Truth to Power

Reverend Wright has been attacked for his thundering jeremiads against American exceptionalism. For many Americans, his words are jarring, even treasonous, but many Americans also know little about what America — or more specifically what her government and corporations — have done in the world over the past two centuries. There is also the dangerous apostasy whereas many American Christians have elevated the flag to the level of the cross as an idol of worship. As such, so many cannot question the evil that is done in their name, nor can admit that they can do evil in the first place.

Indeed, the list of depredations is long. For example, since 1945, the US has intervened over 50 times in the Americas alone, invading countries, staging coups, backing torture states, training death squads, and sponsoring extreme right wing forces. In Africa, the record is similar with longstanding support for various dictators and the South African apartheid regime leading to massive interventions in the so-called frontline states. In Asia, brutal counterinsurgencies were waged in the Philippines (600,000 killed) and Vietnam (3 million killed), while Japan, Korea, Cambodia, and Vietnam were heavily bombed by the US. In Vietnam alone, three times as many bombs were dropped as by all the forces in WWII.

The following is only a small sample of video clips that speak to the nefarious deeds that continue unabated with America’s latest quagmire in Iraq that has killed a million people, and displaced 2 million more. There are many more obvious examples of America’s imperial weight being thrown around with disastrous results for many of the world’s peoples.

Native American Genocide — Through disease and war, 95% of the preexisting native population (>12 million down to 237,000 at the turn of the century) of the US was exterminated. Every single treaty (over 370) made with Native Americans have been broken or unilaterally abrogated by the US. A final blow fell at Wounded Knee as shown below:

Slavery — 11 million slaves transported to the Americas with millions more lost in the Middle Passage or to wars spawned by the slave trade in Africa. KKK and other paramilitary death squads terrorized and killed thousands after the Civil War, effectively stripping African Americans of their political rights for nearly a century. Check this montage set to Billy Holiday’s Strange Fruit:

Philippines — Invasion and occupation of the Philippines during the Spanish American War employs brutal counterinsurgency measures that claims upwards of 600,000 lives.

Congo — CIA-backed assassination of Lumumba, US support for Mobutu sets the pattern of western-backed brutal and kleptocratic dictatorships that took over the continent:

Japan — firebombing of more than sixty Japanese cities, nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, emergence of the targeting of entire cities as a centerpiece of US warfare. Here, Robert McNamara appears in Fog of War to talk about this lack of “proportionality”:

Here’s also a clip reconstructing the dropping of the Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima:

Korea — US drops more bombs on the country than in WWII. Estimates of civilian casualties range from 3.5 to 4 million deaths. North Korea completely devastated that reinforces the hermit like existence of the North.

Vietnam — the apotheosis of “strategic bombing” killing over 3 million civilians in a brutal ten year war. Three times as many bombs dropped by all sides in WWII, agent orange sprayed all over the country, killing 600,000 people over thirty year and affecting 3 million more for decades to come.

Cambodia — heavy illegal bombing kills upwards of a million people and propels the Khmer Rouge to power. Once overthrown by the Vietnamese, the Khmer Rouge begin receiving diplomatic support from the US in 1980.

Indonesia — CIA-backed rise of Suharto in 1965 was accompanied by the massacre of upwards of a million people and hundreds of thousands of East Timorese in the invasion of that small ex-colony in 1975:

Chile — The violent overthrow of President Salvador Allende in 1973 brings two decades of fascist rule to Chile:

And of course there are the continuing atrocities in Iraq, such as this one: