- Contrary to the "catapulted propaganda",
Enron, Haditha, and Abu Ghraib were not isolated incidents or the work
of a "few bad apples". American savagery and oppressive behavior
pervades our society and predates our nation's birth. Building its patriarchal
wealth on the backs of Black slaves and cheap labor while acquiring its
territory through Native American genocide, predatory exploitation of non-Anglos,
the poor, women, and the working class emerged as a pillar of America's
socioeconomic "success" before we even declared our independence.
-
- With the advent of the Industrial Age,
transcontinental railroads, and the rapid proliferation of Capitalism,
an increasingly empowered young nation with an insatiable lust for more
land, resources, and profits began to seek prey beyond its borders. At
the close of the Nineteenth Century, the American Eagle spread its wings
as it began mimicking the rapacious behavior of its Western European ancestors.
-
- With the sun finally preparing to set
on the British Empire, the days of conquest and expansion dawned for the
nascent American Empire. Pathologically hubristic notions like Manifest
Destiny and American Exceptionalism served to dehumanize indigenous people
to justify invasion, theft and murder as acts of necessity to bring civilization
to "primitives".
-
- In his latest book, Overthrow, former
New York Times Bureau Chief Stephen Kinzer chronicles America's exploits
as an empire and imperialist nation.
-
- What is it that they are spreading?
-
- The Bush Regime's launch of the Project
for the New American Century with the invasion of Iraq was not really out
of character for the United States. While it was certainly executed with
more blatant disregard for international law than America's previous imperial
endeavors, it typifies the American sanctimonious belief that it can do
no wrong.
-
- George Bush was simply reiterating America's
long-standing mendacious rationale for its exploitative behavior when he
stated:
-
- "What I'm trying to suggest to you
that this program is a part of a strategic goal, and that is to protect
this country in the short-term and protect it in the long-term by spreading
freedom."
-
- Consider some of the freedoms the United
States is spreading:
-
- 1. Freedom to work under miserable conditions
for a pittance.
-
- 2. Freedom to exist in an environment
permeated with depleted uranium.
-
- 3. Freedom to sell precious resources
to soulless multinational corporations at garage sale prices.
-
- 4. Freedom to experience a Kafkaesque
nightmare including arrest with no charges, no trial to determine guilt
or innocence, the endurance of torture, and indefinite detention.
-
- 5. Freedom to realize the inherent inferiority
of one's culture, religion, and language, and to cast them aside like sacks
of rank-smelling garbage.
-
- 6. Freedom to be maimed or killed if
one dares to reject the "gifts" of these freedoms.
-
- America's corporate media propaganda
machine has managed to maintain a fastidiously manicured façade
for many years. Despite appearing to exist as a champion of democracy,
equality, freedom, and human rights, the reality of the United States was,
and is, that its socioeconomic and governmental systems are racist, bigoted,
ruthless and plutocratic in nature.
-
- Democracy has never existed in the United
States. A de facto aristocracy has dominated our constitutional republic
dating back to the Continental Congress. Capitalism is a brutal, pitiless
economic system that encourages and rewards greed, selfishness, exploitation,
and annihilation of the competition.
-
- Obsessed with materialism, conspicuous
consumption, convenience, physical appearance, and winning, many Americans
gorge themselves on the abundant fruits of Capitalism, oblivious to the
fact that billions of human beings live in abject poverty and misery to
make their feast possible.
-
- America is a nation of the wealthy, by
the wealthy and for the wealthy. Its ruling elite class is buttressed by
the poor and working people who have been rendered politically impotent
by the allure of conspicuous consumption (which further enriches the elite),
the illusion of democracy, and the extremely remote possibility that one
of them could be the next Bill Gates.
-
- Wearing its cloak of benevolence, America
is an abstract embodiment of the proverbial wolf in sheep's clothing. Governed
by avaricious profiteers produced and enabled by a ruthless system that
brings out the worst in humanity, the United States is a predacious nation
innocently posing as a bastion of human rights and democracy.
-
- Running out of real estate (and victims)
-
- Overthrow captures the essence of the
zeitgeist in America in the late Nineteenth Century with an apt quote from
American historian Frederick Jackson Turner:
-
- For nearly three centuries the dominant
fact in American life has been expansion. With the settlement of the Pacific
Coast and the occupation of the free lands, this movement has come to a
check. That these energies of expansion will no longer operate would be
a rash prediction; and the demands for a vigorous foreign policy, for an
inter-oceanic canal, for a revival of our power upon the seas, and for
the extension of American influence to outlying islands and adjoining countries,
are indications that the movement will continue.
-
- According to Kinzer's historical analysis,
the United States cut its imperial fangs on Mexico in the 1840's, but Hawaii
marked America's initial push beyond the North American continent. Two
American missionaries, Amos Starr Cooke and Samuel Castle zealously worked
to convert native Hawaiian "savages" into "civilized"
Christians, but eventually abandoned their missionary work for the profits
of the sugar trade. Cooke and Castle were the fathers of the White American
aristocracy in Hawaii. This group eventually came to wield powerful economic
and political influence on the islands by virtue of the huge sugar plantations
they owned. Manipulation of a pliable Hawaiian monarch whom they had educated
enabled them to engineer land reform which stripped indigenous people of
their traditional communal form of land ownership.
-
- On January 17, 1893 the Marines landed
in Hawaii with a small contingency. In a bloodless coup, the 6220 Whites
(on an archipelago populated by 41,000 native Hawaiians and 28,000 Asian
laborers) seized control of the government and appointed none other than
Sanford Dole (cousin to pineapple magnate James Dole) to lead. By 1897
the United States had formally annexed Hawaii.
-
- Remember the Maine.And a few hundred
thousand Filipinos
-
- Fueled by the mainstream media lie that
Spain had caused an explosion aboard the USS Maine, a battleship President
McKinley had dispatched to Cuba in 1898, the United States declared war
on Spain, won, and quickly acquired Puerto Rico, Cuba, and the Philippines
in the process. Despite the Teller Amendment in which Americans had promised
Cuban sovereignty, President McKinley justified American rule of Cuba through
the "law of belligerent right over conquered territory." The
Platt Amendment eventually became the US tool to give outward appearances
of Cuban autonomy without actually ceding full self-determination.
-
- Having defeated Spain in the Philippines,
Americans encountered another enemy. It seems the indigenous people were
prepared to forcefully resist their new masters. Viewing the Philippines
as crucial to its business interests in Asia, the United States fought
vigorously to retain its new colony. Sending an occupation force of 126,000
(eerily similar to the number of troops in Iraq), America suffered fewer
than 5,000 casualties. At least 16,000 Filipino troops and 250,000 civilians
were slaughtered by the United States military. Rampant and blatant atrocities
committed by American soldiers were white-washed by a compliant mainstream
media and farcical Senate hearings in which Henry Cabot Lodge justified
American torture, cruelty and murder by characterizing Filipinos as "semi-civilized
people with all the tendencies and characteristics of Asiatics."
-
- Better dead than red? Not necessarily.
-
- Throughout its history as an imperial
power, the perpetuation of United States corporate interests abroad has
been its primary motivation. However, no analysis of America's malignant
impact on the world would be complete without addressing its fixation with
crushing movements and governments showing even a hint of Socialist or
Communist tendencies.
-
- Champions of American Capitalism triumphantly
proclaim that the totalitarian and barbaric regimes of Stalin and Mao are
"absolute proof" that any socioeconomic system based on "leftist"
ideologies dooms its people to torture, despotism, and mass murder. Stalin
and Mao were indeed murderous dictators, but the evolution of their regimes
do not negate the possibility of a socioeconomic system placing a reasonable
degree of power in the hands of the working class and affording a more
equitable distribution of wealth.
-
- In fact, critical analysis reveals that
the manifestation of Capitalism in the United States has been as morally
repugnant and vicious as the regimes the champions of our system love to
cite as evil. Those believing otherwise are in deep denial.
-
- Domestically, Americans enslaved millions
(3.9 million according to the 1860 census) and committed genocide against
the millions of indigenous inhabitants whose land they stole. Aside from
the egregious crimes committed against non-Anglos at home, America's system
of Capitalism exists as the virtual antithesis of the "Communist"
systems of Mao and Stalin in terms of inhumanity. Instead of pointing its
malevolence inward on its "own", the United States has committed
its wholesale slaughter abroad (i.e. 3 million in Vietnam, hundreds of
thousands in Central America, and at least a million Iraqis, including
the victims of the Gulf War and the brutal economic sanctions). Anglo exemption
from slavery, genocide, and slaughter explains why American Capitalism
has outlasted the "Communism" of Russia and China.
-
- Portrait of a truly ugly American
-
- Kinzer devotes a chapter of Overthrow
to former Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, who could easily have
been the poster-child for American Capitalism and its inherent hypocrisy
and malevolence. Dulles easily warrants his own chapter. He exerted tremendous
influence on US foreign policy throughout the Cold War and orchestrated
a number of the interventions detailed in Overthrow.
-
- Kinzer writes of Dulles (who in private
life had been a highly successful attorney representing multinational corporations
for the firm of Sullivan & Cromwell):
-
- "He had been shaped by three powerful
influences: a uniquely privileged upbringing, a long career advising the
world's richest corporations, and a profound religious father. His deepest
values, beliefs, and instincts were those for the international elite in
which he had spent his life."
-
- "According to the most exhaustive
book about Sullivan & Cromwell, the firm thrived on its cartels and
collusion with the new Nazi regime, and Dulles spent much of 1934 publicly
supporting Hitler.Soon after World War II ended, Dulles found in Communism
the evil he had been so slow to find in Nazism."
-
- Out of the frying pan.
-
- In Overthrow, Kinzer does more than simply
detail the horrific consequences to the victims of America's imperial interventions.
He also reminds us of the self-destructive nature of America's foreign
policy. Perhaps the most timely and poignant example is that of Iran.
-
- In 1951, Mohammad Mossadegh became Iran's
democratically elected prime minister. To alleviate the abject poverty
of many of his people, he quickly moved to nationalize the oil industry
to utilize the profits to benefit Iranians. The British, who had significant
oil interests in Iran, raised serious objections to Mossadegh's actions
despite the obscene oil profits they had made over the years in Iran, his
offer to compensate them for the oil infrastructure they had built, and
the British government's recent nationalization of its own coal and steel
industries.
-
- While the existence of the Soviet Union
as a rival world power precluded the use of direct military intervention
by the United States, John Foster Dulles contrived a plan to crush the
Socialist "ambitions" of Mossadegh. Disseminating propaganda
through America's mainstream media (including the New York Times and Time
Magazine) which portrayed Mossadegh as a Communist while simultaneously
utilizing the CIA to create a subversive environment in Iran, the United
States succeeded in toppling Mossadegh and replacing him with the Shah
of Iran. Representing US and Western business interests with great enthusiasm
until he was deposed by radical Islamic elements in 1979, the Shah ruled
Iran autocratically. SAVAK, his intelligence agency, tortured and murdered
thousands of Iranian dissidents.
-
- Like Hugo Chavez is in Venezuela, Mossadegh
was anathema to American Capitalism. Leaders of developing countries who
threaten the flow of capital to the Empire by diverting it to their own
people quickly become enemies of the United States. The irony is that the
replacement rulers America installs to preserve its economic interests
are almost always corrupt and murderous dictators who foster deep hatred
of the United States. Ultimately, Washington finds itself grappling with
reactionary regimes which are overtly hostile to the United States, like
the current leadership in Iran.
-
- Like a good neighbor
-
- Kinzer devotes several chapters of Overthrow
to America's numerous interventions in Central and South America over the
last century. Virtually all were launched to protect American corporate
interests by crushing Leftist governments and installing business friendly
despots like Pinochet in Chile. Corporations like the United Fruit Company
and presidents like Ronald Reagan were responsible for the deaths of hundreds
of thousands of Hispanics throughout Central America.
-
- Let them burn
-
- Kinzer also provides an enlightening
analysis of the Vietnam debacle. In contrast to the tissues of lies propagated
by America's media and textbook authors, Ho Chi Minh was not a threat to
US interests. He was too busy striving for independence from Japan while
facing recolonization by France. Neither China nor the Soviet Union (the
"Communist" powers the ruling elite of the United States professed
to fear so greatly because of their "conspiracy to spread Communism"),
was interested in aligning themselves with Minh because of his nationalism.
-
- When Ho Chi Minh spoke to a large group
of supporters in Hanoi in 1945, he stated these subversive "Communist
principles":
-
- "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."
-
- Minh greatly admired the United States
and even appealed to the American government for help.
-
- America ignored Minh's pleas for help.
Instead, the United States chose to take up where France left off and go
to war with him. It also chose to support Ngo Dinh Diem as the leader of
South Vietnam. Diem was a rotten human being and surrounded himself with
family members whose corruption and inhumanity exceeded his own.
-
- When Buddhist leaders led popular protests
against the aristocratic and authoritarian rule of Diem and his family,
Thich Quang Duc, a revered bodhisattva, burned himself to death at a busy
Saigon intersection on June 11, 1963.
-
- New York Times reporter David Halberstam
witnessed the event and wrote:
-
- "I was to see that sight again,
but once was enough. Flames were coming from a human being; his body was
slowly withering and shriveling up, his head blackening and charring. In
the air was the smell of burning human flesh; human beings burn surprisingly
quickly. Behind me I could hear the sobbing of the Vietnamese who were
now gathering. I was too shocked to cry, too confused to take notes or
ask questions, too bewildered to even think.... As he burned he never moved
a muscle, never uttered a sound, his outward composure in sharp contrast
to the wailing people around him."
-
- Madame Nhu, a member of the Diem ruling
family responded to the protest by quipping:
-
- "Let them burn. We shall clap our
hands."
-
- She was one of America's proxies in Vietnam.
What does that say about the United States?
-
- A pattern emerges.
-
- Afghanistan and Iraq are not aberrations
in United States foreign policy. Bush and his Neocons are not "a few
bad apples". They may be more malevolent than their predecessors,
but they are not the first to advance American corporate and plutocratic
interests through lies, propaganda, invasion, and flagrant crimes against
humanity. America's socioeconomic system has engendered and reinforced
such pathological behavior for years.
-
- In Cannery Row, Steinbeck's Doc concluded:
-
- "The things we admire in men, kindness
and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding, and feeling, are the
concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness,
greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism, and self-interest, are the traits
of success."
-
- In America, the inmates truly run the
asylum.
-
- Stephen Kinzer's Overthrow, rife with
well-researched examples of America's imperial conquests from Mexico to
Iraq, further validates the assertion many other writers and I have been
making for some time now. While manifestations of the dark side of human
nature are inevitable aspects of human civilization, the American Way requires
its dedicated adherents to commit their lives to cruelty and inhumanity.
If human civilization is to survive, we need to collectively reject this
abominable mandate.
-
- Jason Miller is a 39 year old sociopolitical
essayist with a degree in liberal arts and an extensive self-education
(derived from an insatiable appetite for reading). He is a member of Amnesty
International and an avid supporter of Oxfam International and Human Rights
Watch. He welcomes responses at willpowerful@hotmail.com or comments on
his blog, Thomas Paine's Corner, at http://civillibertarian.blogspot.com/.
-
|