Thursday, October 07, 2010

A Long History of America's Dark Side

By Peter Dale Scott and Robert Parry
October 7, 2010

There is a dark -- seldom acknowledged -- thread that runs through U.S. military doctrine, dating back to the early days of the Republic.

Read on.
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7 comments:

J. Tyler Ballance said...

I can sum up this long article as:

"War is Hell!"

If you make war against the USA, the USA will respond by sending their Army to kill you, and the soldiers will not be nice about how they do it.

On the other hand, if you exist peacefully, the USA will be your reliable trading partner and will even sometimes come to your aid if attacked by someone else.

Thu Oct 07, 10:41:00 AM 2010
Kevin Ryan said...

In September 2001, a consortium of powerful interests demolished three tall buildings in NYC, two of which still had thousands of people inside.

Here are several firefighters descibing the process as it began.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IO1ps1mzU8o

Many support the cover-up of these criminal acts to this day.

Thu Oct 07, 12:26:00 PM 2010
JOHN L. OPPERMAN said...

Every tiny, poverty-ridden country has the mighty US shaking in her pristine boots, lest they resist US corporate colonialisation -or heaven forbid -hint that the American public start resisting imperialist domination, the dictatorship of their own militarised corporate government!

"War against the USA" indeed~!!!

Thu Oct 07, 12:27:00 PM 2010
Big Em said...

A necessary article to counteract the romantic version of the triumphant imperialistic militarism that this country seems eternally enmeshed in, with perhaps the exception of Post WWI and a decade or so after Vietnam. The staggering disparity in the morality --- the lack of 'proportionality' --- of too many US citizens who can get apoplectically irate over their imagined 'overtaxation', gay marriage, or even the fate of barely visible stem cells or developing fetuses, etc, but can shrug their shoulders and look away when exposed to facts like those in this article regarding US atrocities, or rattle off psuedo-rationalizing (and ultimately irrelevant) cliche's about "Freedom isn't free" / "War is Hell" / "You have to break some eggs to make an omelet"/etc.
About the only difference I would have with the article is the idea that the US originated the 'scorched earth' tactics after the civil war. Unfortunately, there seems to be a long (though occasionally interrupted) history of bestial slaughtering of humans in so-called 'military actions'. For instance, if you look at the accounts of the actions of Attila the Hun, there were similar tactics. He would reportedly send a group of emissaries to the next city ahead of them and offer the people the following 'bargain' - - join/don't resist us and we'll spare everyone and live with you... resist us and we will slaughter everyone. And they were true to their word. Similarly, the Romans did much the same in parts of Europe in the Roman Empire era.

Thu Oct 07, 08:44:00 PM 2010
Ishmael said...

While I applaud this article for pointing out what Native people have known since the arrival of the Europeans, I would poiint out that the mechanism of Native peoples' removal long predates the Civil War. If I had to point out a watershed event that REALLY started this trend, I would go back to the 1830's and The Indian Removal Act signed by President Jackson in 1830.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_removal



That act codified under US law the mechanisms used later in dealing with the nomadic tribes of the Plains. As Jefferson wrote to William Henry Harrison in 1803:



"To promote this disposition to exchange lands, which they have to spare and we want, for necessaries, which we have to spare and they want, we shall push our trading uses, and be glad to see the good and influential individuals among them run in debt, because we observe that when these debts get beyond what the individuals can pay, they become willing to lop them off by a cession of lands.... In this way our settlements will gradually circumscribe and approach the Indians, and they will in time either incorporate with us a citizens or the United States, or remove beyond the Mississippi. The former is certainly the termination of their history most happy for themselves; but, in the whole course of this, it is essential to cultivate their love. As to their fear, we presume that our strength and their weakness is now so visible that they must see we have only to shut our hand to crush them, and that all our liberalities to them proceed from motives of pure humanity only. Should any tribe be foolhardy enough to take up the hatchet at any time, the seizing the whole country of that tribe, and driving them across the Mississippi, as the only condition of peace, would be an example to others, and a furtherance of our final consolidation."



While much attention has rightly been paid to the methods used during the Plains Wars, remember that the Five Civilized Tribes living East of the Mississippi, the Chickasaw, Choctaw, Seminole, Cherokee and Creek tribes had adopted European lifestyles and Agricultural practices in what is now parts of Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia and had grown quite prosperous for their time. This invited the envy and enmity of the white settlers flooding into the region and led TO the aforementioned Indian Removal Act of 1830. Even when the Cherokee took their case to the Supreme Court and won a decision in their favor,



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherokee_Nation_v._Georgia



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worcester_v._Georgia



The Federal Government under Jackson refused to enforce the Decisions of the Marshall Court. With the Indian Removal Act, the Federal Government renegotiated new treaties with the civilized tribes or with what it said was their representatives(most of whom were not) and used those treaties to remove them west of the Mississippi to what is now Oklahoma.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRO8CjzFIh8

Sat Oct 09, 10:48:00 AM 2010
Soylent said...

J. Tyler.

You actually believe Vietnam started a war on the US?

They were a colony of France, and when the Japanese invaded and intentionally caused widespread famine by stealing the rice during WWII they got fed up with colonial rule. After WWII they threw the french out; that's when the US stepped in.

The US is the aggressor; it is impossible to argue otherwise. The US murdered ~3 million vietnamese in order to keep it a colony of France; that is the disgusting truth.

Sun Oct 10, 05:02:00 PM 2010
Dr. Kiss Injure said...

Good to read Parry and Scott teaming up on a very informative summary. Surprised to find the term "American Exceptionalism" missing from this history.

Using the past to justify present and future war and aggression is shoddy logic. Modern warfare is too damaging to the planet. A recent example: the 2006 Israeli-Hezbollah war. The Mediterranean sustained major ecological damage after Israeli targeted fuel tanks on the Lebanese coast. 10,000 and 35,000 metric tons of oil were spilled into the sea. Hezbollah rocket fire damaged an estimated 3000 acres of forest in northern Israel. Stupid wars by selfish and greedy humans need to stop!

http://www1.american.edu/ted/ice/lebanon-war.htm

Sat Oct 16, 11:52:00 AM 2010

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