerome, AR—opened October 6, 1942; closed June 30, 1944. Peak population was 10. 046.

Manzanar, CA—opened March 21, 1942; closed November 21, 1945. Peak population was 10.046.

Minidoka, Id—opened August 10, 1942; closed October 28, 1945. Peak population was 9,397.

Poston, AZ—opened May 8, 1942; closed November 28, 1946. Peak population was 17,814.

Rohwer, AR—opened September 18, 1942; closed November, 1945. Peak population was 8,475.

Topaz, UT—opened September, 1942; closed October 31, 1945. Peak population was 8,130.

Tule Lake, CA—opened May 27, 1942; closed March 20, 1946. Peak population was 18,789.

Life in the camps was harsh, and many children and the old died, unable to survive the ordeal. At the end of the war, there was no compensation for the Japanese citizens of the United States. The suffering of the Japanese American citizens is a forgotten story.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt, like many of our leaders, was a man without a heart.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s reign as president of the United States was as close as we have come to a dictatorship. His four terms as president frightened the American Congress to such an extent that a limitation was placed on the term of office of the president. Franklin D. Roosevelt was a political bastard, and his major concern was staying in power. His refusal to intervene in the lynching of blacks in the South was politically motivated. He did not intervene because he wanted the southern vote, which he always obtained.

Eleanor Roosevelt

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The first lady, Eleanor Roosevelt, was the one bright spot in the reign of President Roosevelt. Of all the women in the history of the United States, she is the one whom I admire most.

Eleanor became an important connection for Franklin’s administration to the African-American population during the segregation era. During Franklin’s term as president, despite Franklin’s need to placate southern sentiment, Eleanor was vocal in her support of the African-American civil rights movement and her opposition to lynching. She was outspoken in her support of Marian Anderson in 1939, when the black singer was denied the use of Washington’s Constitution Hall. Eleanor was instrumental in the subsequent concert held on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

The Daughters of the American Revolution refused to give Marian Anderson permission to sing in the Constitution Hall simply because she was a black woman. With the aid of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, Marian Anderson performed a critically acclaimed open-air concert on Easter Sunday in 1939, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC, to a crowd of more than seventy-five thousand people and a radio audience in the millions.

The first lady played a role in racial affairs when she appointed Mary McLeod Bethune as head of the Division of Negro Affairs.

First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt especially supported more opportunities for women and African-Americans, notably the Tuskegee Airmen in their successful effort to become the first black combat pilots. She visited the Tuskegee Air Corps Advanced Flying School in Alabama and, at her request, flew with a black student pilot for more than an hour, which had great symbolic value and brought visibility to Tuskegee’s pilot training program. She also arranged a White House meeting in July 1941 for representatives of the Tuskegee flight school to plead their cause for more support from the military establishment in Washington.

Eleanor Roosevelt used her high social position to gain access to the media. Her efforts were seen beyond the political realm and often dealt with a woman’s self-awareness.

At the time of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s presidency, the same time that Eleanor served as first lady, most women found themselves within the walls of their homes. Only 25 percent of women worked outside the home. The vast majority of women, that being 75 percent, were unpaid homemakers. Mrs. Roosevelt used her weight in the media as a way to connect with women who found themselves in domestic isolation. With this in mind, Eleanor used three mediums to keep in touch with her female followers—the press conference, a daily newspaper column, and magazine articles. These three means opened up the communication into a two-way channel.

Although the first lady initially wanted to be the voice of the White House to female journalists, Mrs. Roosevelt’s news was often about humanitarian concerns. Her reports stayed true to those issues of the American woman, such as unemployment, poverty, education, rural life, and the role of women in society.

Eleanor Roosevelt died at her Manhattan home on November 7, 1962, at 6:15 p.m. at the age of seventy-eight. President Kennedy ordered the lowering of flags to half-mast in her memory.

United Nations Ambassador Adlai Stevenson said, The United States, United Nations, and the world has lost one of its great citizens. Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt is dead, and a cherished friend of all humankind is gone.

Eleanor Roosevelt made America a better place for all of its citizens. Her husband, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, was a different story.

AMERICA AND

THE REPUBLIC OF CUBA:

The Land of Fidel Castro

There is one practice common to America and its Central Intelligence Agency that I have some serious problems with. The United States and the Central Intelligence Agency will support any dictator, tyrant, tyrannical ruler, oppressor, absolute ruler, king, queen, or autocrat as long as there is a sign on their door that reads, I love America. The real problem that I have with this is that we, the home of the brave and land of the free, choose those dictators, tyrants, tyrannical rulers, oppressors, absolute rulers, and autocrats whom we wish to support. The list of America and the Central Intelligence Agency’s good dictators that we have supported is a long one and reads like a list of the world’s worst people.

Dictators we have supported:

Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines

Park Chung Hee of South Korea

Anastasio Somoza Debayle of Nicaragua

Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi of Iran

Papa Doc of Haiti

Tubman of Liberia

Batista of Cuba

Muammar Gaddafi of Libya

President Assad of Syria

King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifah of Bahrain

Hosni Mubarak of Egypt

Manuel Noriega of Panama

Trujillo of the Dominican Republic

We give them foreign aid as long as they support our interests and global strategies, and we ignored the fact that their subjects’ quest for equality and freedom is similar to those of the American Revolution. We support the dictators while they ignored human rights of their people and lead their countries down the path to disaster. These despots will never give up their right to rule, subjecting their people to poverty and despair. Once these despots are dead or are driven out by a coup or popular uprising, the United States is faced with a major problem of how to deal with the new government. In most cases, as was the case with Cuba, we isolate them and use every means within our power to make sure that the nation does not succeed. We will even attempt to assassinate the new leaders.

Speaking of Cuba and its dictator Batista, Franklin D. Roosevelt is alleged to have said, Batista is a bastard, but he is ours.

While teaching at the Todee Mission School in Liberia, I asked my students why President Tubman, who had been a dictator for more than thirty years, with support of the United States, would not step down and allow someone else to rule the country.

Their answer was What would he do if he were not our president?

They could not conceive the concept that a man ruling a country would not rule that country for his entire lifetime. They could not conceive the fact that a person could have a life after being president of a nation. Yet here in America, we have four or five presidents going about their lives. Some, like President Jimmy Carter, still make major contributions to the world and the American society. Perhaps the most beautiful thing that came out of the Obama election and went almost unnoticed by most of our citizens was the fact that former president George Bush just shook President Obama’s hand, got on a plane, and went home. In most of the countries of the world, this could not happen. In most countries, once in power, statecraft is forgotten, and the ruler attempts to solidify his position and power at the expense of his subjects.

The tragedy is that these dictators, tyrants, tyrannical rulers, oppressors, autocrats, absolute rulers, kings, and queens could do so much for humankind if only they could understand the human side of the equation.

There is one dictator whom we refuse to support and one whom we should support, and that dictator is Fidel Castro and his brother of the Republic of Cuba. Yet as dictators go, Castro has done more for Cuba and its people than any of Cuba’s previous rulers.

At the present time, Cuba has a 98.8 literacy rate, an infancy death rate lower than most developed countries, and an average life expectancy of 77.64 years. In the year 2006, Cuba was the only nation in the world that met the WWF’s definition of sustainable development, having an ecological footprint of less than 1.8 hectares per capita and a human development of over 0.8 for 2007.

In spite of all our efforts, the Republic of Cuba will not disappear.

Fidel Castro

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Castro in 1974

First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba

In office

October 3, 1965-April 19, 2011

America has never learned to deal with any country after its dictator was removed from power by a coup, popular uprising, or premature death. The situation in Egypt is a classic example of America’s policy and its treatment of deposed dictators. Our policy is to hope that the dictator will rise from the dead and once again subject his people to his disastrous policies and become, again, a puppet of America. America supplies its dictators with all the resources to keep them in power simply because we have never learned to deal with a country that removes the despot. If a country leans toward the Communist bloc, the more we double our effort to make sure they do not survive. Therefore, we pretend that the country does not exist and remove our embassy. We do everything in our power to make sure that the new government does not succeed, even if it means attempting to assassinate the new leader. We do not concern ourselves with what the new rulers might do to help their people; all we want is their destruction.

I have no intention of going into the history of Cuba since Cuba’s history, like the rest of humankinds is one of war and destruction brought by the Europeans; the native population was destroyed by disease for which they had no natural immunity. The Republic of Cuba’s history is brutal like that of the rest of the states of the world.

The Republic of Cuba has survived:

Independence Wars of the 1820s

War of 1895

World War I & World War II

After the Cuban Revolution, the immigration of its rich, powerful, and educated to the United States and other countries further increased Cuba’s problems. Yet they were the ones who benefited from the rule of the dictator and were not willing to help Cuba rescue its poor and downtrodden.

In Pre-Castro Cuba, the entire republic was owned by approximately five thousand people, and the vast majority lived in poverty. The American mafia ran many of the businesses, tourism, gambling, and shipping trades. The first immigrants coming to America from Castro’s Cuba were the well educated and the rich. Even today, they form the basis for America’s Cuban policy with their block vote, which our politicians fear. It is far past the time when some politician—one congressional representative, one senator, one president—takes a stand on the Cuban problem. It is far past the time when a few Cubans, living in the United States, dictate America’s policy with our neighbor, the Republic Cuba.

It is far past the time for the United States to start a dialogue with Cuba for our common good.

Sometime during the month of December in 1956, a small party of approximately eighty-five people landed in Cuba. This small band was led by one Fidel Castro. His intentions appear to have been to set up a base in the Sierra Madre Mountains in order to start a revolution to remove the dictator Batista and his henchmen from power. Late in the year of 1958, after two years of consolidating his position in the Sierra Madre Mountains, Castro’s force launched a general, popular revolt. The very poor Cubans, who were the majority of the Cuban population,