permanent, preemptive war- a long american history

What can one say ?  A long read . A required read.

We live in the Permanent War Age. The United States’ goal is simple—one that exposes a superpower’s arrogance and monetary greed, and one that appeals to the American Dream for the majority of its citizens—world domination!

Most US Americans believe they are the best people in the world, the strongest, the bravest, owners of the Land of Opportunity. And if war is necessary to maintain that predominance, so be it—although since the 2008 capital-created economic crisis, there are some cracks in the wall.

“The War-On-Terror” script was written just a year before its terror was enthusiastically unleashed to grab all oil and gas fuel and other raw materials anywhere it could. The world’s policeman warehoused ample ammo in 800 military bases, in 131 countries. Today, the US has military bases where it never had before the fall of European socialist states, including in several new sovereign states earlier under the Soviet Union, but also in Iraq and Afghanistan, and even in Australia. It has doubled its number of bases in Colombia for a total of eight where it also has troops. It operates military war games with previous enemies in Viet Nam and Cambodia. 

The business warlord promoters, who wrote the script “to promote American global leadership” with its preeminent military forces, had founded the right-wing think tank, Project for a New American Century (PNAC), in 1997. In September 2000, the PNAC published its imperial report, “Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategies, Forces, and Resources for a New Century”. They knew it would be unpopular so they predicted that, in order for it to be accepted by sufficient numbers, a tragedy on the scale of Pearl Harbor would have to occur. Some forces complied a year later.

September 11, 2001 was the best of days for the weapons, oil and construction industries. And it fortified the relatively new service branch of professional paramilitary mercenaries into a large national killing industry. Now that the stage was set, the Permanent War Age had to be sold. We good humans must be fearful of the terrorists, and thus we will passively or actively support all the wars the various US governments render us, as we must accept their terror laws and the demise of civil and labor rights fought for and won by workers, solidarity and leftist activists, ethnic rights fighters and civil libertarians.

Former NATO Commander, U.S. General Wesley Clark told “Democracy Now”(2007) that just ten days after 9/11, the Bush regime had plans to invade as soon as possible several of 40 countries it listed as “rogue states”—Iraq, Libya, Syria, Lebanon, Somalia, Sudan and Iran. What they had in common was oil and banks not under the multinational corporation control of the Banking International Settlement (BIS) rules that benefit private capital interests. One of the empire’s fears, for example, was that Saddam Hussein had agreed with France President Jacques Chirac to switch from dollars to Euros in oil trading. Six months later oil dollar rich Bush invaded.
Despite initial hesitancy from several European governments, the Bush regime succeeded in drawing nearly all of Europe, including most Social Democrats and Socialists, into its wars. NATO’s constitution had been limited to defense but was remade, in order to allow for aggressive wars in any area of the world.

Imperial History

The first war began even before the United States gained nationhood. While still a British colony, the white colonists warred against the indigenous “Indians”, in order to take over the lands they used. Formal warring began in 1775 with the declared Chickamauga War against the Cherokee nation, the Shawnees and others. The “Indian wars” lasted for a century in which up to two million natives were murdered. Those who survived were incarcerated into “reservations”.

This war, and those to come against Latin Americans, was part of “Manifest Destiny”, ordained to “expand its territory” and “to extend and enhance its political, social and economic influences”.

The congress legalized, in 1823, the “Monroe Doctrine” as part of Manifest Destiny. Its policy towards Europe: Hands off the US’s backyard, that is, Latin America.

Of the thousands of times that US military force has been used, many countries have been subjected several times. Cuba has been attacked 12 times since 1814; Nicaragua 12 times since 1853; Panama on 13 occasions since 1856.

Although Latin America has been the most targeted, China has been attacked 30 times from 1843 “gunboat diplomacy” to 1999 when the US bombed its embassy in Yugoslavia. 

War was waged in 1798-1800 against France over its colonies in the Caribbean. Then it was Britain’s turn in 1812. The United States stole half of Mexico in 1846-8: Texas, California, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Nevada and Wyoming.

In 1933, the pensioner Marine Corp Major-General Smedley Butler explained how war is a racket.

“I spent thirty- three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country’s most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle- man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.

I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service. 

I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.”

Overt military invasions and interventions



In my research about US wars, I found many sources of facts and statistics. Some of them are from US government departments, the Congress, historians, journalists, former top killers, such as General Butler and secret service officers. Listing names and figures is boring reading but bear with me because these facts are startling.

Between 1869 and 1897, the US sent is war ships to Latin American harbors 5,980 times. That is one ship ever two days over three decades. Hundreds of these dockings resulted in killings of local workers on strike and insurgents against national governments. (1)

In a report to Congress in 2008, 330 military interventions were detailed. (2) 167 interventions from 1798 to 1941, plus 163 interventions from 1945 to 2008. Since then wars against or within Pakistan, Libya, Somalia, Yemen and Uganda must be added: 335. All these wars were aggressive. Both world wars in the 20th century are not included since they were uniquely defensive wars.

After World War Two, the United States economy was booming and its territory unscathed unlike all of Europe and Japan. Its tycoons and politicians seized the perfect opportunity to strive for world domination, albeit the Soviet Union was an obstacle as was China also soon to become. State Department chief for national security planning, George Kennan, expressed the policy succinctly in the secret Policy Planning Study of 1948:



“…We have about 50% of the world’s wealth but only 6.3% of its population. This disparity is particularly great between ourselves and the peoples of Asia. In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security. To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives. We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world-benefaction.”

 “In the face of this situation [Asiatic problems among the peoples themselves, overpopulation, lack of food, and Moscow’s luring influence. Ed. note] we would be better off to dispense now with a number of the concepts which have underlined our thinking with regard to the Far East. 
We should dispense with the aspiration to ‘be liked’ or to be regarded as the repository of a high-minded international altruism. We should stop putting ourselves in the position of being our brothers’ keeper and refrain from offering moral and ideological advice. We should cease to talk about vague and – for the Far East – unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better.” (3)

Kennan was considered by the mass media to be a “liberal dove”, just as were John Kennedy, Bill Clinton and Colin Powell, and as is Barak Obama today.

US military bases on foreign soil were used 200 times between 1945 and 1991 to intervene in third world countries. Millions were killed during the alleged Cold War period. (4)

Several analysts add to the above aggressions the use of military power as threats to force governments to do what the US demands, which succeeded without the use of bullets. This happened 218 times just between January 1946 and January 1976. (5)

The US has conducted military aggression 565 times—combining direct military attacks and lesser military interventions—between 1798 and the present; 395 of these attacks occurred since World War 11 (6) in, at least, 60 countries up to 1988. (7) The estimated numbers of persons killed in these non-defensive wars is placed at 20 million.

Of these invaded countries the US has bombarded 28 nations between the end of the Second World War and 2000. (8). Since then one must add Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and drones against Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen: 34 nations.



Covert Wars

Five hundred and sixty-five military invasions/interventions is not the whole story of state terror. We must add the covert murders under the direction of the National Security Council (NSC) with the CIA as its key killer since WW11. President Harry Truman’s National Security Council Directive 10/2 gave the NSC/CIA permission to use paramilitary forces, sniping and other forms of assassinations, create instability in economies, intervene in elections, and use other means to overthrow governments “from time to time”.

These preemptive deadly actions were ordered to be “so planned and executed that any US Government responsibility for them is not evident to unauthorized persons and that if uncovered the US Government can plausibly disclaim any responsibility for them.” (9)

Following the victory of the tenacious Vietnamese over the warrior Yankees, Congress investigated US executive use of unlawful violence against several countries and leaders. 

In 1975 and 1976, Senator Frank Church’s Committee United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities “published fourteen reports on the formation of U.S. intelligence agencies, their operations, and the alleged abuses of law and of power that they had committed, together with recommendations for reform, some of which were put in place.”



“Among the matters investigated were attempts to assassinate foreign leaders, including Patrice Lumumba of the Congo, Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic, the Diem brothers of Vietnam, Gen. René Schneider of Chile and President John F. Kennedy’s plan to use the Mafia to kill Fidel Castro of Cuba.” (10)

The Church committee found that the CIA had committed 900 large and 3,000 lesser covert and violent operations. (11)

John Stockwell, one of several CIA officers who became whistle-blowers, said, in 1990, that the CIA had completed 3,000 large and 10,000 lesser covert operations during its existence.

 Stockwell asserted that at least six million people had been murdered in the CIA’s secret wars. That would bring the figures of persons murdered overtly and covertly by the United States to 26 million by 2008—and that does not include covert murders since 1990 or the overt killings since 2008. (12) 



http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/12/25/regimen-of-permanent-wars/