Friends, as the U.S. crows about killing Osama Bin Laden and Americans dance in the street, keep in mind the following brief history of American involvement in war since the Korean War began.
It was written by Zoltan Grossman and the link to the original article is shown at the bottom of this post. If you use the link, you’ll see that he also presents a link to an atlas of the deaths estimated to have been caused from 1950 up to the end of the century and beyond. Also he has more to say about the U.S. than I have included in the excerpt.
As you read through the various events below, keep in mind the number of casualties, civilian and military, that America has caused during this period to say nothing of the injuries (two million deaths in Vietnam alone).
It puts the 3,000 deaths from 9/11 (said to have been planned by Osama) into some form of perspective.
“The war in Korea (1950-53) was marked by widespread atrocities, both by North Korean/Chinese forces, and South Korean/U.S. forces. U.S. troops fired on civilian refugees headed into South Korea, apparently fearing they were northern infiltrators. Bombers attacked North Korean cities, and the U.S. twice threatened to use nuclear weapons. North Korea is under the same Communist government today as when the war began.
During the Middle East crisis of 1958, Marines were deployed to quell a rebellion in Lebanon, and Iraq was threatened with nuclear attack if it invaded Kuwait. This little-known crisis helped set U.S. foreign policy on a collision course with Arab nationalists, often in support of the region’s monarchies.
In the early 1960s, the U.S. returned to its pre-World War II interventionary role in the Caribbean, directing the failed 1961 Bay of Pigs exile invasion of Cuba, and the 1965 bombing and Marine invasion of the Dominican Republic during an election campaign. The CIA trained and harbored Cuban exile groups in Miami, which launched terrorist attacks on Cuba, including the 1976 downing of a Cuban civilian jetliner near Barbados. During the Cold War, the CIA would also help to support or install pro-U.S. dictatorships in Iran, Chile, Guatemala, Indonesia, and many other countries around the world.
The U.S. war in Indochina (1960-75) pit U.S. forces against North Vietnam, and Communist rebels fighting to overthrow pro-U.S. dictatorships in South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. U.S. war planners made little or no distinction between attacking civilians and guerrillas in rebel-held zones, and U.S. “carpet-bombing” of the countryside and cities swelled the ranks of the ultimately victorious revolutionaries. Over two million people were killed in the war, including 55,000 U.S. troops. Less than a dozen U.S. citizens were killed on U.S. soil, in National Guard shootings or antiwar bombings. In Cambodia, the bombings drove the Khmer Rouge rebels toward fanatical leaders, who launched a murderous rampage when they took power in 1975.
Echoes of Vietnam reverberated in Central America during the 1980s, when the Reagan administration strongly backed the pro-U.S. regime in El Salvador, and right-wing exile forces fighting the new leftist Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Rightist death squads slaughtered Salvadoran civilians who questioned the concentration of power and wealth in a few hands. CIA-trained Nicaraguan Contra rebels launched terrorist attacks against civilian clinics and schools run by the Sandinista government, and mined Nicaraguan harbors. U.S. troops also invaded the island nation of Grenada in 1983, to oust a new military regime, attacking Cuban civilian workers (even though Cuba had backed the leftist government deposed in the coup), and accidentally bombing a hospital.
The U.S. returned in force to the Middle East in 1980, after the Shi’ite Muslim revolution in Iran against Shah Pahlevi’s pro-U.S. dictatorship. A troop and bombing raid to free U.S. Embassy hostages held in downtown Tehran had to be aborted in the Iranian desert. After the 1982 Israeli occupation of Lebanon, U.S. Marines were deployed in a neutral “peacekeeping” operation. They instead took the side of Lebanon’s pro-Israel Christian government against Muslim rebels, and U.S. Navy ships rained enormous shells on Muslim civilian villages. Embittered Shi’ite Muslim rebels responded with a suicide bomb attack on Marine barracks, and for years seized U.S. hostages in the country. In retaliation, the CIA set off car bombs to assassinate Shi’ite Muslim leaders. Syria and the Muslim rebels emerged victorious in Lebanon.
Elsewhere in the Middle East, the U.S. launched a 1986 bombing raid on Libya, which it accused of sponsoring a terrorist bombing later tied to Syria. The bombing raid killed civilians, and may have led to the later revenge bombing of a U.S. jet over Scotland. Libya’s Arab nationalist leader Muammar Qaddafi remained in power. The U.S. Navy also intervened against Iran during its war against Iraq in 1987-88, sinking Iranian ships and “accidentally” shooting down an Iranian civilian jetliner.
U.S. forces invaded Panama in 1989 to oust the nationalist regime of Manuel Noriega. The U.S. accused its former ally of allowing drug-running in the country, though the drug trade actually increased after his capture. U.S. bombing raids on Panama City ignited a conflagration in a civilian neighborhood, fed by stove gas tanks. Over 2,000 Panamanians were killed in the invasion to capture one leader.
The following year, the U.S. deployed forces in the Persian Gulf after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, which turned Washington against its former Iraqi ally Saddam Hussein. U.S. supported the Kuwaiti monarchy and the Muslim fundamentalist monarchy in neighboring Saudi Arabia against the secular nationalist Iraq regime. In January 1991, the U.S..and its allies unleashed a massive bombing assault against Iraqi government and military targets, in an intensity beyond the raids of World War II and Vietnam. Up to 200,000 Iraqis were killed in the war and its imemdiate aftermath of rebellion and disease, including many civilians who died in their villages, neighborhoods, and bomb shelters. The U.S. continued economic sanctions that denied health and energy to Iraqi civilians, who died by the hundreds of thousands, according to United Nations agencies. The U.S. also instituted “no-fly zones” and virtually continuous bombing raids, yet Saddam was politically bolstered as he was militarily weakened.
In the 1990s, the U.S. military led a series of what it termed “humanitarian interventions” it claimed would safeguard civilians. Foremost among them was the 1992 deployment in the African nation of Somalia, torn by famine and a civil war between clan warlords. Instead of remaining neutral, U.S. forces took the side of one faction against another faction, and bombed a Mogadishu neighborhood. Enraged crowds, backed by foreign Arab mercenaries, killed 18 U.S. soldiers, forcing a withdrawal from the country.
Other so-called “humanitarian interventions” were centered in the Balkan region of Europe, after the 1992 breakup of the multiethnic federation of Yugoslavia. The U.S. watched for three years as Serb forces killed Muslim civilians in Bosnia, before its launched decisive bombing raids in 1995. Even then, it never intervened to stop atrocities by Croatian forces against Muslim and Serb civilians, because those forces were aided by the U.S. In 1999, the U.S. bombed Serbia to force President Slobodan Milosevic to withdraw forces from the ethnic Albanian province of Kosovo, which was torn a brutal ethnic war. The bombing intensified Serbian expulsions and killings of Albanian civilians from Kosovo, and caused the deaths of thousands of Serbian civilians, even in cities that had voted strongly against Milosevic. When a NATO occupation force enabled Albanians to move back, U.S. forces did little or nothing to prevent similar atrocities against Serb and other non-Albanian civilians. The U.S. was viewed as a biased player, even by the Serbian democratic opposition that overthrew Milosevic the following year.
Even when the U.S. military had apparently defensive motives, it ended up attacking the wrong targets. After the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa, the U.S. “retaliated” not only against Osama Bin Laden’s training camps in Afghanistan, but a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan that was mistakenly said to be a chemical warfare installation. Bin Laden retaliated by attacking a U.S. Navy ship docked in Yemen in 2000. After the 2001 terror attacks on the United States, the U.S. military is poised to again bomb Afghanistan, and possibly move against other states it accuses of promoting anti-U.S. “terrorism,” such as Iraq and Sudan. Such a campaign will certainly ratchet up the cycle of violence, in an escalating series of retaliations that is the hallmark of Middle East conflicts. Afghanistan, like Yugoslavia, is a multiethnic state that could easily break apart in a new catastrophic regional war.
Almost certainly more people would lose their lives in this tit-for-tat war on “terrorism” than the 3,000 civilians who died on September 11.”
Friends, there are two sides to every coin. I thank Zoltan for this excellent summary of American warmongering over many decades with no end in sight and he didn’t even mention Iraq, Yemen, Pakistan, etc.
The millions it has slaughtered and injured make Osama look like a choirboy! Yet it talks constantly about working towards peace while it spends trillions on armaments!
http://academic.evergreen.edu/g/grossmaz/interventions.html
We truly are “exceptional”, aren’t we?
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The American idiots expect the enlightened of the world to believe they murdered OBL now, who most certainly passed away several years ago. Such a declaration at this moment seems very sinister and indicates that some major diabolical plans are being hatched by the US, especially given that it is Armies of Terror are stretched very thin, being engaged now in multiple wars simultaneously.
Then again, pompous declarations of OBL’s death are irrelevant to the ground realities of the struggles of the Muslims world against their oppressors. Sure while the fat, ugly, loud, Americans munching on burgers, hotdogs & fries will rejoice, the Muslims will mourn, but their resistance will continue without OBL.
We must not obsess about OBL as the struggle of the Muslim world was not his alone. The Western media over-hyped, exploited and tarnished his name to suit their needs (first he was a Hero and then a Terrorist), spreading their lies & propaganda & giving their ignorant blood-thirsty public someone to hate.
But as long as their are brave, courageous people with a shred of dignity, the struggle of the Muslims against western oppression will continue.
I would recommend you and your readers to view this very informative article http://legalienate.blogspot.com/2011/05/osama-bin-laden-real-story.html . It gives a fairly accurate description of the motivations of a man who stood up to combined might & evil of the Zio-American Empire.
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There is no proof whatsoever that bin Laden was behind 9/11. He most likely was killed during the bombing of the al-Qaida training camp in Afghanistan years ago. Something is up with the IsraeloAmerican war machine; more false flag operations as “revenge” for “the killing of Osama bin Laden” ? I shudder to think of what is next with these homicidal maniacs.
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I would bet that the vast majority of americans have not even the most remote idea of the extent of the death and destruction america has caused starting the day it was “discovered”. If they were to learn about it they would refuse to beleive it.
But reality is catching up with them. They are starting to realise that just maybe things are not going so good. So now, just in time, the government caught the biggest and worst of the “bad guys”. Convient.
This will inflame his followers, cause more death and destruction on a small scale which will give the US the support to cause massive amounts of damage in the name of peace.
Will it never end!
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joebanana Reply:
May 3rd, 2011 at 2:27 pm
Not all of us are idiots, and we know all too well the pure evil of our terrorist government. The problem we face is it’s too big, and out of control. The only negotiations they understand is violence. Yes our government is an arrogant criminally insane cartel, and yes, most American’s are stuck on stupid, but they’re slowly waking up to the facts of what a truly horrible government we have. The term “axis of evil” is a fitting term. We’ve had our constitutional rights stripped by this tyranny, we’re no better than early Nazi Germany, and people are afraid of the repercussions of confronting the evil head on. They now, torture, kidnap, confine indefinitely, on no charges, raid our homes, kill our dogs, throw grandma on the floor and stand on her head with an AK-47 in her ear, that’s what we’re dealing with here, and could use some help.
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Jeannie Reply:
May 3rd, 2011 at 11:37 pm
I did not say that all of us were evil or stupid just that a great many are. The belief that america is a “shining city on a hill’ is so much a part of how we think of ourselves (how we have been taught/programed to think of ourselves) that most do not stop to really think about our actions, about how they might be seen differently by others.
For too many americans the evil of our terrorist government is a public option for health care, government support for the poor or any social program that helps anyone they do not consider worthy. Support for our terrorist military is very high.
I live in a very conservative/republican area of the country and the evil I see is not the same one they and many others see.
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They keelled heeem ded and then they happened to dump his body in the OCEAN.
This government is a dark dramedy. Bubbling, toxic, killing machine
A wicked warlock and the ocean is his cauldron: You take oil and corexit and you mix it with cessium 137 and a bunch of othr plutonium and things and then you add an Osama Bin laden hehehehehehehehehe
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David,
I was watching the Philadelphia Phillies/New York Mets baseball game last night on TV. When the news spread that bin Laden was “dead” 45,000 morons in the stadium started chanting “USA!!” “USA!!”
Stupid is as stupid does.
These are the idiots I live with. These are the idiots that are “superior” to the rest of the world.
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76-water Reply:
May 3rd, 2011 at 6:07 am
Hey Buddy, I am with ya!!! Just how stupid, nieve, and ignorant are the masses we live in? “There’s got to be some kind of way out of here said the Joker to the Thief”. What false-flag hell have they got planned now? America, the biggest insane asylum in the world. Watch your step and keep your seatbelt on. The other shoe should drop shortly.
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Jeff Reply:
May 4th, 2011 at 3:05 am
I suppose I shouldn’t be too hard on those idiots, they don’t know any better. Morpheus explains this in the movie “The Matrix.”
“…most of these people are not ready to be unplugged.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vblJ6RF7rM&feature=related
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Yippee!! Obama has just carried out an extra-judicial execution, which is a violation of human rights. Extrajudicial execution is when the state kills someone without proper due process. It is often forgotten that one of the longest running campaigns of “extrajudicial executions” was that of lynching in the United States. For half a century, it was common place in much of the country for mobs of whites to hang African Americans for merely breaching the social etiquette of the times. Afterwards, none of the participants would be punished in any way.
Extrajudicial executions are almost universally considered as a human rights violation. However, many states continue the practice, either in secret or else justifying it as necessary. The most common justification is that the state is in a state of emergency, and that the killings are necessary because the judiciary is weak, slow, or corrupt. These excuses are disregarded by human rights organizations in almost all cases.(See Articles 1, 6 & 7 of the UNDHR. Also the US constitutional right to due process).
Extrajudicial executions are most often practiced in countries where the leaders of the state have authoritarian leanings, but the state is not strong enough for the use of formal methods. It also happens when the judiciary so opposes the would-be authoritarians that they will not allow the kinds of executions those in charge want.
On the other hand, “extra-judicial executions” are also common in states where the centralized power is very weak. The closer a state is to ochlocracy, the greater the chances of extrajudicial executions.
Note how he waited to ensure that the DNA panned out before announcing the ‘kill’. If they had got the wrong man there would have been silence. Not even an Oopsie!
It is by no means clear that OBL knew of the planned attack on 9/11. He took credit for itv afterwards, but given the cell-like structure of Al Qaeda, cells were free to plan and execute operations without central authorization. Would he have been convicted in a fair trial? Noam Chomsky says that the answer to 9/11 was effective police work, not bombing Afghanistan and Iraq. The perpetrators should have been brought to justice, proper justice, not extra-judicial execution. Now we’ll never know what those Israelis were doing cheering on the sidewalk as the planes hit the Twin Towers. Was he executed because a fair trial would have opened up the activities of Mossad?
Thus it is that the most powerful military state on earth subsides into fascist barbarism. And the people cheer! How sick is that?
BtW I red somewhere that the USA is responsible, directly or indirectly, for 20 million deaths since WW2. I asked William Blum about this, and he couldn’t confirm it. Anybody have a source for such a figure? I read it in the 90′s.
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First of all, bull. They didn’t kill him. It’s amazing how the American sheeple, after everything we’ve been through, still continue to believe every line fed to them by these overlords.
Why would you dump his body in the ocean? Why wouldn’t they keep it as proof? Why wouldn’t you have it plastered all over CNN, Fox, etc? Dumping the body is a very convenient lie.
Secondly, even if they did kill him, does that make up for almost a million people dead or displaced in the middle east, not to mention the erasing of our Constitutional rights here at home? The Patriot Act? The Department of Homeland Security? Militaristic security at our airports? Passports to get to Canada? Big Brother watching us from cameras on every street corner? You’re gonna tell me killing one old man in the desert is gonna make up for all this?
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Come on people, everything doesn’t have to be a conspiracy. You don’t think they made damn sure it was Bin Laden before shouting it from the rooftops to everyone else? It would be the most embarassing moment in history if Bin Laden popped up in one of his videos in a few days time alive and well. They would have taken video and photographic evidence as well as DNA swipes to be certain it was him. They offered his body to Saudi Arabia and Yemen who didn’t want it so they buried him at sea so his grave doesn’t become a shrine and there is not a potential massacre at his funeral. You should be celebrating that there is one less mass murderer on the planet and as much as it may stick in your collective craws, praise the American Special Forces this one time for a job well done.
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drmnys Reply:
May 3rd, 2011 at 12:51 pm
The only ‘mass murderers’ on the planet are America politicians, military personnel and those that support them. The whole world will celebrate when they are hunted down and exterminated like the rabid animals that they are.
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The entire affair smacks of an orchestrated media event, purely for political means, instigated by Obama’s handlers. Its all just a little too convenient: he was killed rather than be brought to justice despite there being minimal resistance from his protectors, his body was dumped at sea (already?!) supposedly so that there wouldn’t be a ‘shrine’ for nutcases to worship (bullsh*t), there are no witnesses to his death other than US forces, Obama’s popularity is dismal and he’s gearing up for another election campaign (co-incidence?), ….and on and on it goes.
Something smells and I for one feel very ineasy about where this might be heading. With a debt of over $14 trillion (that’s trillion) they’re apt to do just about anything to get themselves out of the sh*t. Look out, rest of the planet. I fear some US ‘lashing out’ is about to start happening.
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Thanks for all the comments which seem to indicate a majority of people see the event as rather tawdry, rather sinister, rather Big Brotherish.
It was obvious that capturing Osama and bringing him to trial wasn’t on the agenda of the hit-squad. It was also obvious that the group in the White House who watched the assassination taking place are clearly psychopaths who revel in seeing killing carried out by the ‘brave, heroic’ Americans.
More of the world is waking up to the American reality. It’s about time.
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Sure they killed him. It was the inevitable end, given the path that he chose. But who put him on that path? Our oil-soaked meddling in the Middle East started decades ago, and continues today. What he did was wrong, but we were wrong first and still are. As far as repercussions go, I think we’re asking for them.
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David G Reply:
May 3rd, 2011 at 1:02 pm
Pam, thanks for your comment. Most Americans don’t seem to be aware that what successive Governments have done over decades has put them in an invidious position, one that invites retaliation and vengeance.
Will this reality never sink in?
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joebanana Reply:
May 3rd, 2011 at 2:45 pm
Please don’t lump “all American’s” into a single group of idiots. Although, the majority do seem real slow, and are, some of us are ready willing and able to confront the evil cartel that’s infiltrated our nation, right after Dancing with the Stars, and American Idol, we’ll get right on it.
See, we face a very different set of circumstances with the new regime. They no longer follow the rule of law, constitutional rights are out the window, they are a true criminal cartel, with military power. once we amass enough manpower, we will overtake the evil in our ranks, it just takes time, and lots of beer, and video games, and dancing girls, and boom shaka laka laka, ya know what I mean?
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More US governmental bull siht. We’re sorry our “president” is such a liar, we keep hoping he’ll get better, not at lying, but less of it. But, recent developments have proven he’ll never get better. In fact he’s gotten worse. The birth certificate fraud, the Bin Laden lie, everybody knows it takes days for DNA results, and, 5 hours is extremely impossible. And the finger print and facial recognition, and dental records evidence is wholly ridiculous. Where would the government get current dental, finger print, and photo’s? Come on all ready.
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David G Reply:
May 3rd, 2011 at 3:26 pm
Joe, loved your comments. There is such irony in them. And truth. Would you consider running for President?
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ah well, it takes our minds off the radiation circling the sky and polluting the seas……….
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So true coco. i for one, think he was living in Pakistan in that nice neighborhood and died a natural death and THEN they handed him over and made a deal for a burial at sea. He was a CIA creation. Its all smoke and mirrors. And about those DNA autopsies that take weeks…
AND about USA the EXTRAJUDICIAL KILLER OF BAD GUYS Gulp, Yikes!
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forming a second political party which wld stand antipodally to the present political party offers us the best chance to end once for all time present iniquitous structure of society and governance.
i am hoping that chinese communist or communists-socialists-egalitarians are now building a more or much more an egalitarian society.
tnx
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David G Reply:
May 14th, 2011 at 11:08 am
Boz, welcome! Sacking the two political parties in America would be a good move. Neither of them are worth a cent! But what would replace them is the worry.
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