rah rah America!

Jim heartfield jim at heartfield.demon.co.uk
Thu Sep 16 07:56:38 PDT 1999


In message <v0421010cb4056a4723ab@[166.84.250.86]>, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> writes
>[this guy can't quote Brad De Long enough!]
>
>Financial Times - September 15, 1999
>
>America rules OK
>
>Given the alternatives, the world should be grateful for the hegemony
>of the US throughout the 20th century, writes Martin Wolf
><Martin.Wolf at ft.com>


>This was
>the American century. Given the grim alternatives to US hegemony, the
>rest of the world should, for once, express its gratitude.

The short [Anglo-] American Century

(This is just from memory, other subscribers can add in the details of Panama, Guatemala, Cuba and the extensive CIA involvement in Africa.)

1916 Joins in the imperialist slaughter in Europe

1918 Military invasion of the Soviet Union

1930s economic blockade of Japan

1942 Non-appearance of the 'second front' widely seen as Roosevelt's decision to let Hitler clean up the partisans before imposing a new order on Europe (Soviet troops would say when they opened the American tinned meat rations 'let's open the second front').

1945 Atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki despite full intelligence reports that Japan had already decided to surrender

1946 Plans drawn up to permanently divide Germany (see C Eisenberg, Drawing the Line, The American Decision to Divide Germany 1944-49).

1946 Support for General Scobie's disarming of the Greek partisans and the imposition of a dictatorship.

1948 Creation of the state of Israel on Palestinian land

1949 Chiang Kai-Shek's seizure of Taiwan

1950 onwards US increasingly involved in Vietnam war leading to the loss of one million Vietnamese lives

1951 Macarthur provokes Korean war (see I Stone, The Secret history of the Korean War)

1954 Overthrow of Iran's radical leader Mossadegh

1956 Suez crisis: Israel seizes the Negev and the canal is permanently blocked

1965 CIA backing for Suharto's bloody coup against Sukarno and the left

1967 Victory over Arab states for US-backed Israel

1973 Kissinger endorsed takeover of Chile and another beating for the Arabs, followed by the sustained destabilisation of Lebanon.

1976 support for Indonesian invasion of East Timor

1979 onwards contra war against Nicaragua

1980 military intervention in Iran

1982 Israeli/Falangist massacres of Palestinian refugees at Sabra and Chatila

1988 bombing raids on Libya killing Col. Ghadaffi's adopted daughter, intervention in Lebanon

1991 Gulf War. The British Medical Journal estimated lives lost in the initial bombing alone at 180 000. Intermittent bombing of Iraq ever since, alongside an economic blocade that is starving the country to this day.

1993 Operation 'restore Hope' in Somalia leads to an air war against Somali civilians with thousands killed.

1994 US trained RPF guerillas invade Rwanda signalling the start of a bloody civil war.

1999 Sustained bombardment of the Yugoslav Republic in Kosovo war

-- Jim heartfield



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