Casus belli

Casus belli  (propaganda)

Casus belli is a Latin expression meaning the justification for acts of war. Casus is related to the English word "case," and can mean "case," "incident", or "rupture". Belli means bellic ("of war"). The phrase is often used on Wikispooks to describe a pretext for war.

Deep Events

Full article: Deep event

In the case of resource wars, open declaration of the real cause (i.e. greed) is generally not politic to declare openly, so a casus belli must be manufactured. False Flag Attacks are standard fare in this case. Deep politics researcher, Peter Dale Scott argues that "as long as we have a war machine in Washington, and every time it needs a war, it gets its war by deep events... Since 1950, every single major US war has been preceded by one."

"Gulf of Tonkin Incident"

Full article: “Gulf of Tonkin Incident”

NSA documents declassified in 2005 and 2006 revealed this to be a fabrication used to mobilise support for the Vietnam War.

September 11, 2001

Full article: 9-11

The Guardian, September 12, 2001 - Classic use of controlled media to try to make a case for war.

The commercially-controlled media was used repeatedly across North America and Western Europe - for weeks on end - to repeat footage of the 9-11 attacks, in an attempt to bolster support for the US government's official narrative about the 19 hijackers. Although the US government had already made plans for an invasion of Afghanistan, it was presented as a response to the attacks.

9-11 is the classic pretext for war of the 21^st century

"Iraq's WMDs"

On 6 September 2002, U.S. President George W. Bush claimed that the IAEA had published a “new report” about Saddam Hussein’s efforts to create "weapons of mass destruction". He was quoted by CNN (and others) as stating that “a report came out of the Atomic — the IAEA that they were six months away from developing a weapon. I don’t know what more evidence we need”. The IAEA issued a denial that there was any such report, but US commercially-controlled media reported Bush's statement, but hid that it was a lie. See also Nurse Nayirah, whose lies about babies in incubators were part of a multi-million dollar PR campaign to try to mobilize US public support for the 2003 Iraq War.

 

Examples

Page name	Description
"Iraq/WMD"
Gleiwitz Incident	The excuse for an invasion of Poland, starting World War II
Mukden Incident	A particularly feeble excuse of a false flag used by the Japanese to try to justify their 1931 invasion of Manchuria
Shelling of Mainila	A false flag used to launch the Winter War.
Sinking of the RMS Lusitania	A shipwreck that facilitated the entry of the US into World War I.

 

Related Quotations

Page	Quote	Author	Date
"Iraq/WMD"	“Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac.”	George Orwell
Patrick Clawson	“One can combine other means of pressure with sanctions. I mentioned that explosion on August 17th. We could step up the pressure. I mean look people, Iranian submarines periodically go down, some day one of them might not come up, who would know why? We can do a variety of things if we wish to increase the pressure... We are in the game of using covert means against the Iranians. We could get nastier.”	Patrick Clawson	September 2012
Lucy Morgan Edwards	“[When asked by Tony Gosling why she thought the US & the UK were so interested in invading Afghanistan, other than the drugs ]: Clearly, it's nothing to do with democracy or women's rights. You'd have to need a lobotomy if you still believed that - despite all the relentless propaganda about free and fair elections and everything. That's complete and utter nonsense. It's just one massive great military base now. I went back there in 2013. I found it really shocking, the military, the militarised presence in Kabul, the watchtowers, the Hesco barriers... It's nothing to do with helping Afghanistan develop, but I think it's all about being a military base for the coming wars on Iran, China, potentially Russia. It's all about where it's located. As we know Lord Curzon said obver a hundred years ago it was the center of the geopolitical chessboard of Asia.”	Lucy Morgan Edwards	March 2018
Far West	“There are two kinds of businesses: those which flourish from peace and the strengthening of law and those which require the opposite - zones of incessant chaos like Chechnya Colombia Afghanistan where drugs can be grown or trafficked under the watch of PMCs.”	Peter Dale Scott	26 February 2006
Petrodollar	“I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.”	Alan Greenspan	2007
Kurt Vonnegut	“Here’s what I think the truth is: We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial. And like so many addicts about to face cold turkey, our leaders are now committing violent crimes to get what little is left of what we’re hooked on.”	Kurt Vonnegut

 

Official examples

Name
"Gulf of Tonkin Incident"
9-11
Marco Polo incident
WW2/Attack on Pearl Harbor

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