US history since WW II is pockmarked with endless wars of aggression against invented enemies — what the scourge of imperialism is all about.
The nation’s resources are used for smashing one country after another, occupying planet earth with the Pentagon’s empire of bases, and serving the interests of America’s privileged class by exploiting most others at home and abroad.
April 30 is the 45th anniversary of US defeat in Southeast Asia — marked at the time by a humiliating Saigon embassy rooftop exit, ending America’s aggression in a part of the world where it doesn’t belong.
Historian Gabriel wrote the definitive history of the war in his 1985 book, titled “Anatomy of a War: Vietnam, the United States, and the Modern Historical Experience.”
US aggression was and remains part of its rage for global dominance.
Jack Kennedy was assassinated by the CIA in part because he wanted all US forces out of Vietnam by end of 1963 before war began.
False flags are a longstanding US tradition, dating from the 19th century.
In August 1964, US war on North Vietnam followed the staged Gulf of Tonkin false flag incident.
Raging for over a decade, around three or four million Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians perished from US aggression, one of history’s greatest crimes.
Indiscriminate terror-bombing, including with napalm, other incendiary devices, anti-personal cluster bombs, widespread use of deadly dioxin-containing Agent Orange, and other banned weapons devastated Southeast Asia and its people.
Sarin nerve gas was used in Laos. The scars of war in the region remain to this day.
Scores of towns, villages, and hamlets were destroyed, millions killed, countless millions more harmed.
From 1965 – 1973, around eight million tons of bombs were used against Southeast Asia targets, threefold the tonnage in WW II.
Washington’s defeat in the didn’t curb its rage for global dominance, far from it.
Endless wars of aggression against nations threatening no one followed by hot and other means, ongoing today in multiple theaters.
Will Trump escalate ongoing wars or start one or more new ones to divert attention from homeland economic collapse as a reelection campaign strategy?
Oral historian Studs Terkel once said WW II “warped our view of how we look at things today, (seeing them) in terms of war” as a crusade of good v. evil.
This “twisted memory encourages (people) to be willing, almost eager, to use military force” as a way to solve problems, ignoring their destructive harm.
Never just, in the nuclear age they’re lunatic acts. If past is prologue, US forever wars will continue unless or until mass rebellion ends them or they end us.
The hoped for end of US aggression on April 30, 1975 wasn’t to be. Might unjustifiably justifying right is longstanding US policy.
After the US 1991 Gulf War ended, GHW Bush trumpeted: “By God, we’ve licked the Vietnam syndrome once and for all.”
Three more decades of endless wars followed. Raging today, there’s no end of them in prospect.
From inception, the US has been and remains a warrior state wrapped in the American flag, the rule of law and human toll ignored.
Money and power take precedence over all else — peace, equity and justice be damned.
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Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)
His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”
http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html
Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.
Featured image is from peterpilt.org
