The pursuing is a talk given by William Blum at a teach-in happening The States nonnative policy at the Dry land University in Washington, Direct current, on Sep 6, 2014.
Each of you I'm sure has met many people who support North American country strange policy, with whom you've argued and argued. You point out nonpareil horror after another, from Vietnam to Irak. From god-awful bombings and invasions to violations of international law and torture. And nothing helps. Nothing moves this person.
Now wherefore is that? Are these people just stupid? I think a healthier answer is that they have reliable preconceptions. Consciously Beaver State unconsciously, they take over sure as shooting elementary beliefs about the United States and its foreign policy, and if you get into't deal with these first beliefs you may equally comfortably embody talking to a stone wall.
The nigh basic of these basic beliefs, I think, is a deeply-held conviction that no matter what the United States does beyond the sea, nobelium matter how mischievous it Crataegus laevigata flavour, disregardless what repulsion Crataegus laevigata result, the governance of the America means well. American English leaders may make mistakes, they whitethorn blunder, they May lie, they may even on the odd occasion causal agent more harm than good, merelythey do meanspirited well. Their intentions are always noble, flatbottom noble. Of that the great majority of Americans are certain.
Frances Fitzgerald, in her famous subject field of Ground school textbooks, summarized the message of these books: "The U.S.A has been a large-hearted of Salvation Army to the rest of the world: passim history IT had done little but dispense benefits to poor, ignorant, and unhealthy countries. The U.S. always acted in a fair fashion, always from the highest of motives; it gave, never took."
And Americans genuinely wonder wherefore the lie of the world can't see how benevolent and person-sacrificing United States of America has been. Even many an people who take part in the opposed-state of war movement have a hard clock shaking off whatever of this mindset; they border to spur America – the America they love and worship and trust – they butt o to spur this noble US back onto its path of good.
Many of the citizens fall for US government propaganda justifying its military actions as often and as naively as Charlie Brunet dropping for Lucy's football.
The American the great unwashe are much like the children of a Sicilian Mafi boss who do not know what their Father of the Church does for a bread and butter, and don't want to bang, then again wonder wherefore someone just threw a firebomb through and through the parlour window.
This basic feeling in America's good intentions is ofttimes linked to "American exceptionalism". Let's look at how especial United States foreign insurance has been. Since the end of World War 2, the United States has:
1. Attempted to derangement more than 50 foreign governments, most of which were democratically-elected.
2. Dropped bombs on the people of to a higher degree 30 countries.
3. Attempted to assassinate more 50 foreign leaders.
4. Attempted to suppress a populist operating room nationalistic movement in 20 countries.
5. Grossly interfered in democratic elections in at least 30 countries.
6. Led the Earth in torture; not exclusive the torture performed directly by Americans upon foreigners, but providing torture equipment, torture manuals, lists of people to be tortured, and in-person guidance aside American teachers, particularly in Latin America.
This is indeed exceptional. No early country in all of history comes anyplace close to much a record.
So the next time you'rhenium ascending against a Harlan Stone bulwark … inquire the person what the U.S. government would rich person to do in its foreign insurance policy to suffer his support. What for this person would finally be TOO Untold. If the person mentions something really bad, chances are the United States has already through it, peradventure repeatedly.
Keep in mind that our precious fatherland, above all, seeks to dominate the world. For economic reasons, nationalistic reasons, ideological, Christian, and for other reasons, world hegemony has long been America's fathom tune. And let's non forget the powerful Executive Branch officials whose salaries, promotions, agency budgets and future well-profitable private sector jobs hinge upon lasting war. These leadership are not especially concerned about the consequences for the human beings of their wars. They'rhenium not necessarily bad multitude; merely they're amoral, like a sociopath is.
Take the Middle East and South Asia. The people in those areas have suffered horribly because of Islamic fundamentalism. What they urgently necessitate are secular governments, which have respect for different religions. And such governments were in reality instituted in the recent past. But what has been the fate of those governments?
Symptomless, in the late 1970s through much of the 1980s, Afghanistan had a layman government that was relatively progressive, with overflowing rights for women, which is hard to believe, isn't it? But yet a Pentagon report of the metre testified to the actuality of women's rights in Afghanistan. And what happened to that government? The America overthrew it, allowing the Taliban to touch power. So keep that in nou the next time you hear an American official tell that we stimulate to remain in Afghanistan for the sake of women's rights.
After Afghanistan came Al-Iraq, another layperson society, below Saddam Hussein. And the United States overthrew that politics as well, and straight off the country is overproduction by crazed and bloodthirsty jihadists and fundamentalists of all kinds; and women World Health Organization are not covered up are running a serious risk.
Next came Libya; again, a secular nation, under Moammar Gaddafi, who, like Saddam Hussein Hussein, had a tyrant side to him but could in weighty ways be benevolent and do marvelous things for Libya and Africa. To name just unrivaled example, Libya had a high ranking connected the United Nation's Anthropomorphous Development Index. So, of course, the United States overthrew that government as well. In 2011, with the help of NATO we bombed the people of Libya near every day for more than sextet months. And, once again, this light-emitting diode to savior jihadists having a field twenty-four hour period. How it will all turn out for the the great unwashe of Libya, only God knows, or perhaps Allah.
And for the ultimo three years, the United States has been doing its best to overthrow the secular government of Syria. And hazard what? Syria is now a playground and battleground for all personal manner of radical militant fundamentalists, including everyone's new favorite, IS, the Islamic State. The rise of IS owes much to what the United States of America has done in Iraq, Libya, and Syria in Holocene years.
We can add to this marvelous list the causa of the former Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, another lay government that was overthrown by the United States, in the imprint of NATO, in 1999, giving rise to the creative activity of the mostly-Muslim submit of Kosovo, run by the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). The KLA was well-advised a terrorist organization by the US, the UK and France for age, with numerous reports of the KLA beingness armed and trained by Qaeda, in al-Qaeda camps in West Pakistan, and even having members of al-Qaeda in KLA ranks war-ridden against the Serbs of Yugoslavia. Washington's main concern was dealings a blow to Serbia, wide known A "the utmost communist government in Europe".
The KLA became renowned for their torture, their trafficking in women, diacetylmorphine, and human body parts; another wizardly client of the empire.
Someone looking down upon all this from outer space could be forgiven for thinking that the United States is an Moslem power doing its best to scatter the word – Allah Akbar!
But what, you power wonder, did each of these overthrown governments have in common that ready-made them a target of Washington's wrath? The resolution is that they could non easy be controlled away the empire; they refused to be client states; they were patriotic; in a word, they were indie; a serious crime in the eyes of the empire.
So mention every this every bit well to our hypothetic supporter of US foreign policy and see whether he still believes that the US means well. If he wonders how long IT's been this way, remark to him that it would be difficult to diagnose a single brutal dictatorship of the moment incomplete of the 20th Hundred that was non supported by the United States; non solely supported, merely often put into power and kept in power against the wishes of the population. And in recent years likewise, Washington has supported very repressive governments, such as Saudi Arabia, Honduras, Indonesia, Egypt, Colombia, Qatar, and Israel.
And what do Dry land leaders think about their own record? Former Foreign minister Condoleezza Rice was probably talking for the unanimous private club of our foreign-policy leadership when she wrote in 2000 that in the pursuit of its national security the Allied States no longer needed to Be guided by "notions of international law and norms" or "institutions like the United Nations" because America was "on the satisfactory side of history."
Let me cue you of Daniel Ellsberg's conclusion about the America in Vietnam: "Information technology wasn't that we were on the wrong lateral;we were the wrong side."
Well, far from being happening the right pull of history, we wealthy person in fact fought – I tight really engaged in warfare – happening the same side Eastern Samoa atomic number 13 Qaeda and their issue on several occasions, beginning with Afghanistan in the 1980s and 90s in defend of the IslamicMoujahedeen, or Holy Warriors.
The U.S. then gave military assistance, including bombing reinforcement, to Bosnia and Kosovo, both of which were being endorsed by al Qaeda in the Yugoslav conflicts of the early 1990s.
In Libya, in 2011, Washington and the Jihadists shared a common enemy, Qaddafi, and as mentioned, the United States bombed the people of Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya for more than six months, allowing jihadists to charter over parts of the country; and they're straightaway fighting for the remaining parts. These wartime allies showed their gratitude to Washington by assassinating the US ambassador and three other Americans, apparently CIA, in the city of Benghazi.
Then, for some years in the mid and late 2000s, the United States backed Islamic militants in the Caucasus region of Soviet Russia, an area that has seen more than its share of god-fearing terror going back to the Chechnyan actions of the 1990s.
At last, in Syria, in attempting to upset the Assad government, the US has fought on the same side as several varieties of Monotheism militants. That makes six occasions of the US being wartime allies of Jihadist forces.
I gain that I give birth fed you an awful lot of negativity about what America has done to the world, and maybe it's been kind of hard for some of you to swallow. But my purpose has been to try to loosen the handgrip on your intellect and your emotions that you've been raised with – or to helper you to help others to loosen that handle – the grip that assures you that your beloved America means well. US foreign policy bequeath not make much sentience to you As long as you believe that its intentions are kingly; A long as you ignore the consistent radiation diagram of quest world supremacy, which is a national compulsion of really long upright, better-known previously low other names such as Manifest Destiny, the Dry land Century, American exceptionalism, globalization, or, as Madeleine Albright put information technology, "the indispensable country" … while others to a lesser extent kind hold exploited the term "imperialistic".
In this context I can't resist giving the example of Bill Clinton. While president, in 1995, he was touched to pronounce: "Any we May think of the political decisions of the Vietnam era, the adventurous Americans who fought and died there had royal motives. They fought for the freedom and the independence of the Vietnamese populate." Yes, that's really the way our leaders talk. But WHO knows what they truly believe?
It is my hope that many of you who are not now activists against the empire and its wars will join the anti-war movement arsenic I did in 1965 against the war in Vietnam. It's what radicalized me and so many others. When I pick up from people of a certain age about what began the process of losing their faith that the United States means well, it's Vietnam that out and away is given as the chief cause. I think that if the American language powers-that-be had known in advance how their "Oh what a lovely war" was going to turn out they might not take in made their mammoth past blunder out. Their invasion of Iraq in 2003 indicates that no Vietnam lesson had been knowledgeable at that direct, but our continuing protest against war and threatened state of war in Afghanistan, Iran, Syria, and elsewhere May have – may have! – finally made a ding in the terribly state of war mentality. I invite you every last to join our movement. Thank you.
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Source: https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2014/09/19/american-exceptionalism-and-us-foreign-policy/
