Regarding the current wars in Ukraine and Palestine:
A handy list of U.S. war involvement since 1949. Overt and covert.
Just in case you’re interested.
49 Greece
50 Korean War
52 Cuba
53 Iran
53 British Guyana
54 Guatemala
55 South Vietnam
57 Haiti
58 Laos
60 South Korea
60 Laos
60 Ecuador
63 Dominican Republic
63 South Vietnam
63 Honduras
63 Guatemala
63 Ecuador
64 Brazil
64 Bolivia
65 Zaire
66 Ghana
67 Greece
70 Cambodia
70 Bolivia
72 El Salvador
73 Chile
79 South Korea
80 Liberia
82 Chad
83 Grenada
87 Fiji
89 Panama
91 Iraq & Yugoslavia
99 Yugoslavia (Serbia & Montenegro)
01 Afghanistan
02 Venezuela
03 Iraq
04 Haiti
09 Honduras
11 Libya
11 Tunisia
13 Egypt
14 Ukraine
Nice.
Does the tiger change his (stars and) stripes?
Not so far, even if it is past time to do so on a strategic level.
Bet on it.
In a recent comment here, TarheelDem wrote a wonderful précis regarding the ongoing economic and social plunge that has been experienced by the U.S. ever since the Vietnam debacle.
The fact is, you cannot continue to take advantage financially of populous countries that are growing economically nonetheless and not expect alliances to push back. The rest of the world is going to construct institutions that bypass the US the more the US insists on its own exceptional status.
I repeat:
“The rest of the world is going to construct institutions” that will push back.
This holds militarily, it holds economically and it holds politically as well.
Support no political party or candidates that want to continue beating the almost dead horse of the American Century.
American exceptionalism.
It’s over.
Time to wake the fuck up.
Please.
AG
Denials of what, exactly?
Denials that “American exceptionalism” is just a code word used to brand the real tactic, militarily enforced economic imperialism?
Denials that said economic imperialism is not working very well anymore? All one need do is walk the streets of our ruined rust belt cities, our urban ghettoes and our broken rural areas to see the truth of that statement.
Denials that the Democrats have not been just as complicit as have been the Republicans in this 50 year+ fiasco?
Please.
Do some research.
Or…just let your fingers do the thinking.
22 of the above 43 wars were started under Democratic presidents.
Pretty even-handed in the guilt department, don’tcha think?
Pretty goddamned even-handed.
WTFU.
Insanity is often defined as continuing to take the same actions over and over again even if they no longer work.
Barking mad, we are.
On the evidence.
Barking mad.
WTFU.
AG
Sorry…I just posted the above image and when I looked at it, another picture flashed through my mind’s eye.
The look on the face of our economic imperialist war hero General David Petraeus whenever he was pictured near his main squeeze, the aptly named Paula Broadwell.
Too good to pass up.
Is Dickens writing this shit or what?
AG
The same Petraeus who makes $40,000 a speech for pimping fracking as essential to national security.
Dickens, indeed.
Somehow my “Tips? Recs?” comment got posted below this comment, even though that was the first one I wrote.. When I said “the above image” I was referring to the one below
Petraeus has always reminded me of some kind of lapdog that succeeds in ruling the house by sheer attitude.
Dog politicking.
So it goes.
AG
I wish there were some links to details on those overt and covert wars. There also is a bunch of stuff missing because our military action was in support of existing governments–think of the multiple actions in Lebanon, from Eisenhower through Reagan.
My bigger point is that this action is baked into the legislation that Truman pushed through in 1947 and that the institutions established then have come to dominate US society in neo-feudal ways. Electing the “correct” candidates is not sufficient if they are not going to tear down that bureaucratic monstrosity and get a national security institution more adequate to the times.
But that requires a conversation that is not corrupted by zombie Cold War jingoism.
Not often I agree with you Arthur, but your depiction of the USA as a perpetual war machine rings very true to anyone outside the USA who is paying attention. And it doesn’t matter that (sometimes) they appear to have some justification, it is the perpetuation of the war machine that has brutalised the USA and much of the world.
On an entirely different matter we disagreed recently on the effect of the German World Cup victory on German society. For what I think is a very good discussion of how Germany has reacted to the victory, see http://www.irishtimes.com/sport/soccer/international/seven-steps-to-world-cup-immortality-for-german
y-1.1871225
One of AG’s better diaries – no hokey gimmicks or graphics. Just a stark reminder of a reality that many Americans regrettably deny.
I don’t always agree with AG about politics, but he sees most of the problems that are usually forbidden to be spoken aloud. A lot of the time, that is enough for me, since it implies at least a modicum of free thought and critical thinking.
That the US has been in a near-constant state of war is a given. More Americans need to be clued into that basic fact. William Blum summarized all that quite aptly in his periodically updated book, Rogue State (see chapter 17). For those wanting an even more detailed account from the same author, there is always Killing Hope. Those who can stand ex-professor Ward Churchill’s prose can also find a decent compilation of US overt and cover military actions (along with a blow-by-blow account of just how isolated the US is in international affairs, judging by UN votes) in his book, On the Justice of Roosting Chickens. The nation we inherited (and that the rest of the world has to deal with) didn’t get this way overnight – it was centuries in the making. Turning away from our current path will not come from periodic blog posts and comments. It will take the sort of organized resistance that at present does not quite exist.
I’d argue that 1949 is simply the start of US Empire 2.0.
I’d also argue that 1947 and onward was when the US explicitly became an American-fascist democracy (1945: House UnAmerican Activities Commission permanent, followed by Taft-Hartley, Loyalty Oaths, cold war, etc, that all enshrined capitalism as legitimate while communism was equated to treason and un-Americanism.)
Hell, the US and the colonies before it were playing empire while just a subunit under Britain.
Here is a longer list of imperial actions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_United_States_military_operations
I’d bet that most Americans don’t even know that we’ve had US soldiers inside Russia, for example.
The Central Intelligence Act of 1949 was the legislation that gave the CIA the “black budgets” that Congress could not see for oversight.
The National Security Act of 1947 established the unified Department of Defense (instead of separated into War and Navy Departments), established the National Security Council and the CIA and extended and refined the World War II classification system.
NATO enshrined the occupation of Europe for perpetuity.
Oh yeah, absolutely.
I think from 1945+, the United States government became a fascist country, simply as an extension of it’s fight against communism – an economic system. We imported German scientists, and gave some of their war criminals jobs in the paramilitary/intelligence agency.
You can point to law after law after policy, and see how capitalism and corporatism decided that it knew best. By the 1950s, we’re toppling democratically elected governments on the fear that they might be somewhat socialist and nationalize some extraction industry racket the US or its favorite puppy the UK had going on.
In the whole Iran-US drama over the past 60+ years, the only belligerent has been the US. Over and over and over. Topple their government, install a dictator. Sell conventional weapons and WMDS! to Iraq to be used against Iran. Salient to these past few days, shooting down a passenger jet over Iranian airspace. Labeling them as an enemy right before invading and occupying a different named enemy.
This hostility stemmed from the Iranians possibly nationalizing oil extraction. That would have hurt UK corporations (and the US corporations that profited from a puppet government afterwards).
My fear isn’t that we’re going to wake up one day and be fascist. It’s that we’ll let them get total control, resulting in feudalism. They worship Mammon and hold in awe those blessed by Mammon. And they dress Mammon up in a Jesus costume. It’s their very best lie, and one of the reasons that a lot of blue collar white people vote against their economic interests. They’re just voting for their tribe.
My own fear is not that “we are going to wake up one day and be fascist.”
It’s that we are not going to wake up at all.
AG
“But in the final analysis, it’s [fascism in the United States] based on power and on the inability to put human goals and human conscience above the dictates of the state. Its origins can be traced in the tremendous war machine we’ve built since 1945, the “military-industrial complex” that Eisenhower vainly warned us about, which now dominates every aspect of our life. The power of the states and Congress has gradually been abandoned to the Executive Department, because of war conditions; and we’ve seen the creation of an arrogant, swollen bureaucratic complex totally unfettered by the checks and balances of the Constitution. In a very real and terrifying sense, our Government is the CIA and the Pentagon, with Congress reduced to a debating society.” -Jim Garrison, 1967
Chris Floyd’s recent post is worth a read.
Game of Thrones writ large.