iso homepage latest socialist
review back issues
Washington's war crimes From Socialist Review Aotearoa New
Zealand
When
George W Bush announced that the US bombing campaign against Afghanistan
had begun, he declared, "We are a peaceful nation." Not
exactly. A look at its history shows that the US is the most violent and
interventionist nation ever known. For more than a century, the US
government has used military force or covert operations - or backed
local thugs and dictators - to enforce its interests around the globe. A
full list of US interventions would fill whole books.
Here,
Anthony Arnove
and Alan Maass
compile a partial time line of America's imperialist adventures - and
the tragic toll they've taken.
1846-48
"We
have not one particle of right to be here," Colonel Ethan Allen
Hitchcock wrote of the US expansion into territories that were then part
of Mexico - but were coveted by President James Polk and the
slaveholders he served. The US incited Mexico, hoping to draw it into a
war over disputed territory. The conflict caused massive casualties.
When it was over, the US controlled all of New Mexico and California,
and more of the territory of Texas.
1850-57
When an
anti-US protest stormed the American foreign ministry building in San
Juan del Norte in Nicaragua, the USS Cayne sailed into the port and
bombarded the city. This was one of four US interventions in the 1850s.
In 1855, a US mercenary named William Walker came to Nicaragua with a
band of supporters and declared himself president of the country - with
crackpot plans to make Nicaragua a US state where slavery was legal.
Robber baron Cornelius Vanderbilt organised a private army to force
Walker to surrender.
1898
On 15
February 1898, the USS Maine exploded while in the harbor off Havana,
Cuba - and that became the pretext for the US war against Spain. The
Spanish-American War was justified by US leaders with talk about
democracy and human rights. But the US's real goal was to make off with
Spain's remaining colonial possessions. With its victory, the US took
charge in Cuba, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Guam and the Philippines.
1899-1901
Immediately
after the war with Spain, the US military went into the Philippines to
smash a movement for independence. The war claimed hundreds of thousands
of Filipino lives, with US troops committing numerous mass slaughters.
"I wish you to kill and burn; the more you kill and burn the better
you please me," General "Howling" Jake Smith told his
soldiers.
1903-14
The
country of Panama owes its existence to the US government. In 1903,
President Theodore Roosevelt sent two warships to support a revolt -
sponsored by US big business - for Panama to secede from Colombia. Five
days after Panama gained independence, the US got its reward - a treaty
for the building of a canal to link the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans,
something of immense commercial and military value. The US maintained
military control over a strip of land called the Panama Canal Zone until
the end of the 20th century.
1912-33
US
Marines hit the shores of Nicaragua to back a Conservative Party revolt
against President Jos Santos Zelaya, whose nationalism threatened US
interests. Washington's occupation army left in 1925 - and returned a
year later, again to prop up Conservative Party rule. US troops failed
to defeat the liberation army of Augusto Csar Sandino. But before
withdrawing in 1933, Washington established the National Guard under the
leadership of Anastasio Somoza. Somoza ordered the murder of Sandino in
1934, and a few years later took power in a coup against the president.
The Somoza family ruled Nicaragua with an iron fist for nearly half a
century.
1914-34
The US
sent warships into the waters off Haiti 24 times between 1849 and 1913 -
and finally invaded in 1914. During the 20 year occupation, American
troops "murdered and destroyed, reinstituted virtual slavery [and]
dismantled the constitutional system," wrote Noam Chomsky. At least
15,000 people died as a result. When the US finally withdrew, it left
the country in the hands of the brutal National Guard.
1918-20
The US
sent troops as part of an intervention of more than a dozen countries to
oppose the spread of the successful workers' revolution in Russia in
October 1917. US and allied forces worked with savage reactionaries who
hoped to restore the rule of the tsar.
1941-45
The US
entered the Second World War in December 1941 after Japan's attack on
Pearl Harbour, something that US leaders had advance warning about. The
US delayed its invasion of Northern Europe until 1944 - after the USSR,
at enormous cost, had beaten back Germany on the eastern front. The US
used saturation bombing against Germany. More than 100,000 people were
killed when warplanes bombed Dresden, a city with no military targets.
But the US never bombed the rail lines leading to the Nazi death camps.
The war against Japan ended with President Harry Truman's barbaric
decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.
The US Strategic Bombing Survey concluded that "Japan would have
surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped."
1948-2001
Washington
has provided military and economic assistance to Israel from its
foundation in 1948 and increasingly after the 1967 war. Israel has long
been the largest recipient of US aid - today getting more than US$3
billion annually, despite its ongoing illegal occupation of Palestinian
land, widespread human rights abuses and its brutal invasions of
Lebanon.
1950-53
Never
officially declaring a war, as many as many as two million people died
in the "police action" in Korea between the US-backed South
and the North backed by the USSR. The fighting "reduce[d] Korea,
North and South, to a shambles, in three years of bombing and
shelling," Howard Zinn wrote. The Korean War ended in a stalemate,
and to this day, the US maintains a huge military presence there.
1953
The CIA
organised a coup in Iran to overthrow President Mohammed Mossadegh.
Mossadegh's crime was to nationalise the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company and
carry out land reform, threatening the profits of the Western oil
giants. The US backed the brutal dictatorship of the Shah of Iran, until
the Shah was overthrown in the 1979 Iranian Revolution.
1954
President
Jacobo Arbenz of Guatemala was overthrown in a 1954 coup organised by
the CIA. Arbenz had undertaken land reform measures that threatened the
United Fruit Company - now known as Chiquita Brands - which ran
Guatemala like its private plantation. United Fruit lobbied its friends
in the Eisenhower administration for the coup - and helped to carry it
out at every level. The coup ushered in decades of military regimes that
led to the murder of tens of thousands.
1954-75
US
military involvement in Vietnam - at first covert, later an open war -
led to more than two million deaths. The US used carpet bombing, napalm,
chemical weapons and psychological warfare to terrorise the civilian
population. And Richard Nixon's savage "secret war" in
neighboring Laos and Cambodia took as many as two million more lives and
created the conditions for the rise of Pol Pot in Cambodia. The US
brought all of its military might to bear on Southeast Asia. But the
Vietnamese resistance and growing opposition to the war inside the US
army and at home led to the US government's first major military defeat.
1959-2001
From the
moment that dictator Fulgencio Batista was overthrown by a rebel army
led by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, the US government declared war on
Cuba. In 1961, the CIA helped to coordinate an invasion of the island by
right-wing exiles at the Bay of Pigs, which was defeated. In 1962,
President John F. Kennedy brought the world closer than it has ever been
to nuclear war in a showdown with the USSR over missiles in Cuba.
Despite numerous plots, the US never toppled Castro. But the US economic
embargo - which continues to this day - strangled the country's economy.
1960-64
After
the Democratic Republic of the Congo achieved independence in 1960, the
US helped to engineer the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, the
country's first prime minister. The US backed Joseph Mobutu (who later
renamed himself Mobutu Sese Seko). Mobutu took power as a military
dictator in 1965 and became one of the world's most notorious tyrants,
bleeding the poverty-stricken country dry as he amassed a billion-dollar
fortune.
1963-65
In 1963,
the US helped to remove democratically elected Dominican Republic
President Juan Bosch in an army coup. Two years later, an invasion force
of 22,000 US Marines landed after falling sugar prices led to a popular
uprising against the dictatorship. More than 4,000 Dominicans were
killed. Even the New York Times admitted at the time that Dominicans
were "fighting and dying for social justice and
constitutionalism."
1965-98
With US
approval and support, President Sukarno of Indonesia was overthrown in a
coup led by General Suharto. The coup was followed by massacres of
peasant organisers, labour leaders and others identified as
"communists" on lists supplied in part by the CIA. As many as
one million Indonesians were killed. The US approved Suharto's invasion
and annexation of East Timor in the mid-1970s. One third of East Timor's
population was killed during Indonesia's occupation. Washington backed
Suharto to the hilt until just before he was toppled in 1998. "He's
our kind of guy," a top Clinton administration official said in
1996.
1973
The CIA
helped to engineer the overthrow of socialist Salvador Allende, the
democratically elected president of Chile. "I don't see why we
should let a country go Marxist because its people are
irresponsible," then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger explained.
The coup against Allende brought to power the dictator Augusto Pinochet,
who ruled Chile with an iron fist until 1990. Thousands of Chilean
dissidents were murdered and "disappeared" under Pinochet.
1979-90
The US
backed a proxy army in Nicaragua against the Sandinista government that
came to power after toppling the Somoza dynasty. The contras were
instructed by the CIA to "kill, kidnap, rob and torture,"
admitted former contra leader Edgar Chamorro. "Many civilians were
killed in cold blood. Many others were tortured, mutilated, raped,
robbed and otherwise abused." When the US Senate forbade funding
for the contra army, the Reagan administration organised an illegal
scheme to sell arms to Iran and use the proceeds for its dirty war in
Central America. The US government's war reduced Nicaragua to one of the
poorest countries in the world.
1983
Claiming
that it was a threat to the US, US Marines invaded the tiny island
nation of Grenada in Operation Urgent Fury. The invasion overturned
Grenada's government and helped to make the country a "haven for
offshore banks," as the Wall Street Journal put it.
1989
When the
US decided that its long-term friend General Manuel Noriega had outlived
his usefulness, George Bush Senior sent 26,000 troops into Panama in
December 1989. Thousands of Panamanians were killed before Noriega was
seized and brought to Florida to stand trial on drug charges. The US
claimed that it brought democracy to Panama. "[B]ut they left all
the little Noriegas in place," said Miguel Bernal, a professor of
international law at the University of Panama.
1991-2001
In
January 1991, the US launched the most intensive bombing campaign in
world history against Iraq. The country's dictator Saddam Hussein had
been a US ally - until he stepped out of line with the invasion of
Kuwait. US warplanes deliberately targeted Iraq's civilian
infrastructure, reducing the country to "a pre-industrial
state," according to the UN. Strict economic sanctions continued
after the Gulf War - and are responsible for the deaths of more than
500,000 children under the age of five over the past decade, according
to UNICEF.
1992-93
Claiming
that it was intervening to provide humanitarian assistance during a
famine, Bush Senior sent troops to Somalia. US and UN soldiers were
responsible for 10,000 Somalians killed or wounded. The intervention
complicated relief efforts and encouraged infighting among Somalian
factions seeking US favour.
1999
The US
fell out with another former friend, Slobodan Milosevic, in its war
against Yugoslavia. Bill Clinton claimed that the US was intervening to
prevent the "ethnic cleansing" of Albanians in Kosovo. But US
intervention only escalated the crisis, and Albanians forced ethnic
Serbs to flee from Kosovo. US saturation bombing wreaked environmental
havoc. Today, the countryside remains littered with the remains of
shells made of depleted uranium.
Find
out the facts about the world's cop. Among
the resources used to compile this time line are:
Tom
Barry and Deb Preusch, The Central
America Fact Book (Grove Press)
William
Blum, Killing Hope
(Common Courage Press)
Noam
Chomsky, Rogue States: The Rule of
Force in World Affairs (South End
Press)
Noam
Chomsky, Year 501: The Conquest
Continues (South End Press)
Ellen
Collier, "Instances of Use of United States Forces
Abroad,1798-1993," Congressional
Research Service, Library of
Congress, 7 October, 1993
Zoltan
Grossman, "A Century of US Military Interventions," Znet
(www.zmag.org)
Sidney
Lens, The Forging of American Empire
(Thomas Y. Crowell Co.)
Lance
Selfa, "US Imperialism: A Century of Slaughter," International
Socialist Review, Spring 1999
Howard
Zinn, A People's History of the
United States (HarperCollins)
|
Contact Socialist Review: sr@iso.org.nz