by Jacob G. Hornberger

April 2, 2026

Hermann Goering, founder of the Nazi Gestapo, had it right when he stated:

Why of course the people don’t want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally the common people don’t want war neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, [especially with nuclear weapons or other WMDs,] and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.

Okay, I added the part in the brackets, but I’m sure that Goering would have included it if nuclear weapons and other WMDs had existed when he made that statement.

In a non-elected dictatorship, the dictator doesn’t need to secure anyone’s consent to initiate a war. He simply initiates it on his own by ordering his military to attack another country.

It’s possible, of course, to have a dictatorship within a democratic form of government. Dictatorship depends on the extent of power wielded by the ruler, not by how he got to be ruler. Thus, a democratically elected ruler can end up wielding and exercising the same types of omnipotent, totalitarian powers as an unelected dictator who has simply taken power by force.

In a democracy, however, a ruler must seduce the citizenry into supporting the war, especially since war inevitably involves the destruction of people’s own freedom at the hands of their own government. Otherwise, if the elected dictator initiates a destructive war that destroys his own citizens’ freedom and well-being, he knows that he and his supporters are subject to being ousted in the next election.

Knowing the propensity of rulers to initiate wars, our American ancestors formed a federal government in which the democratically elected president would not be permitted to initiate a war on his own. Instead, he would be required to first secure a formal declaration of war from Congress.

As we all know, however, ever since the U.S. government was converted to a national-security state in the late 1940s, the president has been free to ignore the war-making restriction in the Constitution. Notwithstanding the Constitution, the president now wields both powers — the power to decide whether to initiate a war and the power to wage war.

Nonetheless, there are those pesky elections that U.S. presidents and their political parties have to deal with. If they want to continue to be elected, they have to convince a large percentage of the citizenry to support their wars.

Enter Herman Goering. All that presidents have to do is tell Americans that they are in grave danger of being attacked and conquered by some scary boogeyman in some faraway land, in which case Americans will overwhelmingly support the war. Raising the prospect of nuclear bombs, mushroom clouds, and an imminent WMD attack by the targeted nation inevitably clinches the support of a frightened citizenry.

Americans witnessed this phenomenon during the entire Cold War racket. The Reds are coming! They are going to take over our public (i.e., government) schools and teach our children communism. They are going to carpet bomb our nation with nuclear bombs.

So, the American people were seduced into supporting the conversion to an ever-expanding national-security state, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and all of the destruction of liberty and privacy that came with the Cold War racket.

It was no different after the 9/11 attacks, when the war on terrorism replaced the war on communism. The terrorists, who are Muslims, are coming to get us! They are going to establish Sharia law all across America. They are going to teach Islam to our children in our public (i.e., government) schools!

And so Americans overwhelmingly supported the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, along with the USA PATRIOT Act, the TSA, and other infringements on their liberty. Since the Iraq invasion was a more difficult sell than Afghanistan, President George W. Bush and the national-security establishment employed the prospect of an imminent nuclear attack on the United States by Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. They even concocted fake charts to prove it. The strategy, of course, worked. Deeply fearful of the mushroom clouds that Saddam was supposedly set to unleash on American cities, Americans overwhelmingly supported Bush’s and the Pentagon’s undeclared war on Iraq and even the long-term occupation of Iraq after it was established that the entire WMD scare had been bogus.

Moreover, let’s not forget the false North Vietnamese attack on American vessels in the Gulf of Tonkin, which President Lyndon Johnson, the Pentagon, and the CIA fraudulently used to justify a massive undeclared U.S. war in Vietnam, one in which almost 60,000 American men were sacrificed for nothing.

Thus, it should surprise no one that in his national address last night regarding his undeclared illegal and unconstitutional deadly and destructive war of aggression against Iran, President Trump stated that he and the Pentagon attacked Iran because Iran was supposedly going to attack the United States and, even worse, with WMDs.

The only surprise was why Trump didn’t make that case prior to his initiation of his war a month ago. Wouldn’t you think that if a foreign nation really did intend to initiate a war against the United States, the U.S. president would let the American people know about it then rather than waiting a month to tell them? Perhaps it’s worth mentioning U.S. intelligence assessments held that there has never been an imminent threat of a WMD attack by Iran on the U.S.

Every U.S. president since World War II has known that Herman Goering was right. Democracy or no democracy, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders when it comes to supporting wars of aggression. All that rulers have to do is tell the citizenry that they are being attacked, especially with nuclear weapons or other WMDs. Whether they live in Germany, the United States, or elsewhere, most of the citizenry will immediately become patriotic supporters of the war and denounce opponents of the war as weak and unpatriotic.