The Death of America’s Conscience: Countries Bombed By The USA

Authors Note: This article was originally written in 2013 (as you can see in the comments) with a slightly altered title, but contrary to my most ardent prayers the circumstances in America have worsened, and on a substantial scale. So I have pulled it out, dusted it off and updated it with current information including a highly appropriate attached article. Most of the information in the original article remains as it could not be said better. We as a society had better accelerate our awakening to what is described in this article … or perhaps we will be the next nation the world rises up against. If you say “that cant’t happen to America” … you’re a fool!

By: Roger Landry (TLB)

The American people throughout our history have resisted change, conflict and outright war. It took direct acts of aggression against We The People to facilitate enough backing for our leaders to justify entering into The Spanish American war, WWI, WWII, the Vietnam war, the invasion of Afghanistan, etc…. Remember the words of Admiral Mamamoto proclaiming after the attack on Pearl Harbor, “I fear we have awakened a sleeping giant” (emphasis on the word awakened).

But is this reality or incidents (false flag operations) contrived and perpetrated by a few all-powerful elites who own this government and in fact rule America and a vast majority of this planet, to bend the will of the American people and utilize the most powerful military force this planet has ever known to achieve their personal goals? Please look around you today and see the ultimate control mechanism of fear being smothered over the American population once again to extract compliance and support for even more imperialistic warmongering across the globe.

We were instructed about, and learned of the ultimate evil of tyrannical leaders and governments such as Pol Pot’s Cambodia, Stalin’s USSR, Hitler’s Nazi Germany, Mao’s China and so many more, who through the exercise of tyranny and imperialism, sought to impose their will over the lives of unsuspecting masses, resulting in the slaughter of untold millions of innocent people …. Yet this country enforces its will or wishes on countless nations via the most powerful war machine this planet has ever seen, or through economic blackmail. Please explain to me how this government is so different or innocent of the same mechanisms of tyranny?

Today, we as a people who once resisted any type of conflict, are now repressed under a monolithic government responsible for  having killed directly or indirectly untold millions of people, and destroyed the lives of untold millions more. The vast majority (by our government’s own accounting over 90%) of this carnage consists of innocent human beings never having been of any threat to America … Collateral Damage. The part of this that borders on insanity or just plain ridiculous is this is emanating from a country that professes to value personal freedom, national sovereignty and self determination, REALLY?

We as a people don’t push back against this en masse as we did in the Vietnam era or even to some extent in the Bush era. We don’t fire our leaders who allow or ignore it. We don’t impeach those who, through the wishes of their true global masters, would advance it in a perpetual cycle, illegally. Hell, in the case of most of us, we don’t even discuss it! The American conscience, the past guide to actions we condoned by our government as a people … is dying …

Fifty years from now, when the children of our children study the history of this once great and admired country, will we be the USSR, Red China or Nazi Germany of our time? You may push back and say this is not so … and I will say WAKE THE HELL UP!

A quick look at modern American Hegemony.

Note: Be prepared to hit the pause button to read captions, video moves fast but contains a lot of information.

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What follows is a historical account presented as an excerpt from Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower by William Blum. Maybe this will help you to put the above commentary into a more understandable perspective. It is not all inclusive … but the information will awaken you to the reality of US military global (corporate controlled) hegemony.

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United States bombings of other countries

It is a scandal in contemporary international law, don’t forget, that while “wanton destruction of towns, cities and villages” is a war crime of long standing, the bombing of cities from airplanes goes not only unpunished but virtually unaccused. Air bombardment is state terrorism, the terrorism of the rich. It has burned up and blasted apart more innocents in the past six decades than have all the antistate terrorists who ever lived. Something has benumbed our consciousness against this reality. In the United States we would not consider for the presidency a man who had once thrown a bomb into a crowded restaurant, but we are happy to elect a man who once dropped bombs from airplanes that destroyed not only restaurants but the buildings that contained them and the neighborhoods that surrounded them. I went to Iraq after the Gulf war and saw for myself what the bombs did; “wanton destruction” is just the term for it. – C. Douglas Lummis, political scientist

The above was written in 1994, before the wanton destruction generated by the bombing of Yugoslavia, another in a long list of countries the United States has bombarded since the end of World War II, which is presented below.

By: William Blum

There appears to be something about launching bombs or missiles from afar onto cities and people that appeals to American military and political leaders. In part it has to do with a conscious desire to not risk American lives in ground combat. And in part, perhaps not entirely conscious, it has to do with not wishing to look upon the gory remains of the victims, allowing American GIs and TV viewers at home to cling to their warm fuzzy feelings about themselves, their government, and their marvelous “family values”. Washington officials are careful to distinguish between the explosives the US drops from the sky and “weapons of mass destruction” (WMD), which only the officially-designated enemies (ODE) are depraved enough to use. The US government speaks sternly of WMD, defining them as nuclear, chemical and biological in nature, and “indiscriminate” (meaning their use can’t be limited to military objectives), as opposed to the likes of American “precision” cruise missiles. This is indeed a shaky semantic leg to stand on, given the well-known extremely extensive damage to non-military targets, including numerous residences, schools and hospitals, even from American “smart” bombs, in almost all of the bombings listed below.

Moreover, Washington does not apply the term “weapons of mass destruction” to other weapons the US has regularly used, such as depleted uranium and cluster bombs, which can be, and often are, highly indiscriminate.

WMD are sometimes further defined as those whose effects linger in the environment, causing subsequent harm to people. This would certainly apply to cluster bombs, and depleted uranium weapons, the latter remaining dangerously radioactive after exploding. It would apply less to “conventional” bombs, but even with those there are unexploded bombs lying around, and the danger of damaged buildings later collapsing. But more importantly, it seems highly self-serving and specious, not to mention exceptionally difficult, to try to paint a human face on a Tomahawk Cruise missile whose payload of a thousand pounds of TNT crashes into the center of a densely-populated city, often with depleted uranium in its warhead.

A terrorist is someone who has a bomb but doesn’t have an air force.

The bombing list

• Korea and China 1950-53 (Korean War)
• Guatemala 1954
• Indonesia 1958
• Cuba 1959-1961
• Guatemala 1960
• Congo 1964
• Laos 1964-73
• Vietnam 1961-73
• Cambodia 1969-70
• Guatemala 1967-69
• Grenada 1983
• Lebanon 1983, 1984 (both Lebanese and Syrian targets)
• Libya 1986
• El Salvador 1980s
• Nicaragua 1980s
• Iran 1987
• Panama 1989
• Iraq 1991 (Persian Gulf War)
• Kuwait 1991
• Somalia 1993
• Bosnia 1994, 1995
• Sudan 1998
• Afghanistan 1998
• Yugoslavia 1999
• Yemen 2002
• Iraq 1991-2003 (US/UK on regular basis)
• Iraq 2003-2015
• Afghanistan 2001-2015
• Pakistan 2007-2015
• Somalia 2007-8, 2011
• Yemen 2009, 2011
• Libya 2011, 2015
• Syria 2014-2015

Plus

Iran, April 2003 – hit by US missiles during bombing of Iraq, killing at least one person

Pakistan, 2002-03 – bombed by US planes several times as part of combat against the Taliban and other opponents of the US occupation of Afghanistan

China, 1999 – its heavily bombed embassy in Belgrade is legally Chinese territory, and it appears rather certain that the bombing was no accident (see chapter 25 of Rogue State)

France, 1986 – After the French government refused the use of its air space to US warplanes headed for a bombing raid on Libya, the planes were forced to take another, longer route; when they reached Libya they bombed so close to the French embassy that the building was damaged and all communication links knocked out.

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, May 13, 1985 – A bomb dropped by a police helicopter burned down an entire block, some 60 homes destroyed, 11 dead, including several small children. The police, the mayor’s office, and the FBI were all involved in this effort to evict a black organization called MOVE from the house they lived in.

Them other guys are really shocking

“We should expect conflicts in which adversaries, because of cultural affinities different from our own, will resort to forms and levels of violence shocking to our sensibilities.” – Department of Defense, 1999

The Targets

It’s become a commonplace to accuse the United States of choosing as its bombing targets only people of color, those of the Third World, or Muslims. But it must be remembered that one of the most sustained and ferocious American bombing campaigns was carried out against the people of the former Yugoslavia – white, European, Christians. The United States is an equal-opportunity bomber. The only qualifications for a country to become a target are:

1. It poses a sufficient obstacle to the desires of the American Empire;
2. It is virtually defenseless against aerial attack.

The survivors

A study by the American Medical Association: “Psychiatric disorders among survivors of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing”:

Nearly half the bombing survivors studied had an active postdisaster psychiatric disorder, and full criteria for PTSD [posttraumatic stress disorder] were met by one third of the survivors. PTSD symptoms were nearly universal, especially symptoms of intrusive reexperience and hyperarousal.

Martin Kelly, publisher of a nonviolence website:

We never see the smoke and the fire, we never smell the blood, we never see the terror in the eyes of the children, whose nightmares will now feature screaming missiles from unseen terrorists, known only as Americans.

1. The Nation, September 26, 1994, p.304
2. RFE/RL Newsline, April 9, 2003 (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty is a “private” international communications service in Europe and Asia funded by the US government.)
3. Washington Post, January 1, 2003; Australian Broadcasting Company, January 1, 2003; Agence France Presse, September 19, 2003
4. Associated Press, “France Confirms It Denied U.S. Jets Air Space, Says Embassy Damaged”, April 15, 1986
5. U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century, “New World Coming” (Phase I Report), September 15, 1999, p.3
6. Journal of the American Medical Association, August 25, 1999, p.761

This is a chapter from Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower by William Blum.

William Blum is an author, historian, and U.S. foreign policy critic. He is the author of Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II and Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower, among others.Read more →

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ATTACHED ARTICLE

Visit William Blum’s Blog for more pertinent articles and information.

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