by Jacob G. Hornberger

December 17, 2025

The driving force of the U.S. Cold War and the hot wars in Korea and Vietnam — was the fierce anti-communist crusade that was being waged by the U.S. national-security establishment — that is, the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA, as well as America’s national police force, the FBI. The notion was that the Reds were coming to get us and, therefore, it was necessary for the U.S. to fight the communist takeover of America, even if that meant the “temporary” destruction of the rights and freedoms of the American people and the structural alteration of their founding governmental system.

It was an ironic claim because Americans had just concluded World War II with a victory over Nazi Germany. Although Americans had overwhelmingly opposed U.S. entry into that war, President Franklin Roosevelt had successfully provoked Japan into attacking U.S. forces in the Pacific, thereby providing FDR with the ability to circumvent the will of the American people.

FDR claimed that if the U.S. didn’t enter the war against the Nazis, they would ultimately come and get us — the same claim that President Truman, FDR’s successor, would later make about the Soviet Union and other communist regimes. Ironically, Americans are still told that the United States could not have survived with a Nazi Germany in the world, even though America ended up surviving with a communist Soviet Union in the world.

In fact, another irony is that Hitler opposed the Soviet Union and its communist regime as much as Truman and other U.S. officials would after World War II was over. Hitler’s fierce anti-communist mindset would have fit in perfectly with the fierce anti-communist mindset of U.S. officials throughout the Cold War. Also ironic was that FDR considered Soviet communist leader Joseph Stalin to be his pal, referring to him as his “Uncle Joe.”

Indeed, another irony is that U.S. officials made the Soviet Union into a World War II partner and ally, even though the Soviets invaded and occupied Poland soon after Nazi Germany did. Then, as soon as the war was over, U.S. officials converted the Soviet Union (which had been Hitler’s enemy) into an official enemy of the United States.

The American people were really never given a chance to rest after the U.S. victory in World War II. Instead, they were told that they now faced an even more dangerous foe — their wartime partner and ally, the Soviet Union, along with communists all over the world, including those in China, Korea, Vietnam, and elsewhere.

It was that fear — the fear that the Reds were coming to get us — that brought about the conversion of the U.S. government from a limited-government republic, which was our founding governmental structure, to a national-security state, which wielded omnipotent, totalitarian-like powers, including assassination, torture, and indefinite detention and waging undeclared wars contrary to the provisions in the U.S. Constitution.

The idea was that the suspension of the rights and liberties of the American people would be only “temporary.” As soon as the Cold War was won, Americans would be permitted to get them back.

One of the amusing aspects of the Cold War was that proponents of the anti-communist crusade continually emphasized that socialism was an inherently defective system and would ultimately collapse from within. Given such, why then was it necessary for the U.S. government to embark on its anti-communist crusade, which ended up destroying our rights and freedoms and our democratic system, rather than simply let socialism fail of its own accord?

Among the domestic measures taken during the Cold War was a fierce anti-communist crusade against Americans who had had any connection to communism or the U.S. Communist Party. American citizens were hauled before Congress to confess as to whether they had ever been members of the Communist Party. If they answered yes or if they took the Fifth Amendment, U.S. officials would do everything in their power to have them fired at their places of employment, in an effort to impoverish them or even starve them to death.

At the same time, a heavy pall of paranoia settled upon America. The national-security establishment — i.e., the Pentagon and the CIA — orchestrated and carried out the murder of President Kennedy, believing that his policies of befriending the Soviet Union, Cuba, and the Reds — constituted a grave threat to U.S. “national security,” which have been the two most important words in the American political lexicon ever since the advent of the Cold War.

For its part, the FBI was certain that Martin Luther King and the civil-rights movement were Soviet agents who were paving the ground for a communist takeover of the United States. That’s why it was considered necessary to spy on him, blackmail him, and ultimately assassinate him too.

The FBI also embarked on a massive scheme of secret surveillance called COINTELPRO against the American people. The national-security establishment intervened in civil wars in Korea and Vietnam, which sacrificed the lives of tens of thousands of American soldiers for nothing. It also engaged in deadly and destructive regime-change operations that resulted in the deaths and suffering of countless people, such as in Iran, Guatemala, and Chile — all in the name of keeping America safe from the communists.

In a genuinely free society, people have the right to believe in communism, to read and study communist books, to become members of communist groups, and, yes, to even join a Communist Party. When government is doing bad things to people who are subscribing to unpopular or what some consider to be despicable ideas, that’s about as far from a free society as one can get.

To win the fight over the Reds, the U.S. government ended up destroying the rights and liberties of the American people as well as our democratic processes. A free people do not fight communism by copying the governmental structure and evil methods of the communists. A genuinely free people fight communism and communists with freedom and a limited-government republic.