|
Updated: November 17, 2008
See asterisked item(s) below
for latest updates |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| (New Articles) * |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
ENDLESS
WARS OF EMPIRE AND DOMINATION
In
their book “War and
Anti-War” Alvin and Heidi Toffler wrote that;
“between 150
and
160 wars and conflicts have raged around the world since ‘Peace’
broke out in 1945.” Their research revealed
that
as of 1993, when they published their book 7,200,000 soldiers
were slaughtered in these wars, not counting those wounded, tortured,
or mutilated.
When
civilian deaths are included, the total reaches the astronomical
33-40 million! The total by 2005 could easily be twice
that number!
Most
of these wars are as a result of the efforts of one nation or group
attempting to exert Domination
over the political, economic, religious, or land of another.
Such wars are usually caused by aggressive and authoritarian
political leaders that believe in Power,
Force, Violence,
and Coercion,
to achieve their goals.
U.S.
History shows that whenever the Authoritarian-Conservatives
have been in power, they resolve their differences with native and
foreign opponents by waging war, invading their territory, occupying
their country, exploiting their natural resources, and enforcing
American economic and political systems on them.
“Today
we hope to gain…by the victorious sword of a master people,
putting
the world into the service of a higher culture, not what so many
blinded pacifists… hope to gain, by the palm branches of
tearful,
pacifist female mourners” Adolf
Hitler, Mein Kampf
There
are many cases that can be cited, but included here are summaries of
a few of the worst examples of our Imperial and Ideological Wars of
Domination.
Domination
Madness:
“Why
has man, of all the species of animals, alone the mad ambition to
dominate his fellows?
Francois
Voltaire
The
Wars of Mani-Fascist Destiny
In 2003, Historian Howard
Zinn republished his latest update of a disturbing, but true version
of U.S. history, not taught in American schools: “A
People’s
History of the United States” is based on a lifetime of
scholarly research that supports the major premises of this book.
This section is drawn heavily from this book, including summaries,
quotes, and paraphrases of Zinn’s work.
Adolph Hitler claimed that
his invasions of other states in Europe, especially in the East,
(Czechoslovakia, Poland, Russia, etc.), was to give the German people
what he called Liebensraum,
or vital living space. In the early 19th century, the
Paleo-Fascist
Nationalist-Conservatives, governing the emerging
American Superstate, encouraged western expansion, and had every
intention of taking all of what is now the Continental United States,
from ocean to ocean, by whatever means necessary; including purchase,
outright theft, or conquest. In their view of the world; the U.S. had
a right and a duty to acquire Native-American lands, Spanish lands,
French lands, Mexican lands, and eventually overseas colonies. They
excused this grand larceny under the guise of a 19th
Century Liebensraum
Program for a New American Century, called Manifest
Destiny.
Manifest
Destiny:
“It
can certainly not be the intention of Heaven to give one people fifty
times as much land and soil in this world as another. In this case we
must not let political boundaries obscure for us the boundaries of
eternal justice.”
Adolf
Hitler, Mein Kampf
The
Genocidal War on the Native Americans
In
1779, the New York militia destroyed 40 Iroquois villages, but they
didn't destroy democracy as these natives knew it:
Early
American Ethnic Cleansing:
“I
flatter myself that the orders with which I was entrusted are fully
executed, as we have not left a single settlement or field of corn in
the country of the (Iroquois), nor is there even the appearance of an
Indian on this side of the Niagara” General John Sullivan,
Report to the Continental Congress, 1779
Genocide
has helped make the 20th Century the bloodiest in history.
Genocide is defined as the systematic and planned extermination of an
entire national, political, or ethnic group. It has been estimated
that over 41
million people were slaughtered by Genocide during the
20th Century alone.
Here
in the New World the history of the treatment of the Native
Americans, from the time the European settlers first arrived in the
Americas can only be described as Genocide.
In his book, Howard Zinn
describes the corrupt and illegal actions of what I have called the
Paleo-Fascist
Conservatives of the 19th and early 20th
Centuries, as they conspired to conquer the lands of the Native
Americans and the Spanish Empire in the New World, ruthlessly
attacking and displacing or killing any who stood in their Westward
Expansion.
The
White Man’s Burden:
“Take
up the white man’s burden-the savage wars of peace-
Fill
full the mouth of famine, And bid the sickness cease;
And
when your goal is nearest (the end for others sought)
Watch
sloth and heathen folly Bring all your hopes to naught”
Rudyard
Kipling
In 1492, Columbus
discovered what he thought was the Indies, but which was later to
become known as the Americas. What he discovered was a land with
millions of Native Americaninhabitants, living in societies that had made surprising
advances in
agriculture, astronomy, commerce, and architecture. These were
advances that were not expected in aboriginal societies of pagans;
that had not been enlightened by Christianity.
From the very beginning,
these Old World
ambassadors of European Christianity began to abuse,
enslave, and murder the native peoples. They brought with them their
Imperial practices of; conquest, domination, plunder, rape, and
economic exploitation; and their diseases; for which the native
populations had no immunity.
“Let
us in the name of the Holy Trinity; go on sending all the slaves that
can be sold.”
Christopher
Columbus
The
Last of the Arawaks
Zinn
writes that Bartolomeo de la Casas, a young catholic priest, who
eventually became a harsh critic of the Spanish invaders, wrote that
when he arrived in Hispaniola in 1508;
“…there
were 60,000 people living on this island; so that from 1494 to 1508,
over three million people had perished from war, slavery, and the
mines..”
By
the year 1515, there were perhaps fifty thousand Indians left. By
1550, there were five hundred. A report of the year 1650, shows none
of the original Arawaks or their descendants left on the island.
What
Columbus and his successors did to the Arawaks of the Bahamas, Cortes
did to the Aztecs of Mexico, Pizarro to the Incas of Peru, and the
English settlers of Virginia and Massachusetts to the Powhatans and
the Pequots.
The Native American
population of 10 million
that lived North of Mexico when Columbus came, would ultimately be
reduced to less than a
million.
The genocide of the
Arawaks was to be repeated hundreds of times by; Christian Spanish,
French, Portuguese, Dutch, and English Conquistadores.
When
the Pilgrims came to New England, they were not coming to vacant
land, but to a huge land populated with hundreds of Native American
tribes. The Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, John Winthrop,
created a precedent that would be used as the excuse for stealing
Indian Lands for the next 200 years. The very Christian Governor
Winthrop declared that the area was legally a “Vacuum”.
The Indians he said, had not subdued the land, and therefore had only
a “Natural
Right” to it, and not a “Civil
Right”. Since a Natural Right did not have legal
standing, it was legal to seize Indian lands.
Early
Anglo Biological Warfare:
“P.S.,
I will try to inoculate the Indians by means of (smallpox
contaminated) Blankets that may fall in their hands, taking care
however not to get the disease myself”
A letter from British
Col. Henry Bouquet to General Jeffrey
Amherst, French and Indian War, 13 July 1763
Zinn writes that; Twenty
years before the Declaration of Independence was signed, the
Massachusetts legislature declared the Penobscot Indians; “rebels,
enemies, and traitors” and provided a bounty:
“For
every scalp of a male Indian brought in…forty pounds. For every
scalp of such female Indian or male Indian under the age of twelve
years that shall be killed…twenty pounds”
Almost from the end of the
War for Independence from England, and the formation of the new
nation, the United States began to take Native-American lands. This
was later given the innocuous sounding name of the “Indian
Removal Policy”, but what it
actually
involved was; a sustained program of theft, rape, pillage, plunder,
and sheer genocide of hundreds of Native American tribes, and their
land and culture.
In 1790, there were 3.9
million Americans, most of them living within 50 miles of the
Atlantic Ocean. By 1830, there were 13 million; and by 1840,
4.5 million had crossed the Appalachian Mountains; into
the Mississippi valley.
In 1820, 120,000
Indians lived east of the Mississippi. By 1844, fewer than
30,000 were
left. The Indians tribes were an obstacle to westward expansion, and
most of them had been killed or forced to migrate westward, across
the Mississippi.
In 1794, General Anthony
Wayne won a decisive victory against Native-Americans forces in the
Ohio valley. Twelve tribes were coerced into signing the “Treaty
of Greenville” which ceded the rights to the Ohio
valley to the United States.
The
Louisiana Purchase - Napoleon’s Distress Sale
In
1801, the Liberal Democratic President Thomas Jefferson, sent Robert
Livingston to Paris, France, to try and buy the City of New Orleans
and adjacent lands, from Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of France. New
Orleans was a key port for shipping goods from all over the North
American continent to the European markets across the Atlantic.
Jefferson had been the U.S. Representative in Paris, during the
Revolutionary War, and he and the new Republic still had strong
credibility among the French, which undoubtedly made Livingston’s
job easier.
By
acquiring this territory, Jefferson hoped to make it secure for
commerce along the Mississippi. In 1803, James Monroe joined
Livingston in the Paris negotiations, and in one of the greatest real
estate deals in history, they returned with the rights to a vast land
area stretching west of the Mississippi river to the Rockies, north
to the Canadian border and south to the Gulf of Mexico. This
acquisition nearly doubled the size of the United States and ensured
its position as a world power. This territory later became thirteen
entirely new states, and parts of two others were carved from this
immense territory.
“I
have the consolation to reflect that during the period of my
Administration not a drop of the blood of a single citizen was shed
by the sword of war” President Thomas Jefferson
President
Jefferson had negotiated the Louisiana Purchase from a cash-starved
France, without a shot being fired. This purchase from the French
Government added millions of acres to the territory of the new United
States, and avoided what could have become a War with France; the
nation that had provided critical military and financial support to
the Colonies in their War for independence from Great Britain.
However, the French had
sold territory that they did not actually own, to the new country
that received it as stolen property, without fair remuneration to the
Native Americans that actually owned it. The future occupation of
this and other Native American territory by Paleo-Fascist
Conservative Presidents was to be accomplished by
coercion and bloody wars of conquest.
Jefferson advocated a
paternalistic
policy which was; to encourage the Native Americans to abandon
hunting, and to lead them into agriculture, manufacturing, and other
civilized pursuits. Jefferson reasoned that since the U.S. had
doubled the size of the nation by the purchasing of the Louisiana
Territory, extending the western frontier from the Appalachians,
across the Mississippi, to the Rocky Mountains, he thought the
Indians could move there. Some of the founders, like Jefferson and
their descendants, were land speculators, including George Washington
and Patrick Henry.
In 1809, Tecumseh, a
Shawnee Chief established a union of Native American tribes to resist
westward expansion into the Mississippi valley, and in 1811, at an
Indian gathering of 5,000 on the banks of the
Tallapoosa river in Alabama, he said;
“Let
the white race perish, they seize your land, they corrupt your women,
they trample on the ashes of your dead! Back where they came, upon a
trail of blood, they must be driven.”
Tecumseh
In 1810 President Madison
annexed western and northern portions of Florida, and in 1811,
William Henry Harrison led an attack on Tecumseh and the Shawnee
tribe at the battle of Tippecanoe in Indiana. Tecumseh died in battle
in 1813, crippling Indian resistance in the Ohio valley. The war of
1812 against England had resulted in the expansion into Florida,
Canada, and Indian territory.
Fascists
Also Believed in Manifest Destiny:
“The
insistence on ‘Manifest Destiny of the nation whether Germany or
Italy, is at bottom, simply the search for new sources of wealth to
be exploited as a means of maintaining acquiescence in the regime.
Conquest means posts, investments, a market to be politically
controlled. The attack on Democratic principles, necessarily flow
from the need of the leader to justify his own exercise of absolute
power.
Harold Laski, Professor of Political Science, London
School of Economics, Prominent Member of the British Labour Party,
1943
Future
President, Andrew Jackson, was a land speculator, slave trader, and
the most aggressive enemy of the Indians in early American history.
Jackson became a national
hero in 1814, when he fought the battle of Horseshoe Bend, allied
with the Cherokees, against a thousand Creeks, killing
800 of them, with few casualties on his side. When the
war ended, Jackson and his friends began buying up the seized Creek
lands. He got himself appointed Treaty Commissioner and dictated a
treaty which took away half the land of the Creek nation, the largest
single cession of Southern American land. From 1814 to 1825, in a
series of treaties with the southern Indians, whites took over
three-fourths of Alabama and Florida, one-third of Tennessee,
one-fifth of Georgia, and Mississippi, and parts of Kentucky and
North Carolina.
From 1816 to 1827 tension
developed between the Northern and Southern states over slavery, and
the Underground Railroad was established to assist runaway slaves.
Jackson’s previous actions had brought the white settlements to
the
border of Florida, owned by Spain. Jackson then began raids into
Florida, arguing it was a sanctuary for escaped slaves, and for
marauding Indians. Florida, he said was essential to the defense of
the United States. Thus began the Seminole War of 1817-1818. As a
result of Jackson’s campaign, burning Seminole villages, and
seizing Spanish forts, Spain was persuaded to sell Florida to
the United States in 1819. Jackson then became the Governor of
Florida Territory.
Jackson was elected
President in 1828, and the “Indian
Removal” bill became the “leading measure”
of his administration, and the “greatest question that ever
came
before Congress” except for matters of peace and war.
In 1832, Jackson was
re-elected, and the Choctaw
tribe was sent on a forced march from Alabama and
Mississippi to Oklahoma.
The
Indian Removal Act, May 28, 1830:
“Be
it Enacted… that it shall and may be lawful for the President of
the United States to cause so much of any territory belonging to the
United States , West of the river Mississippi , not included in any
state or organized territory , and to which Indian title has been
extinguished , as he may Judge necessary, to be divided into a
suitable number of Districts, for the reception of such tribes or
nations of Indians as may choose to exchange the lands where they now
reside, and remove there..”
The Indian Removal Act was
sold to the Congress and the people as a program of equitable land
exchange, by which new western Indian Territory lands would be
given in exchange for Indian lands east of the Mississippi, along
with Federal government protection of the Indians against the states.
In reality the actual execution proved to be devious and ruthless,
and the Indians were moved further and farther west, and forced to
live on confined reservations of land, which were not able to sustain
their populations.
As
soon as Jackson was elected President, Georgia, Alabama, and
Mississippi began to pass laws to extend states rule over the Indians
in their territory. These laws did away with the tribe as a legal
unit, outlawed tribal meetings, took away the chief’s powers, and
made the Indians subject to militia duty and state taxes, but denied
them the right to vote, bring suits, or to testify in court. Indian
territory was divided up, to be distributed by state lottery.
Jackson sent a message to
the Choctaws and
Cherokees,
which included a phrase to live forever in infamy.
The
Great White Father:
“Say
to my Choctaw children and my Chickasaw children to listen…by
removing from the limits of the states of Mississippi and Alabama,
and by being settled the lands I offer them…which they shall
possess as long as grass grows or water runs. I am and will protect
them and be their friend and father” Andrew Jackson
Treaties made under
pressure and by deception, broke up Creek,
Choctaw, and Chickasaw
tribal lands into individual holdings, making each person prey
to contractors, speculators, and politicians.
Everything
in the Indian heritage spoke out against leaving their land. A
council of Creeks being offered money for their lands said;
“We
should not receive money for land in which our fathers and friends
are buried”
The Creeks
defrauded of their land, short of money and food, refused to go west.
Starving Creeks began raiding white farms, while Georgia Militia and
settlers attacked Indian settlements in what became the Second Creek
War.
The 17,000
Cherokees surrounded by 900,000
whites in Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee began to adopt the
trappings of white civilization. Under the guidance of their Chief,
Sequoyah, they became farmers, developed a written language, a
legislative council, and began publishing their own newspaper; The
Cherokee Phoenix,
printed in English and Cherokee.
In
1829, Jackson informed the Congress:
“I
informed the Indians inhabiting parts of Georgia and Alabama that
their attempt to establish an independent government would not be
countenanced by the Executive of the United States, and advised them
to emigrate beyond the Mississippi or submit to the laws of those
states.”
Andrew Jackson
Congress moved quickly to
pass an Indian
Removal bill. In 1831, thirteen thousand Choctaws
began the long journey west to a land and climate totally
different from what they knew. The first winter migration was one of
the coldest on record, and people began to die of pneumonia. In the
summer a major Cholera epidemic hit Mississippi and Choctaws died by
the hundreds.
In his second annual
message to Congress, in December 1830, Jackson pointed to the fact
that the Choctaws
and Chickasaws had
already agreed to removal, and that a “speedy removal”
of
the rest would offer many advantages to everyone.
“He
has done nothing for which an Indian ought to be ashamed. He has
fought for his countrymen, the squaws and papooses, against white
men, who came year after year, to cheat them and take away their
lands”
Chief
Black Hawk, Sac and Fox tribe of Illinois, captured in 1832
In
the battle preceding his capture, the gallant American Commander
reported:
“As
we neared them, they raised a white flag, and endeavored to decoy us,
but we were too old for them. The soldiers fired, killing women and
children as well as warriors”
Georgia put Cherokee land
on sale and moved Militia in to crush any sign of Cherokee
resistance. Jackson then moved to speed up Indian removal. Most of
the Choctaws;
and some of the Cherokees
were gone, but there were still 22,000
Creeks in Alabama, 18,000
Cherokees in Georgia, and 5,000
Seminoles in Florida. On the basis of false
promises from the Federal government, Creek delegates finally signed
the coerced Treaty
of Washington agreeing to the removal beyond the
Mississippi.
Within days the promises
were broken, as a white invasion of Creek
lands began by looters, land seekers, defrauders, whiskey sellers,
and thugs, driving thousands of Creeks
from their homes into the swamps and forests. Despite the hardships,
the Creeks refused to budge; but by 1836, both state and federal
officials decided they must go. An army of eleven thousand troops was
sent after them, and they surrendered. They were removed to a
concentration camp on Mobile Bay. Hundreds died from lack of food and
sickness.
The Choctaws
and Chickasaws
had quickly agreed to migrate, but the Creeks
were stubborn and had to be forced. The Cherokees
practiced a non-violent resistance, and when summoned to sign the
removal treaty, fewer than 500
of the 17,000
Cherokees appeared, but the treaty was signed
anyway.
In 1838, General Winfield
Scott with 15 regiments of regulars and 4,000 Militia moved into
Cherokee territory to use whatever force was necessary to move the
Cherokees
west.
Removal
of the Cherokees to Indian Territory, May 10, 1838:
Cherokees,
the President of the United States has sent me with a powerful Army
to cause you, in obedience to the treaty of 1835, to join that part
of your people who have already established in prosperity on the
other side of the Mississippi. I am come to carry out that
determination.. Obey them (our troops) when they tell you that you
can remain no longer in this country… Chiefs, Headmen, and
Warriors! Will you then by resistance, compel us to resort to
arms?... Or will you, by flight, seek to hide yourselves in mountains
and forests, and thus oblige us to hunt you down?....spare me I
beseech you, the horror of witnessing the destruction of the
Cherokees…” Major General
Winfield Scott, USA
17,000
Cherokees were rounded up and crowded into
stockades. On October 1, 1838, the first detachment set out, in what
was to be known as the “Trail
of Tears” As they moved
westwards, they began to die; of sickness, drought, heat, and
exposure. On the march westward four
thousand Cherokees died.
The Seminoles
decided to fight. When the Indian agent ordered them to assemble for
relocation no one came. The Seminoles
then began a series of guerrilla attacks on white coastal
settlements. Congress then appropriated money for a war against the
Seminoles.
General Winfield Scott
took charge, but no one wanted to face the Seminoles
in the Florida swamps. After a war of attrition that
lasted eight years and at a cost $20
million, Osceola was captured in 1837, by treachery
under a flag of truce.
“Am
I a Negro? Am I a Slave? My skin is dark, but not black! I am an
Indian- A Seminole! The white man shall not make me black! I will
make the white man red with blood, and then blacken him in the sun
and rain, where the wolf shall smell of his bones, and the buzzard
live upon his flesh! Osceola, Seminole
War Chief, 1835
The
following lists all of the recorded wars on the Native Americans by
the civilized conquerors spreading Christianity and American style
Democracy in the new world:
Powhatan
War; 1622-1644 Mohawk-Mahican War; 1624-1628 Pequot War; 1637 Iroquoian
War; 1638-1684 Algonquin-Dutch War; 1639-1645 Iroquois-French War;
1642-1696 Maryland’s
War with the Susquehannocks; 1644-1652 Iroquois-Huron War; 1648-1650
Peach War; 1655-1657 Esopus War;
1655-1660 and 1663-1664
King
Philips’s War; 1675- 1676 First Abnaki War; 1675-1678 Second
Abnaki
War; 1702-1712 Tuscarora War; 1711-1712 Fox Resistance; 1712-1733
Yamasee War; 1715-1716 Chickasaw Resistance; 1720-1724 Natchez Revolt;
1729 Third Abnaki War; 1722-1727 Second Pima Revolt; 1751 French and
Indian War; 1754-1763 Cherokee Uprising; 1759-1762 Pontiac’s
Rebellion; 1763-1766 Little
Turtle’s War; (Shawnee)1786-1795 Creek War; 1812-1814 First
Seminole War;
1817-1818 Wars of Indian Removal; (Creeks, Choctaws, Chickasaws,
Cherokees, and Seminoles) 1830-1839 Second Seminole War;
1835-1842 Third Seminole War; 1855-1858 Black Hawk War; 1832 Mariposa
War;
(Digger tribe) 1850-1851 Yuma and Mojave Uprising; 1851-1852 Rogue
River War,(Cayuse); 1855-1856 Yakima War; 1855 Coeur d’Alene
War;(Spokane, Palouse,and Coeur d’Alene);
1858 Paiute War; 1860 Apache and
Navajo War; 1860-1868 Minnesota Santee Sioux Uprising; 1862
“We
have no food, but here there are stores filled with food.”
Santee
Sioux Chief, August 15, 1862
“So
far as I am concerned , if they are hungry, let them eat grass or
their own dung.’
Andrew J.
Myrick, Trading Post Operator
In
the massacre that followed, Myrick would be among the first to fall.
The Indians stuffed his mouth with grass. Minnesota Santee Sioux
Uprising; 1862 Cheyenne and Arapaho War;
1864-1865 Bozeman
Trail War; (Oglala Sioux); 1866-1868 Hancock’s War;(Southern
Cheyenne; Southern Arapahos; Oglalas; and
Southern Brule Sioux); 1867 Snake War, (Paiutes); 1866-1868
Sheridan’s
Campaign, (total war on plains Sioux); 1868-1869 Madoc War; 1872-1873
Kiowa War; 1874-1875 Apache War;
1876-1886 Black Hills Sioux War; 1876-1877 Nez Perce War; 1877 Bannock
War; 1878 Sheepeater War; 1879 Ute War; 1879 Sioux War; 1890-1891.
With
the Wounded Knee Massacre, in 1890, the Indian Wars ended. (Source:
America’s Wars, by Alan Axelrod)
In 1871, By the Indian
Appropriations Act, all
Native-Americans were labeled “wards of the U.S.
Government”
In
1879, White settlers began to invade Native-American reservations in
Oklahoma for land.
In 1886, the Chiracahua
Apache Chief, Geronimo, was arrested and deported to
Florida as a POW.
In 1889, Two million acres
of native land in Oklahoma, was transferred to
U.S. settlers by the Oklahoma Land Rush.
In 1890, Congress
establishes the ‘Oklahoma Territory” further
stripping
Native-Americans of their lands.
In 1890, Federal troops
massacred
more than 200
Sioux Men, Women, and children at Wounded Knee, South Dakota.
In 1892, the Dawes act
took more than two million acres of Crow
lands in Montana for white settlers.
In 1893, six million acres
of Cherokee
land in Oklahoma was seized for white settlers.
In 1894, one million acres
of Native lands
were granted to white settlers by the Carey act.
In 1909, an additional
Dawes act took 700,000 acres of Native-American
land for white settlers.
The
“Lebensraum” War on Mexico; (U.S. Casualties: 1,733
Killed, 11,550
Other deaths, 4152 wounded)
20th
Century Lebensraum (Vital Space):
“To
deny Germany its colonies any longer and challenge its right to
additional “Vital Space”(Lebensraum) and a source of raw
materials would mean to compound the sin of passively tolerating
Soviet domination—the greatest crime in human history—with
a new
sin” Paul Ritter, Nazi Colonial Office, Leipzig 1937
The
Spanish empire in the new world was seized by conquest from the
Native American tribes in the Americas. By the early 1800s Spanish
settlements, in areas now part of the Southwest U.S. had been well
established for over a century. The Spanish government had encouraged
colonization of their land by Anglo-American settlers. In the 1820s,
American land developers, such as Moses Austin, known as
entrepreneurs (empresarios), negotiated Land Grants with the Spanish
government for the purpose of establishing colonies, and the right to
sell land to settlers, in territory that is now called Texas.
In
1821, the people of Mexico gained their independence from Spain, but
their neighbors to the north were engaged in a relentless westward
expansion. New York journalist John O’Sullivan wrote that it was
our;
“Manifest
Destiny” to overspread the continent allotted by
Providence for the free development of our yearly
multiplying millions.”
This
westward expansion had already taken the lands of hundreds of Native
American tribes, who by then were being crowded onto reservations
that could not sustain them.
“We
must march from Texas straight to the Pacific Ocean, and be bounded
only by its roaring wave…It is the destiny of the white race,
it
is the destiny of the Anglo-Saxon race”
Congressman Giles of
Maryland, 1847
In
1823, President James Monroe issued what was called the
“Monroe Doctrine” which declared that
the
Western Hemisphere was closed to any European expansion or
intervention, without military opposition from the U.S. The U.S. was
announcing to the world that it needed more Lebensraum,
and it had sole claim to the Americas.
In
1829, President Andrew Jackson tipped his hand when he made an
unsuccessful bid to purchase Texas from the Mexican Government, for
$5 million dollars. The offer was rejected, and by 1830 the Mexican
government sensing an intention to take their lands by insurrection,
prohibited any further colonizing of Texas.
By
1836, the Texas Anglo-American
population was about 50,000 and the Mexican Nationals
numbered only 30,000. The territory had become de-facto
American. These settlers, predominately white
Anglo-Saxon Protestant colonists felt racially,
morally, and politically superior to the Mexicans; and harbored
resentment of the Mexican government over issues of slavery (which
they wanted), trade and taxation, (which they resisted), and at being
ruled by a Catholic government. In 1829, the Mexican government tried
to satisfy the colonists and issued a proclamation which permitted
Texas, the only portion of a state in Mexico, to maintain slaves. In
1834, the Mexican government also issued a guarantee of religious and
political freedom to all of Mexico; which removed two major reasons
for the political unrest in the colonies. It was not enough!
Stephen
F. Austin, the son of entrepreneur (empresario) Moses Austin, then
traveled to Mexico to present a petition for granting Texas the
status of a separate state within Mexico. Mexican President Santa
Anna pledged to remedy all Texas grievances, but did not agree to the
proposal to make Texas a separate state. Before he could leave
Mexico, Austin was arrested and jailed for having urged Texas
statehood in a letter. When he was released in 1835, Austin threw his
support to those who were advocating Independence from Mexico by
rebellion. The first act of rebellion occurred when the Texans forced
the surrender of a small Mexican Garrison and customs house at
Anahuac, southeast of present day Houston.
The
historical evidence is solid, that the U.S. Government under
Paleo-Fascist
Conservative Presidents Andrew Jackson
and James K. Polk; whose overtures to buy Texas
in 1829, and California in 1845, from Mexico (also refused), reflect
a pattern of continuing coercion to acquire this territory by
purchase, or conquest if necessary. These were the same methods
previously successfully used on the Native American tribes.
At
the end of 1835, Santa Anna sent some cavalry troops to Texas to
enforce Mexican laws; but they were eventually forced to retreat to a
fortified old mission church in San Antonio called the Alamo.
On December 5, 1835, a Texas force of 5,300 men stormed
the city and the badly outnumbered Mexicans were forced to surrender.
By January 1836 Santa Anna and a force of 5,000 men
marched into Texas to punish the Texas rebels. He arrived in San
Antonio on February 25, 1836, and after a short siege took the broken
down fortress called the Alamo, on March 6, 1836. The remaining
defenders not killed in the battle, were executed. The fall of the
Alamo, and the summary executions at the Alamo and at Goliad,
provided the Texas revolution with martyrs, and a battle cry;
“Remember the
Alamo”
Santa
Anna’s reduced and sick troops and the rebels, faced off at the
Battle of San Jacinto, where in eighteen minutes, the Texans had an
overwhelming victory. They captured Santa Anna, who was then forced
to sign the Treaty
of Velasco in exchange for his life. In the Treaty;
signed under duress, the Mexicans agreed to evacuate all Mexican
Armed Forces from Texas, and recognized the former province as the
Independent and sovereign Republic
of Texas.
The
new government of Mexico repudiated the Treaty of Velasco, and
refused to recognize the Texans, who then petitioned the U.S.
government for statehood and annexation. On July 4, 1845, President
Polk ordered General Zachary Taylor to take up positions near the Rio
Grande, near present Corpus Christi in the disputed Texas territory.
Texas
was quickly admitted to the union in December 1845, and designated a
slave state in 1848. In February 1846, Taylor was ordered to advance
100 miles past the Nueces River, into what had always been recognized
as Mexican territory, actually violating the sovereign rights of
Mexico.
“I
have said from the first that the United States are the
aggressors...we have not one particle of right to be here…it
looks
as if the government sent a small force on purpose to bring on a war,
so as to have a pretext for taking California and as much of
this country as it chooses.”
Colonel Ethan Allen
Hitchcock, US Army
This
was a direct provocative challenge to the Mexicans; that eventually
brought a response. On April 25, 1846, a substantial Mexican force
crossed the Rio Grande and attacked an advance detachment of sixty
U.S. mounted Dragoons, killing eleven Americans. Taylor quickly
reported to Polk that hostilities had commenced. Polk then sent a
message to congress. He spoke of the dispatch of American troops to
the Rio Grande as a necessary measure of defense, but
the reverse was true. Polk had incited war by sending American
soldiers into what was disputed territory, historically controlled
and inhabited by Mexicans. Congress then rushed to approve the war
message. In 1846, Abraham Lincoln challenged Polk to specify the
exact spot where American blood was shed “on
the American soil.”
“…If
to say the war was unnecessarily and unconstitutionally commenced by
the President” be opposing the war, then the Whigs have very
generally opposed it..” Abraham Lincoln
Possessing
superior weapons, the American forces went on the offensive, and won
continuous victories over the Mexican forces, equipped with ancient
cannons. They took Monterey in September 1846, Saltillo and Tampico
in November 1846, Buena Vista in February 1847, Vera Cruz in March
1847, Puebla in May 1847, Churubusco, Chapultepec, and finally Mexico
City in September 1847. The American bombardments of the cities, was
an indiscriminate killing of civilian men, women, and children.
William
Lloyd Garrison’s Liberator, denounced the war as one “of
aggression, of invasion, of conquest, and rapine—marked by
ruffianism, perfidy, and other features of national
depravity…”
Other
newspapers also protested the war. Horace Greeley wrote in the New
York Tribune;
“We
can easily slaughter the armies of Mexico, slaughter them by the
thousands, and pursue them perhaps to their capital; we can conquer
and annex their territory; but what then? Have the histories of the
ruin of Greek and Roman liberty, consequent on such extensions of
empire by the sword, no lesson for us?”
Horace Greeley
Meanwhile
Anglo-American settlers in California had also been agitating for
Independence. In 1840, President Polk had sent John Slidell, of
Louisiana, to Mexico City to negotiate the purchase of California for
the sum of $40 million. The Mexican President refused to see him, and
Polk commissioned the U.S. Consul at Monterey, to covertly organize
the prosperous and influential California community into a separatist
movement, sympathetic to annexation. Men like John Fremont then
started the rebellion when they raised the American flag on
Hawk’s
Peak in Northern California.
In
1846, Fremont was notified by the Polk government that; war between
the U.S. and Mexico was imminent, that U.S. warships were already
anchored in San Francisco Bay, that the rest of the U.S. Pacific
Fleet was already anchored off Mazatlan, and that U.S. and Mexican
troops faced each other across the Mexican border. Fremont later
claimed that he had received secret orders from Polk, authorizing him
to take action to bring about a rebellion in California. In June
1846, a group of hunters, trappers, and sailors, under the leadership
of Fremont and other Anglo-American leaders took the settlement of
Sonoma, and negotiated a surrender from the town’s leading
citizen.
On July 1,1846, 134 men took the Presidio at San Francisco. On July
7,1846, Commodore Sloat of the U.S. Navy landed at Monterey and
claimed possession of California in the name of the U.S. Fremont was
named commander of the California Battalion in the War with Mexico.
The
Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, also signed under duress, on February 2,
1848, was quickly ratified by the U.S. Senate. In return for cession
of all of ‘New
Mexico” which including the present states of New
Mexico, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, part of Colorado and California, as
well as the renunciation of all claims to Texas above the Rio Grande
river, the grand sum of $15 million was paid to Mexico.
Probably one of the greatest land swindles in history.
“I
cannot for an instant recognize that political organization as my
government…when a whole country (Mexico) is unjustly overrun and
conquered by a foreign army, and subjected to military law, I think
that it is not too soon for honest men to rebel and revolutionize”
Henry David Thoreau
The
“Lebensraum” War on Spain (U.S. Casualties: 385
Killed,
2,061 Other Deaths, 1,662 Wounded)
In the late 1890s, the
American Imperial-Nationalist propagandist, and yellow journalist, W.
Randolph Hearst, and other Corporate media moguls, helped the
Paleo-Fascist
Conservative Republican Government of President
William McKinley,
to persuade the American people to wage an unnecessary and illegal
war against Spain. This war was strongly advocated by such
Paleo-Fascist-Conservative
Republicans as; President McKinley, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, and
Theodore Roosevelt.
The patrician Mr.
Lodge, a Brahmin of early colonial stock, was one of the
country’s foremost White
Supremacists. He actually believed that the
Anglo-Saxon race possessed qualities that destined it for greatness,
and is quoted saying:
“If
a lower race (designated as “Black, Italians, Russians, Poles,
Hungarians, Greeks, and Asiatics”) mixes with a higher,
in
sufficient numbers, history teaches us that the lower race will
prevail” Henry
Cabot Lodge
The Big Lie for the
Spanish American War; was that Spanish saboteurs had used torpedoes
(mines) to blow up the USS Maine, while docked in Havana harbor. At
the peak of the hysteria, Hearst Headlines read; “Maine
Was Destroyed by Treachery” and “The
Whole Country Thrills With War Fever”.
“You
furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war”
W.
Randolph Hearst
Historical
records prove that the Spanish Government, which was facing an
insurrection in Cuba, had willingly agreed to U.S. offers to mediate
the dispute with the rebels; but before any effort could be made to
find a peaceful solution to the crisis, McKinley had taken the
unusual step of sending the Maine, a modern warship to Cuba, and
placed it in Havana Harbor, under the noses of the Spanish
government. This was a provocative and threatening step; but the
Spanish, anxious to avoid war, had swallowed this insult. It would
have been comparable to Hitler bringing the Bismarck Battleship to
New York Harbor, without clearance, after the invasion of Poland.
The Maine exploded on
February 15, 1898, killing 260 American sailors. The Naval Court of
Inquiry was unable to determine the cause; but McKinley lied to the
Congress, and claimed that the Court had determined that the
explosion was caused by an “external”
explosion (meaning sabotage by the Spanish). Many decades later,
divers proved that the explosion was caused by an “internal”
explosion, and was probably an accident caused by the detonation of
its own fuel.
An
Eyewitness Account:
“I
have no theories as to the cause of the explosion. I cannot form any.
I, with others, had heard the Havana Harbor was full of torpedoes
(mines) but the officers whose duty it was to examine into that
reported that they found no signs of any. Personally, I do not
believe that the Spanish had anything to do with the disaster”
Lt. John J. Blandin’s account of the
explosion of the Battleship Maine, February 15, 1898
The State Department then
sent an ultimatum to Spain, and before the Spanish Government could
act, McKinley on April 11, 1898, delivered a Declaration of War
Message to the Congress. War with Spain was then quickly declared by
the Paleo-Fascist
Conservative Republican controlled Congress. Some of
the moderate Republicans objected to the unjust war. For example,
House Speaker Reed actually resigned in protest. The U.S. then
mounted an illegal invasion of all Spanish possessions in Cuba,
Puerto Rico, and other Spanish islands in the West Indies.
The
U.S. defeated the small Spanish West Indies fleet, seized Cuba,
Puerto Rico, and in a completely unjustifiable aggression, and
blatant land grab, thousands of miles away, in the Pacific; attacked
and defeated the Spanish fleet in the Philippine Islands! During the
subsequent peace conference, held under the barrels of U.S. Naval
guns, the U.S. demanded and received, the Spanish possessions of
Puerto Rico, Cuba, other islands in the West Indies, and took
possession of the Philippine Islands, Wake, and Guam.
Later, Philippine
patriots, calling themselves “Insurgos”
or insurrectionists, resisted American benevolence, and waged war
against their new Colonial dominators. Over 600,000
brave Filipinos died in that insurgency,
so that they could enjoy the benefits of 19th Century
Democracy American style. This meant living under the government of
an aristocratic American Army Military Governor named Arthur
MacArthur, father of General Douglas MacArthur.
Thus began the U.S. lust
for empire; based on the unilateral, and illegal assertions of the
Monroe Doctrine,
and Manifest
Destiny; which has led to the permanent domination of
Central America, and the South American Continent, and to seizing
economic possessions in the Pacific.
Theodore Roosevelt was a
militarist who expressed a liking for war. He continued what became
known as “Big
Stick” imperial policy toward the countries of the
Southern hemisphere during his Presidency (1901-1909)
Although Theodore
Roosevelt became known for being the Corporate “Trust
Buster” and his term of office was known as the
“Progressive
era”, the people of Central and South America can
be
excused for not finding very much that was progressive about the
repeated incursion, invasions, and manipulation of their governments
by the U.S. for the following decades.
Over the past hundred
years, the U.S. has continued to exercise continuing political,
economic, and military hegemony over the countries of our neighbors
in Central and South America; frequently intruding into their
sovereign affairs. For example, between 1898 and 1934, the Marines
invaded Cuba four times, Nicaragua five times,
Honduras seven times, the Dominican Republic four
times, Haiti twice, Guatemala once,
Panama twice, Mexico three times, and
Columbia four times.
After
each invasion and a period of occupation, the U.S. has traditionally
followed a practice of setting up puppet states; ruled by brutal
dictators, armed
to the teeth with American made weapons, and trained to suppress their
own people. Behind the military came shiploads of U.S.
businessmen ready to set up Plantations, dig oil wells, and stake out
mining claims. The military were then frequently called back to
protect these businessmen, enforce slave labor working conditions,
and put down political protests, labor strikes, and rebellions.
We
greedily embraced Old World Imperialism, and it was good!
It
was not unusual for the U.S. to manipulate elections and in one case,
to actually create a new country, with land stolen from a neighboring
state.
For example, in 1903, the
U.S. and its surrogates, engineered a revolution against the nation
of Columbia; set up the tiny Republic of Panama, and dictated a
treaty giving the U.S. military bases, and U.S. “sovereignty
in Perpetuity” over the Panama
Canal.
By
the 1950s, one of these countries, Cuba; was being run by the corrupt
U.S. supported Batista regime, when the popular revolutionary
Socialist, Fidel Castro and his peasant rebels, overran Cuba on New
Years Day, 1959. They overthrew the hated Batista government and
nationalized most of the property of foreign corporations that had
exploited the Cuban people for decades.
For
this Capitalist mortal sin, the U.S. turned its back on the rebels,
and drove them into the hands of the Soviet Union; insuring that Cuba
would become a Soviet ally and a full blown Communist Dictatorship.
To this day, American foreign policy towards Cuba is distorted by
anti-Castro Cubans, led by the descendants of the Batista regime and
many of the old Cuban ruling class, which had escaped to Florida.
Some of the descendants
of these Cubans are NFC
Republicans serving in Congress; who have fought to
maintain the embargo on Cuba even when the UN almost unanimously
voted to end it. They continuously attempt to involve the U.S. in
military confrontations with Cuba.
Throughout
this time, the U.S. has continued to maintain its Naval Base at
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the only U.S. Base in a so-called hostile
Communist Country. The U.S. also continues its possession of Puerto
Rico, the occupation of bases in Panama, and domination of Panamanian
politics to the present day; when the Panama Canal has long ceased to
be a strategic naval choke point. The Philippines have gained their
Independence; but had to struggle for decades to emerge from under
U.S. domination.
We
Are The Veterans of Too Many Foreign Wars!
“The
awareness that we are all human beings together has become lost in
war and through politics”
Albert
Schweitzer, Appeal for World Peace, April 30, 1958
The U.S. has been involved
in more foreign wars in the last Century, than any other nation. We
also spend more on our military than all other countries combined.
Most of these wars, advocated by the Nationalist-Conservatives
of both parties, have caused as much damage to the American people,
as they did to our chosen enemies. Invariably, these unpopular wars
have been caused by the agitation of Nationalist-conservatives
in Congress. Whenever Liberals have resisted such war fever, the
Nationalist-Conservative
Republicans used their Pacifism to
attack, isolate, and defeat them.
This
is the record of over a Century of U.S. military foreign invasions,
interventions, and covert interference in the affairs of other
nations, around the world, from 1890-2005. With the exception of
those to protect American citizens, and to support our European
allies against the Militarist-Nationalist- Conservative Fascist
Dictatorship aggression of WWII, and to stop Genocide, they were all
unjustified.
Argentina,
1890, protecting U.S. “Interests”
Chile,
1891, Oppose Nationalist rebels
Haiti,
1891, Black workers revolt put down
Hawaii,
1893, assisted in overthrowing Hawaiian Kingdom
Nicaragua,1894,
protecting U.S. Interests
China,
1894-95,Intervened in Sino-Japanese War
Korea,
1894-96, Station Marines in Seoul during Sino-Japanese War
Panama,
1895, protecting U.S. Interests
Nicaragua,
1896, protecting U.S. Interests
China,
1899-1901, Boxer Rebellion put down
Puerto
Rico, 1898-Present, seized from Spain.
Nicaragua,
1898, protecting U.S. Interests
Samoa,
1899, entered the Battle over succession to the throne
Nicaragua,
1899, protecting U.S. Interests
War with Spain, 1898, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, Wake Island, and the
Philippines ceded to the U.S. by Spain for $20 million, U.S. still
occupies the Naval Base at Guantanamo, Cuba, and Puerto Rico,
Philippine
Occupation/Insurrection , 1899-1902, 600,000
Filipino Insurgent Nationalists killed
Philippines,
Moro Wars, 1901-1913
Panamanian
Revolution, 1903, U.S. supports rebels in revolt against Columbia,
Panama Canal Zone annexed by the U.S. in Perpetuity
Honduras,
1903, intervention in internal revolution
Dominican
Republic, 1903-04, protecting U.S. Interests
Korea,
1904-05, Marines intervened in Russo-Japanese war
Cuba,
1906-09, Marines interfered in elections
Nicaragua,
1907, “Dollar Diplomacy” Protectorate established
Honduras,
1907, Marines landed during a war with Nicaragua
Panama,
1908, Marines intervened in Election
Nicaraguan
Civil War, 1909-1912, protecting U.S. Interests
Honduras,
1911, protecting U.S. Interests
China,
1911-41, Continuous occupation with periodic flare-ups
Cuba,
1912, protecting U.S. Interests
Panama,
1912, Marines landed during heated elections
Honduras,
1912, protecting U.S. Interests
Nicaraguan
Civil War, 1912-33, 20 year U.S. Occupation, fought freedom fighter
guerrillas
Mexico,
1913, Americans evacuated during revolution
Dominican
Republic, 1914, Naval fight with rebels
Mexico,
1916-1917, Punitive Expedition against Villa’s raids.
Haiti,
1913-34, 19 year occupation, after revolts
Dominic
Republic, 1916-24, 8 year Marine Occupation
Cuba,
1917-33, 16 year Military Occupation, Economic Protectorate
World
War I, 1917-1918, War with Germany, Austrian, Turkish forces.
U.S.
Casualties: 53,402 Killed, 63,114 Other deaths, 204,002 Wounded
Called the “War to End All Wars”
Russia,
1918-22, to fight the Bolsheviks
Panama,
1918-20, after unrest after elections
Honduras,
1919, Marines land during election campaign
Guatemala,
1920, U.S. Intervention against unionists
Turkey,
1922, fought Nationalists
China,
1922-27, during Nationalist Revolt
Honduras,
1924-25, landed twice during elections
Panama,
1925, Marines suppress general strike
China,
1928-34, Marines stationed throughout Country
El
Salvador, 1932, intervene in the Faribundo Marti revolt
World War II, 1941-45,
40 million Killed worldwide in war against Fascism; U.S.
Casualties: 291,557 killed, 113,842 Other Deaths, 671,846 wounded (over
50 years later, U.S. still occupying many bases in Germany and Japan)
Iran,
1946, to oppose Soviet troops in Azerbaijan
Uruguay,
1947, Bombers deployed, show of strength
Greece,
1947-49 U.S. directed the extreme right in a Civil War
Germany,
1948, Berlin Airlift
Philippines,
1948-54, U.S. CIA directs war against Huk rebellion
Puerto
Rico, 1950, Independence rebellion, crushed by the U.S.
Korean
War, 1951-53, 88,000 UN Casualties, U.S. Casualties: 54,643 Killed,
153,303 Wounded, 2 Million North Korean and 1 Million South Koreans
Killed, Defending Capitalism against Communism (U.S.
still Occupies bases in South Korea, and Okinawa)
Iran,
1953, CIA Overthrows Democratically elected Government and installs
Shah
Vietnam,
1954, U.S. backs the French with Air and financial support
Guatemala,
1954, CIA directs exile invasion
Lebanon,
1958, Marine Occupation against rebels
Panama,
1958, Flag protests erupt into confrontation
Vietnam
War, 1960-75, Longest U.S. War, Tonkin Gulf resolution based on lies,
Domino Theory, U.S. Casualties: 58,167 Killed, 153,303 wounded, 6
Million Vietnamese killed, defending Capitalism against Communism.
Laos, 1961, U.S.
involved in Military buildup during guerrilla War
Cuba,
1961, CIA directed Exile invasion fails.
Germany,
Berlin Wall crisis
Cuba,
1962, Cuban Missile Crisis, Nuclear War narrowly averted.
Panama,
1964, Panamanians shot for urging Canal return
Indonesia,
1965, One million killed in a CIA/Army coup
Dominican
Republic, 1965-66
Guatemala,
1966-67, Green Berets against rebels
Cambodia,
1969-75, 2 million killed in decade of bombing, and starvation
Oman,
1970, Assist against Iranian invasion
Laos,
1971-73, Carpet Bombing of country
Chile,
1973, CIA directs ouster and assassination of elected President
Allende
Cambodia, 1975,
Bombing campaign
Angola,
1976-92, U.S. supports South African backed rebels
Iran,
1980, Aborted Raid, Embassy Hostages
Libya,
1981, Two Libyan Jets shot down by the U.S.
El
Salvador, 1981-92, Aid to Anti-Rebel war
Nicaragua, 1981-90,
support of the Contras against the popular leftist Sandinista
government
Honduras, 1981-90,
U.S. illegally provided support of reactionary Nicaraguan rebels
known as the “Contras”
Lebanon,
1982-84, Expel the PLO/Muslims, and support the Phalangists, over 200
marines killed
Grenada,
1983-8, U. S. Invasion four years after coup, diverts attention to
the loss of Marines in Lebanon.
Libya,
1986, Air Strikes to topple Nationalist government
Bolivia,
1987, Army raids on Cocaine regions
Iran,
1987-88, U.S. intervenes on side of Iraq and bombs Iran
Libya,
1989, Two Libyan jets shot down by U.S. Aircraft
Virgin
Islands, 1989, to quell Black unrest
Panama,
1989, U.S. Invasion, Noriega’s Nationalist Government ousted, by
24,000 U.S. troops
Saudi
Arabia, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain, UAE, 1990-91 , Bases occupied, to
oppose Iraq invasion of Kuwait, possibly encouraged by the U.S.
Iraq
War of Attrition, 1991- 2003, massive destruction of Iraqi military,
and civilian infrastructure, Sustained control of Iraq Airspace, no
fly zones, UN Inspectors
Somalia,
1992-94, U.S. led UN intervention
Haiti,
1994, Clinton sends U.S. troops restore elected President Jean
Bertrand Aristide to office
Bosnia,
1994-95, U.S. Intervenes for Humanitarian purposes
Kosovo Crisis,
1999, US/NATO Air War against Milosevic led Serbians involved in
Ethnic Cleansing, and Genocide.
Haiti,
2004, U.S. CIA involved in Coup sponsored by Ruling elite, to remove
the democratically elected Aristide, by the FRAPH Haitian Front,
headed by Guy Phillipe, brutal Police Chief, trained by the U.S.
2001 - Present
The Never-Ending Global War on Terror
Iraq
War II, 2003-Present, Illegal Invasion and Occupation
170,000
Iraqi civilians killed, and over 2100 U.S. Military killed by
December 2005
(Note:
Major conflicts shown in bold letters, all Casualty Data from the
official Pentagon Website)
Gen.
David M. Shoup, USMC, who received the Medal of Honor in WW ll; and
became Commandant of the Marine Corps in the early 1960s, publicly
railed against America’s continuous interventions and wars. In
1966
he said:
“I
believe that if we would keep our dirty, bloody, dollar-soaked
fingers out of the business of these nations so full of depressed,
exploited people, they will arrive at a solution on their
own….And
if unfortunately their revolution must be of the violent type because
the ‘haves’ refuse to share with the
‘have-nots’ by any
peaceful methods, at least what they get will be their own and not
the American style, which they don’t want and above all
don’t
want crammed down their throats by Americans.”
As a result of our many
and continuing Foreign wars, as of 2002, there were still living in
the U.S 25,038,459 Veterans and 17, 578,500 War
Veterans.
The
Nuclear Chain Reaction of The Cold War:
“I
have told the Secretary of War, Mr. Stimson, to use it so that
military objectives and soldiers and sailors are the target and not
women and children. Even if the Japs are savages, ruthless, merciless
and fanatic, we as the leader of the world for the common welfare
cannot drop that terrible bomb on the old Capitol or the new. He and
I are in accord. The target will be a purely military one and we will
issue a warning statement asking the Japs to surrender and save
lives” President Harry S. Truman,
Diary entry, July 25, 1945, (The Militarists in the Truman regime,
later persuaded him to use them on the civilian populations of
the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki).
The
start of the Cold War can realistically be traced to these decisions
in the last days of WWII. Gary G. Kohls of Duluth, Minnesota wrote
an essay on the subject, some of which is repeated here.
“On
August 9th, 1945, the second of the only two atomic bombs ever used
as instruments of aggressive war (against essentially defenseless
civilian populations) was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, by an
all-Christian bomb crew. The well-trained American soldiers were only
doing their job, and they did it well.
It had been only 3 days since the
first bomb, a uranium bomb, had
decimated Hiroshima on August 6, with chaos and confusion in Tokyo,
where the fascist military government and the Emperor had been
searching for months for a way to an honorable end of the war which
had exhausted the Japanese to virtually moribund status. (The only
obstacle to surrender had been the Truman administration's insistence
on unconditional surrender, which meant that the Emperor Hirohito,
whom the Japanese regarded as a deity, would be removed from his
figurehead position in Japan - an intolerable demand for the
Japanese.)
The Russian army was advancing across Manchuria
with the stated aim of entering the war against Japan on August 8, so
there was an extra incentive to end the war quickly: the US did not
want to divide any spoils or share power after Japan sued for peace.
The US
bomber command had spared Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Kokura from the
conventional bombing that had burned to the ground 60+ other major
Japanese cities during the first half of 1945. One of the reasons for
targeting relatively undamaged cities with these new weapons of mass
destruction was scientific: to see what would happen to intact
buildings - and their living inhabitants - when atomic weapons were
exploded overhead.
Early in the morning of August 9, 1945, a
B-29 Superfortress called Bock's Car, took off from Tinian Island,
with the prayers and blessings of its Lutheran and Catholic
chaplains, and headed for Kokura, the primary target. (Its plutonium
bomb was code-named "Fat Man," after Winston Churchill.)
The only field test of a nuclear weapon, blasphemously named
"Trinity," had occurred just three weeks earlier, on July
16, 1945 at Alamogordo, New Mexico. The molten lava rock that
resulted, still found at the site today, is called trinitite.
With
instructions to drop the bomb only on visual sighting, Bock's Car
arrived at Kokura, which was clouded over. So after circling three
times, looking for a break in the clouds, and using up a tremendous
amount of valuable fuel in the process, it headed for its secondary
target, Nagasaki.
Nagasaki
is famous in the history of Japanese Christianity. Not only was it
the site of the largest Christian church in the Orient, St. Mary's
Cathedral, but it also had the largest concentration of baptized
Christians in all of Japan. It was the city where the legendary
Jesuit missionary, Francis Xavier, established a mission church in
1549, a Christian community which thrived and multiplied for several
generations. However, soon after Xavier's planting of Christianity in
Japan, Portuguese and Spanish commercial interests began to be
accurately perceived by the Japanese rulers as exploiters, and
therefore the religion of the Europeans (Christianity) and their new
Japanese converts became the target of brutal persecutions.
Within 60 years of the start of Xavier's mission church, it was a
capital crime to be a Christian. The Japanese Christians who refused
to recant of their beliefs suffered ostracism, torture and even
crucifixions similar to the Roman persecutions in the first three
centuries of Christianity. After the reign of terror was over, it
appeared to all observers that Japanese Christianity had been stamped
out. However, 250 years later, in the 1850s, after the coercive
gunboat diplomacy of Commodore Perry forced open an offshore island
for American trade purposes, it was discovered that there were
thousands of baptized Christians in Nagasaki, living their faith in a
catacomb existence, completely unknown to the government which
immediately started another purge. But because of international
pressure, the persecutions were soon stopped, and Nagasaki
Christianity came up from the underground. And by 1917, with no help
from the government, the Japanese Christian community built the
massive St. Mary's Cathedral, in the Urakami River district of
Nagasaki.
Now it turned out, in the mystery of good and evil,
that St. Mary's Cathedral was one of the landmarks that the Bock's
Car bombardier had been briefed on, and looking through his bomb site
over Nagasaki that day, he identified the cathedral and ordered the
drop. At 11:02 am, Nagasaki Christianity was carbonized - then
vaporized - in a scorching, radioactive fireball. And so the
persecuted,, vibrant, faithful, surviving center of Japanese
Christianity became ground zero. And what the Japanese Imperial
government could not do in over 200 years of persecution, American
Christians did in 9 seconds. The entire worshiping community of
Nagasaki was wiped out.
What
can we do to prevent the next round of atrocities perpetrated by
baptized Christians: the My Lai Massacre, Auschwitz and the other
Nazi death camps, Dresden, El Mozote, Rwanda, Jonestown, the black
church bombings, the execution of innocent death row inmates, the
sanctions against Iraq that killed 500,000 children during the 1990s,
the military annihilation of Fallujah and much of the rest of Iraq
and Afghanistan, the torturing of innocents at Abu Ghraib and
Guantanamo Bay and many other international war crimes (albeit
unindited to date) perpetrated by the current "Christian"
administration of the United States. And what is to be done to
prevent the next Nagasaki?
A large portion of the
responsibility for the prevention of military atrocities like
Nagasaki lies within the organized Christian churches and whether or
not they soon start teaching and living what the radical nonviolent
Jesus taught and lived - the essence of the motto of the new movement
called;
“Every
Church A Peace Church”
This
Armageddon of destruction was later shown to be unnecessary, as the
U.S. Occupation Government allowed the medieval Japanese Emperor to
survive, and War Crimes tribunals were limited to the top leaders of
the government and the worst cases of War Crimes.
Kohl's’ purpose in
writing the essay was not to place guilt on the military crew, but to
set the record straight, and to urge the righteous Christian
communities to heed Jesus call to nonviolence, and join in a
worldwide movement called; “Every
Church a Peace Church.”
It will be an almost
impossible challenge for the CNF
Crusaders to find their way out of the Old Testament
battles to join this movement.
The
War on Communism Was Started By Hitler!
Hitler’s
Hot War to Save Europe from Communism:
“Hitler’s
mission has a world-historical significance. By taking up the fight
to the death against communism in Germany, he also created a bulwark
for other European countries…” Reich Marshal
Hermann Goering, Berlin 1934
The
Cold War was planned by Winston Churchill, John Foster Dulles, and
others before the end of WWII. In 1948, George Kennan, the head
of the Policy and Planning Staff of the State Department, advised
President Truman that:
"We
have about 50% of the world's wealth but only 6.3% of its population.
In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and
resentment. Our real test in the coming period is to devise a pattern
of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of
disparity."
George Kennan
This
led to the writing of NSC-68 and the policy of “Containment”
of the Soviet Union which was the principal strategy of our Cold War
efforts, until the USSR's collapse. The Cold War between the U.S. and
its NATO allies, and the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact lasted
almost 50 years, with the result of the buildup of a massive U.S.
Military-Industrial complex, and a worldwide Empire
of Bases, that still distorts the economy of the U.S.,
even after it’s only credible enemy collapsed almost 15 years ago.
At
the height of the Cold War Communism scare, during the McCarthy era,
Communists, Socialists, and Liberal Democrats in the Arts, and the
entertainment industry, became high profile targets. Some of their
own fellow artists became their greatest critics and persecutors,
including people like the disgusting gossip columnist Hedda Hopper;
and a man who eventually become President of the United States,
Ronald Reagan.
Reagan, John Wayne, and
other macho stars, sat out World War II in Hollywood, wearing natty
uniforms and making make believe war movies, while real Patriots like
the Liberal Clark Gable and traditional-conservative Jimmy Stewart
volunteered for service and served valiantly in combat. This was to
become a pattern with the Nationalist-Conservative
Republican War Hawks.
The
DOD awards its Cold War recognition certificate to veterans who
served between September 2, 1945 and December 26, 1991, when the
Soviet Union ceased to exist. The closest the Cold War had to a front
line was in Europe where the U.S. and NATO squared off against an
in-place mighty force of 132 Soviet-Warsaw Pact Divisions, including
32,000 tanks and about 6,000 combat aircraft. The threat was real,
but the threat of the communist economic system was virtually
non-existent, except to the Corporate world, which has a phobia
against any idea that gives power to the workers. The
Conservative-Bolshevik Soviet Union, held its allies by a combination
of economic and military domination, and collapsed primarily because
of economic, not military weakness. Some of the key events in the
Cold War included:
May 1945
Soviet
Russian Army occupies Eastern Europe, the Balkans, and half of East
Germany.
June 1947
The “Marshall Plan for
the recovery of Europe announced.
July
1947
The
“Containment” concept elaborated by George Kennan in
Foreign
Affairs became the Foreign Policy of the U.S.
June 1948
The
Berlin Airlift begins after the Russians cut off land access to
Berlin.
April 1949
North
Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) formed.
August
1949
The
Soviet Union explodes its first atomic bomb.
October 1949
The
Communist government of the People’s Republic of China
established.
January 1950
Truman
orders the development of the Hydrogen Bomb.
June 1950
The
Korean War begins with communist invasion of South Korea.
October
1952
The
U.S. explodes its first thermo-nuclear device.
July
1953
The
UN and North Korea sign an armistice agreement, producing a
cease-fire in Korea.
August
1953
The
Soviet union explodes its first thermo-nuclear device.
April
1954
President
Eisenhower formulates the “Domino Theory.”
May
1955
The
Warsaw Pact formally created as a response to NATO.
July
1956
The
U-2 Reconnaissance plane makes its first overflight of the Soviet
Union.
May
1957
NATO
adopts the Nuclear “Massive Retaliation” strategy for the
defense of Western Europe.
February
1960
France
explodes its first Atomic Bomb.
May
1960
CIA
U-2 Reconnaissance aircraft is shot down over the Soviet Union.
January
1961
Khrushchev declares
support of “Wars of National Liberation.”
August
1957
The
Soviet union launches the world’s first ICBM.
October
1957
The
Soviet Union puts “Sputnik” the world’s first
artificial
satellite into Earth orbit.
December
1957
The
first successful U.S. launch and test of an ICBM.
January
1958
The
U.S. places the satellite Explorer I into earth orbit.
April
1961
Soviet
Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin makes the first human Spaceflight.
April
1961
The
disastrous CIA-Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba fails.
August
1961
The
construction of the Berlin Wall begins.
June
1962
SECDEF
McNamara announces the “No Cities/ Counterforce” Nuclear
targeting doctrine.
October
1962
Photographic
Reconnaissance reveals Soviet Ballistic Missile sites in Cuba. The
Cuban Missile Crisis develops. USSR agrees to remove Missile sites
from Cuba in return for the removal from U.S. sites in Turkey.
August
1963
Limited
Test Ban Treaty signed by the U.S., Great Britain, and Russia. U.S.
and the Soviet Union install round-the-clock teletype hot line
between the Pentagon and the Kremlin.
October
1964
Chinese
explode a nuclear device.
February
1965
McNamara
announces a change in Nuclear Strategy from “No-Cities” to
“Assured Destruction.”
March
1966
France
withdraws its Armed forces from NATO.
January
1968
NATO
announces the “Flexible Response” strategy replacing
“Massive
Retaliation.
February
1972
President
Nixon makes first visit to China.
May
1972
SALT
I and ABM Treaties signed between U.S. and the Soviet Union.
March
1974
SECDEF
Schlesinger announces the “Limited Nuclear Options”
strategy.
April
1975
Saigon
falls to North Vietnam Forces.
December
1978
U.S.
and China establish Diplomatic Relations.
June
1978
SALT
II Treaty signed between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.
December
1979
Soviet
Union invades Afghanistan. Carter withdraws SALT II Treaty from
Senate Consideration because of Soviet invasion.
July
1980
The
Nuclear “Countervailing Strategy” announced.
January
1983
Reagan
issues directive for a rollback of Soviet power and expansion.
March
1983
Reagan
delivers the “Evil Empire” speech, and the “Star
Wars”
speech.
December
1987
U.S.
and USSR sign the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.
December
1988
Gorbachev
reverses the Brezhnev Doctrine.
November
1989
The
Fall of the Berlin Wall.
October
1991
East
and West Germany Reunify.
July
1991
Warsaw
Pact formally disbands.
July
1991
The
U.S. and USSR sign the START agreements.
December
1991
The
Soviet Union ceases to exist.
A casual examination of
these key events reveals how many times the U.S.
and USSR
Nationalist-Conservative Governments brought the world to
the brink of a Nuclear Armageddon, from which neither country would
have survived in any sense of a modern civilization. The USSR
Conservative-Bolsheviks
pursued their policy of domination of their sphere of influence; but
the U.S. was able to counter the threat very effectively, by a system
of Deterrence, Multi-Lateral International Agreements, such as the
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the political influence
of the United Nations (UN).
In the end, those nations
in the West, which practiced Liberal
Democracy, with traditions of peaceful resolution of
grievances, sane foreign leaders who followed policies of deterrence
and defensive military traditions; and whose populations enjoyed the
values of Human and Civil Rights, were able to prevail. The NFC
Republicans are fond of giving the credit for ending
the Cold War to their Nationalist-Conservative
heroes, like Reagan, and Bush Sr., but the real credit goes to the
moderate and wise National Security policies crafted by Liberal
Democrats after WWII, and patiently followed by the moderate and
centrist traditional-conservatives and traditional-liberal leaders,
and above all to the men and women who served in the Armed Forces of
the Atlantic Alliance and the American and Western European people
that paid for it all.
The lessons and the
restraints of the Cold War were immediately forgotten as soon as the
NFC Republicans
gained total control of the world’s only remaining superpower.
The
Vietnam War--of the Dominoes
“You
have this row of dominoes set up—you knock over one, and what
will
happen to the last one is the certainty it will go over very
quickly”
President
Eisenhower, to American Press, approximately 1952
What became known as the
Domino Theory
was being described in National Security and Foreign policy circles
as early as 1950. The theory held; that like a row of dominoes, if
one country (for example in Indochina) fell to communism, the next
one would do the same and so on. The military concern was real, as
the U.S. was trying to maintain the security of a string of U.S.
military bases along the coast of China, the Philippines, Taiwan,
Japan, and South Korea, to encircle the expanding Soviet Union
presence around the world.
The
Domino concept was simplistic, and failed to consider the widespread
desire of native populations to rid themselves of foreign domination.
In Vietnam, during WWII, a revolutionary resistance movement led by
Ho Chi Minh, had fought with the allies against the Japanese, and had
no intention of returning to French Colonial status. Minh was a
Communist; but he was also a pragmatic Patriot that might have led
all of Vietnam into a benign Socialist government and economy; but
the U.S. ignored his pleas for help and drove him into the arms of
the Soviets and the Chinese.
Ho Chi Minh, was a widely
popular communist revolutionary war hero; who had worked with the
U.S. Office of Strategic Services during WWII. After the Japanese
were overthrown in late 1945, he issued a Declaration
of Independence which borrowed heavily from
Declaration of the Rights of
Man, in the French revolution, and the American
Declaration of Independence. The declaration began with;
“All
men are created equal. They are endowed by their creator with certain
inalienable rights, among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of
Happiness…”
They
then listed their grievances against the French;
“They
have enforced inhuman laws… they have built more prisons than
schools. They have mercilessly slain our patriots, they have drowned
uprisings in rivers of blood. They have fettered public opinion…
They have robbed us of our rice fields, our mines, our forests, and
our raw materials… They have invented numerous unjustifiable
taxes
and reduced our people… especially our peasantry, to a state of
extreme poverty… from the end of the last year, to the beginning
of
this year… more than two million of our fellow citizens died of
starvation…The whole Vietnamese people, animated by a common
purpose, are determined to fight to the bitter end against any
attempt by the French colonialists to reconquer their country”
Howard Zinn writes; that
between October 1945 and February 1946, Ho Chi Minh wrote eight
letters to President Truman, reminding him of the “self-determination
promises” of the Atlantic Charter. Truman never
replied. Skillful diplomacy might have turned Minh and his movement
into a Social-Democratic state, but the western powers, preoccupied
with the civil war in China, and Russian expansion, decided to depend
on the French to keep Vietnam from becoming the first domino. The
English, who occupied the Southern part of Indochina, then returned
it to the French.
The U.S. recognized the
Vietnam government of the French puppet, former Emperor Boa Dai, and
Congress initially appropriated $75 million to support the French.
This grew to $1Billion, or 80% of the French war
effort. A guerrilla war was waged against the French, from 1946 until
1954, when the last French stronghold at Dien Bien Phu fell to the
North Vietnamese. At the Armistice Conference in Geneva, in 1954, the
French and the Viet Minh agreed to divide Vietnam along the 17th
parallel.
A
reunification plebiscite was planned for July 1956, but it never was
held, as the government of South Vietnam realized that it could not
win the election. With this violation of the Armistice, a Viet Cong
insurgency began in the South, aided by the north Viet Minh.
By 1961, President Kennedy
had expanded the U.S. role from a purely advisory role to a Limited
Partnership. We were getting pregnant a little at a
time. By June 1962, less than a year later, the U.S. presence had
expanded from 400 Special Forces soldiers to 6,419
U.S. soldiers, and by mid-August there were 11,412 U.S.
military personnel in Vietnam.
The
United States recruited a former Vietnamese official, Ngo Dinh Diem,
who had been living in New Jersey, as the puppet President of South
Vietnam. Diem and his cronies were installed in the government, but
Diem was a conservative Catholic, in a nation of Buddhists. Before
long Diem became increasingly unpopular. Diem eventually became an
embarrassment to the U.S., and With Kennedy’s approval, the CIA
initiated a coup with South Vietnamese Generals. On November 1, 1963,
the Generals attacked the Presidential Palace, and Diem and his
brother were assassinated. Kennedy was assassinated, a few weeks
later, and in November 1963. President Johnson was sworn in. Johnson
also succumbed to the War Hawks, and instead of finding a diplomatic
solution he greatly expanded the war.
In August 1964, President
Johnson used a murky set of events in the Gulf of Tonkin, off the
coast of Vietnam, to launch full-scale war on Vietnam. The CIA had
been engaged in a secret operation attacking North Vietnamese coastal
installations; however, Defense secretary McNamara told the American
public there was an unprovoked attack on the U.S. destroyer Maddox,
in International waters. Johnson called it “open
aggression on the high seas” The Pentagon papers
later proved that the entire incident was a hoax, and that the Tonkin
Gulf Resolution was actually drafted months in advance of the attack
that supposedly prompted it!
Senate
Debate of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, August 6/7, 1964:
“Regrettably,
I find myself in disagreement with the President’s Southeast
Asian
Policy…. The serious events of the past few days , the attack by
North Vietnamese vessels on American warships and our reprisal,
strikes me as the inevitable and foreseeable concomitant and
consequence of U.S. unilateral military aggressive policy in
Southeast Asia….. We are about to authorize the President, if he
sees fit to move our Armed Forces …. Not only into South
Vietnam,
but also into North Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, and of course
the authorization includes all the rest of the SEATO nations. That
means sending our boys into combat in a war in which we have no
business, which is not our war, into which we have been misguidedly
drawn, which is steadily being escalated. This resolution is a
further authorization for escalation unlimited. I am opposed to
sacrificing a single American boy in this venture. We have lost far
too many already…”
Senator Ernest Gruening, (D)
Alaska
Senator
Gruening was not alone;
“I
believe this resolution to be a historic mistake. I believe that
within the next century, future generations will look with dismay and
great disappointment upon a Congress which is now about to make such
a historic mistake…”
Senator Wayne Morse,
(D), Oregon
By
1968 U.S. troop strength reached its wartime peak of 536,000.
“…the
danger is, that in seeking universal peace, needlessly fearful of
change and disorder, we will in fact embroil ourselves and the world
in a whole series of Vietnams”
Bobby
Kennedy, 1968
Howard Zinn wrote that
During the war, large areas of South Vietnam were declared Free
Fire Zones, meaning that all persons; civilians,
women, children. Infants, and old people, were considered an enemy;
and bombs were dropped at will. Villages suspected of harboring Viet
Cong were subject to search
and destroy missions. This meant that all men of
military age were killed, homes burned, and women and children sent
off to refugee camps. The CIA, in a program called Operation
Phoenix, executed at least 20,000 South
Vietnamese civilians who were suspected of being members of the
communist underground. 65-70,000 people were held in
South Vietnamese prison camps, where they were beaten and tortured,
and systematically brutalized, often with American Intelligence
personnel in attendance.
“A
true revolution of values will say of war-This way of settling
differences is not just.”
‘Beyond Vietnam: A Time to
Break Silence’ delivered by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,
on April 4, 1967, at a meeting of Clergy and Laity Concerned at
Riverside Church in New York City. (One year later to the day, he was
murdered in Memphis.)
In March 1968, a company
of American soldiers went into the hamlet of My Lai. They rounded up
450-500 inhabitants, including, children, old people,
and women, some with infants in their arms. They were ordered into a
ditch, where they were methodically shot to death by American
soldiers. Their Commander, Lt. Calley was the only officer found
guilty. He was sentenced to life imprisonment, but his sentence was
reduced twice. He served three years and then President Nixon ordered
that he be released to house arrest, and then finally paroled.
(Possession of Marijuana in the U.S. regularly brings 30 year
sentences).
“Let
us be united for peace. Let us also be united against defeat, because
let us understand; North Vietnam cannot defeat or humiliate the
United States, only Americans can do that.”
Richard
M. Nixon, November 3, 1969
Fearful that the RCN
Republicans would accuse them of being soft on Communism,
and unwilling to stand up for Liberal
Democracy, Democratic Presidents Kennedy and Johnson
allowed the U.S. to become heavily involved in a war which was not
necessary or winnable; based on the theoretical Domino Theory. Today,
all of Southeast Asia is under the economic sphere of influence of
either Buddhist Capitalist Japan or Godless Communist China, and the
world political and economic system has not collapsed.
“We
are not convinced that this is the right way, that it is the right
long-term course to take. We are not sure, under the circumstances
which exist, that a conventional military victory, as commonly
defined, can be had” Clark Clifford to President Lyndon
Johnson, March 4, 1968
Lyndon Johnson and the
Conservative Democrats were guilty of escalating the war based on
false intelligence. Then to get elected; the Criminal-Conservative
Richard Nixon, promised to end the War, but secretly expanded it even
further, into Laos and Cambodia. The Democratically controlled
Congress did not find the courage to oppose the war until the entire
nation was in a virtual state of revolt.
“We
have met the enemy and he is us.” Pogo, 1971 Cartoon
strip.
In
the oval office Nixon chats with Henry Kissinger about the escalating
bombing of Vietnam and interjects that:
“I'd
rather use the nuclear bomb.”
Richard Nixon, White House Tapes,
1972
Pacifists:
“Pacifists
today hope to gain by begging, whining, and whimpering: a peace,
supported not by the palm branches of tearful, pacifist female
mourners, but based on the victorious sword of a master people,
pulling the world into the service of a higher culture.”
Adolph
Hitler, Mein Kampf
The brutal, bloody, and
futile Vietnam War, cost the American taxpayer over $150
Billion, and resulted in a total of 211,470
American Casualties, including 58,167 killed. From 1964 to
1972; seven million tons of bombs were dropped, twice the total
tonnage dropped in WWII in Europe and Asia. On the opposing side, it
is reliably estimated that 6 million Vietnamese regular
military, irregulars, and innocent civilian peasants were killed.
In
the oval office, Nixon chides Kissinger for being overly worried
about noncombatant victims:
“You're
so goddamned concerned about the civilians, and I don't give a damn.
I don't care.”
Richard
Nixon, White House Tapes, to Kissinger, 1972
On
May 4, 1970, four college demonstrators were killed by National Guard
troops during an anti-war demonstration at Kent State University. The
National Guards leaders had violated Army riot Control regulations by
issuing live ammunition to the inexperienced troops; and the troops
may have been illegally authorized to fire into the crowd. However, a
Justice Department investigation (cover-up) found no grounds for
prosecution against any of the Guardsmen or their officers.
Pretending
not to understand why there were demonstrations and riots on College
Campuses, the government appointed the Scranton Commission, which
issued its report in September 1970;
“Unless
it (the division between established society and the new youth
culture, that generates intensifying violence) is stopped, the nation
could disintegrate into near civil-war, a brutal war of each against
all.”
Unanimous
Report, Scranton Commission on Campus Unrest, Sept. 1970
The war eventually created
a permanent rift in American Society, as massive numbers of young
lower and middle class American draftees were sacrificed for a lost
cause. The NFC
Republicans have continued to blame the Liberals
and the Democratic Party for losing the Vietnam war; but they
have never been able to define what would constitute winning such a
war of attrition; which was based primarily on economic system
differences, Nationalist-Conservative pride on both sides of the Iron
Curtain, and Cold War geopolitical nonsense about the grave
consequences of Communism gaining control of all of Indochina; which
was no threat to the U.S. in any case.
The Democratic Party
leaders were guilty of not finding a legitimate and creative
diplomatic and democratic solution to the entire postwar Indo-China
problem, propping up the French, getting the U.S. involved in the war
and expanding it; and not resisting the NFC Republican urge to
attempt to Win the
war, at all costs. It took the ethically challenged
Richard Nixon, to open a dialogue with Communist China, which changed
the dynamic of U.S. Foreign Policy in the Far East.
No
Democratic Party President would have dared to make such a move,
because the Arch-Conservative War Hawk Republicans would have accused
them of appeasing the evil Communist dictators. No such charges were
made against Nixon by the Democrats.
The
Nationalist-Conservatives
of both Parties were criminally liable for the mass murders of the
Vietnam people and the waste of the lives and limb of the brave
American service personnel whose intentions and conduct; were almost
entirely honorable.
Political
Obedience Required:
“They
never understood that the strength of a political party lies by no
means in the greatest possible independent intellect of the
individual members, but rather in the disciplined obedience with
which its members follow the Intellectual leadership.”
Adolph
Hitler, Mein Kampf
Getting
Over the Vietnam Syndrome - Wage Some Small Wars!
Having learned nothing
since the tragedy of Vietnam, NFC
Republican Administrations have once again become
involved in a series of unjustified Wars on small third world
countries; always initiated by the United States. These have included
unjustified military invasions of; Granada, Nicaragua, Panama,
and Iraq in 2003.
In 1983, the U.S. invaded
the tiny island of Grenada. President Reagan, reeling from the loss
of over 200 Americans in Beirut, decided Grenada, to be a “threat
to our national security” because they were
building
an airport that would accommodate large aircraft with help from Cuba,
a sure sign of the spread of Communism in the Western Hemisphere!
A
Fantastic Lie:
“Grenada,
we were told was a friendly island paradise for tourism. Well, it
wasn’t. It was a Soviet-Cuban colony, being readied as a major
military bastion to export terror and undermine democracy. We got
there just in time…”
President Ronald Reagan,
October, 27, 1983
In 1989, the elder Bush
invaded Panama with 27,000 troops, allegedly to arrest
one drug dealer, his old pal Manuel Noriega, the country’s
President. Reliable accounts from the Red Cross and other Human
Rights organizations reported that, in addition to Panamanian
military casualties, over 3,000 innocent civilians were
massacred in a populated part of the city by U.S. troops. The U.S.
had put Noriega in power in the first place, and there is evidence
that Bush as Vice-President, had worked with Noriega to arrange the
illegal Iran-Contra Drugs for Weapons smuggling operation with Iran.
The NFC
Republican base had been chafing for years over
the return of the Panama Canal to Panama, and this satisfied their
sense of Manifest
Domination.
In 1993, the Clinton
Administration, in an alliance with NATO, intervened in the Bosnian
War, but only when it was clear that ethnic cleansing and genocide
was taking place. Hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians were
saved, and some of those guilty of Genocide
and Ethnic Cleansing were eventually brought to
justice for War Crimes by the International Criminal Court.
The |