Making the World Safe for Hypocrisy

Michael Hoover hoov at freenet.tlh.fl.us
Wed Apr 7 00:00:30 PDT 1999



>From Michael Parenti:
>
> _Against Empire_, 1995, pp. 27-28:
> 'Since World War Two, the U.S. government has given over $200 in
> military aid to train, equip, and subsidize more than 2.3 million
> troops and internal security forces in some eighty countries, the
> purpose being not to defend them from outside invasions but to
> protect ruling oligarchs and multinational corporate investors from
> the dangers of domestic anticapitalist insurgency. Among the
> recipients have been some of the most notorious military autocracies
> in history, countries that have tortured, killed, or otherwise
> maltreated large numbers of their citizens because of their
> dissenting political views, as in Turkey, Zaire, Chad, Pakistan,
> Morocco, Indonesia, Honduras, Peru, Colombia, El Salvador, Haiti,
> Cuba (under Batista), Nicragua (under Somoza), Iran (under the Shah),
> the Philippines (under Marcos), and Portugal (under Salazar).
>
> U.S. leaders profess a dedication to democracy. Yet over the past
> five decades, democratically elected reformist governments in
> Guatemala, Guyana, the Dominican Republic, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay,
> Syria, Indonesia (under Sukarno), Greece, Argentina, Bolivia, Haiti
> and numberous other nations were overthrown by pro-capitalist
> militaries that were funded and aided by the U.S. national security
> state.
>
> The U.S. national securty state has participated in covert action
> or proxy mercenary wars against revolutionary governments in Cuba,
> Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Portugal, Nicaragua, Cambodia, East
> Timor, Western Sahara, and elsewhere, usually with dreadful
> devastation and loss of life for the indigenous populations.
> Hostile actions also have been directed against reformist
> govermments in Eygpt, Lebanaon, Perus, Iran, Syria, Zaire, Jamaica,
> South Yemen, the Fiji Islands, and elsewhere.
>
> Since World War II, U.S. forces have directly invaded or launched
> aerial attacks against Vietnam, the Dominican Republic, North Korea,
> Laos, Cambodia, Lebanon, Grenada, Panama, Libya, Iraq, and Somolia,
> sowing varying degrees of death and destruction.
>
> Before World War Two, U.S. military forces waged a bloody and
> protracted war of conquest in the Philippines from 1899 to 1903.
> Along with fourteen other capitalist nations, the United States
> invaded and occupied parts of socialist Russia from 1918 to 1921.
> U.S. expeditionary forces fought in China along with other Western
> armies to suppress the Boxer Rebellion and keep the Chinese under
> the heel of European and North American colonizers. U.S. Marines
> invaded and occupied Nicaragua in 1912 and again from 1926 to
> 1933; Haiti, from 1915 to 1934; Cuba, from 1898 to 1902; Mexico,
> n 1914 and 1916. There were six invasions of Honduras between 1911
> to 1925; Panama was occupied between 1903 and 1914.'
>
>
> _Dirty Truths_, 1996, p. 74:
> 'Tallying only the death toll inflicted by U.S. armed forces or U.S.-
> backed surrogate forces around the world, the estimates are as follows:
> 3,000,000 in Vietnam, 1,000,000 in Cambodia, 1,000,000 in Mozambique,
> 500,000 to 1,000,000 in Indonesia, 600,000 in Angola, 300,000 in Laos,
> 250,000 in East Timor, 200,000 in Iraq, 200,000 in Afghanistan, 150,000
> in Guatemala, 100,000 in Nicragua, 90,000 in El Salvador, and tens of
> thousand in Chile, Argentina, Zaire, Iran (under the Shah), Colombia,
> Bolivia, Brazil, Panama, Somalia, South Yemen, Western Sahara, and other
> countries.'
>
>
> Lenin wrote somewhere that, politically, imperialism tends toward
> violence and reaction...'humanitarianism' my ass...Michael Hoover



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