The Perils of Peace

The Perils of Peace – Iron Mountain

Since 1950, the United States has been at war for more than 31 years: The Korean War (3 years), the war in Vietnam (16 years), the war in Iraq (10 years), the war in Afghanistan and the War on Terrorism (since 2001 and counting). Did the recent bombing of Syria signal the war that will be next? I admit that the motives for any war are at best complicated, yet a super-sized military industrial complex exists in the United States with literally millions of people worldwide on the payroll from armed forces to Pentagon executives.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower coined the term the military-industrial complex and warned Americans about it. It is a now billion-dollar industry that contracts with private corporate partners to produce its war machinery and other products and services, thereby making additional millions of people in the private sector also dependent on it. I have no doubt that the self-preservation of this mega-industry acts as a hidden motivation for war along with the more obvious motivation to insure the repayment of debt to foreign creditors.

On the Possibility and Desirability of PeaceThe book, The Report from Iron Mountain on the Possibility and Desirability of Peace, has helped me to sort out what we see today with war after war erupting in the world. The light bulb went on for me as to how war has essentially been made perpetual via t he government disseminated, “war on terrorism.”

The Report from Iron Mountain on the Possibility and Desirability of Peace became a New York Times best seller in 1967. It shook and shocked America with tales of a small group of men making decisions for America that included a thirty year plan. Leonard Lewin wrote in the book’s introduction that a man who called himself “John Doe” leaked the Iron Mountain report to him. John Doe claimed it was a top-secret document of a special 1963 fifteen-man study group near Hudson, New York. He gave a copy of the “secret” report to Lewin because he thought the public had a right to know.

In the original introduction to the book, Lewin wrote that he had only penned the introduction and that he took the rest of the book directly from what John Doe had given him. The subject matter addressed potential future problems for the United States and recommended ways to preempt them. The central question the book asked and answered is, is lasting peace desirable? The answer was an emphatic NO!
“Without [war], no government has ever been able to obtain acquiescence in its ‘legitimacy,’ or right to rule its society. Obviously, if the war system were to be discarded, new political machinery would be needed at once to serve this vital subfunction. Until it is developed, the continuance of the war system must be assured, if for no other reason, than to preserve whatever quality and degree of poverty a society requires as an incentive, as well as to maintain the stability of its internal organization of power.” — The Report from Iron Mountain, Leonard Lewin, 1967

Widely discussed and translated into fifteen languages, the book caused an uproar within a short five-year period. Some readers believed the information in the book and others thought it had to be a hoax. Then, in 1972, Leonard Lewin “confessed” to writing the entire book, not just the introduction, as a political spoof. Future publications credited him as the exclusive author and the book’s true source remains a mystery.
“America’s business is war. Permanent wars reflect official US policy. They’re glorified in the name of peace.” ~ Stephen Lendman, author, April 28, 2013

According to The Report from Iron Mountain, lasting peace would be neither desirable nor sustainable nor create the legitimate right for the government to rule society. Among its nine specific recommendations, war and militarism topped the list as government’s best overall solutions until and if there was an effective substitute for war, equal in stature and impact to war, capable of creating a similar national rallying point for the masses.
Ready for this? Their highest recommendation other than war and militarism was…environmentalism.



“It may be, for instance, that gross pollution of the environment can eventually replace the possibility of mass destruction by nuclear weapons as the principal apparent threat to the survival of the species. Poisoning of the air, and of the principal sources of food and water supply, is already well advanced, and at first glance would seem promising in this respect; it constitutes a threat that can be dealt with only through social organization and political power. But from present indications it will be a generation to a generation and a half before environmental pollution, however severe, will be sufficiently menacing on a global scale, to offer a possible basis for a solution.” — The Report from Iron Mountain, Leonard Lewin, 1967

Who the author actually was matters little because over the forty plus years since the Report’s first publication, many of its recommendations have already come to pass.  Reader, please, help me out here, do we have a U.S. Government today of, by and for the people or of, by and for itself?

Think outside the box. Live outside the cage.