“Since WW2, the US government has spent over 240 billion to equip and station military and internal security people in more than 80 other nations, not to "defend" these nations from foreign aggressors, but to protect various ruling dictators and multi national corporate investors from being kicked out by domestic, anti imperialist movements.
Remember, Saddam Hussain was our "Friend" (Saddam and Rumsfeld got along just fine) In fact the U.S. government supplied the "gas" which Hussain used to kill and keep down the Kurds who wanted to be in control of their own society whose lands contained..., guess what ...? Right! Oil. Saddam kept the Kurdish oil...then he nationalized Iraq's oil fields..., and kept the profits for himself and Iraq rather than for the U.S. corporations. “
***All comments parenthesized are mine…Wally
(Then, when Iraq’s Saddam Hussein accused Kuwait of overproducing its oil, which lowered prices globally…., and Kuwait , in tern, accused Iraq of siphoning Kuwait’s oil fields with underground pipelines.., Iraq, with the U.S. government’s silent approval, attacked Kuwait …Then suddenly, in a sharp reversal of friendship with Iraq, the U.S. declared Iraq an aggressor, and committed the U.S. military to defend Kuwait…, and the first Persian Gulf war for oil, managed by, of all related people to the current President, George Bush No.1, who was helped by the UN in forming a formidable coalition of surrounding nations who feared Saddam Husseins’s territorial ambitions in that area…, overwhelmed Iraq, and the First Gulf War ended with Iraq soundly defeated, but it remained an integral national entity due to Bush no.1’s reluctance to occupy Iraq and reconstruct its government.
(The policies of the U.S. in the Mid East are not always very clear to the American people. Both U.S. incursions into Iraq have been for control of its oil reserves, yet, WE never hear of that resource being one of the significant reasons for the present there of the U.S. military…., the other being complete U.S. corporate hegemony in the Mid East, a goal of which the Mid East nations are acutely aware.
(Instead, we are TOLD building a DEMOCRACY is the reason why our kids are dying these., while the secretive sessions between US reps and Iraqi hand-picked legislators for future Iraqi oil rights go in uninterruptedly …)
“Since World War II, the US government has given some $240 billion in military aid to build up the military and internal security forces of more than eighty other nations. The purpose of this enormous effort has been not to defend these nations from invasion by foreign aggressors but to protect their various ruling oligarchs and multinational corporate investors from the dangers of domestic anticapitalist insurgency. That is what some of us have been arguing.
“But how can we determine that?
“By observing that (a) with few exceptions there is no evidence suggesting that these various regimes have ever been threatened by attack from neighboring countries; (b) just about all these "friendly" regimes have supported economic systems that are integrated into a global system of corporate domination, open to foreign penetration on terms that are singularly favorable to transnational investors; (c) there is a great deal of evidence that US-supported military and security forces and death squads in these various countries have been repeatedly used to destroy reformist movements, labor unions, peasant organizations, and popular insurgencies that advocate some kind of egalitarian redistributive politics for themselves.
“For decades we were told that a huge US military establishment was necessary to contain an expansionist world Communist movement with its headquarters in Moscow (or sometimes Beijing). But after the overthrow of the Soviet Union and other Eastern European communist nations in 1989-1991, Washington made no move to dismantle its costly and dangerous global military apparatus. All Cold War weapons programs continued in full force, with new ones being added all the time, including the outer-space National Missile Defense and other projects to militarize outer space. Immediately the White House and Pentagon began issuing jeremiads about a whole host of new enemies-for some unexplained reason previously overlooked-who menace the United States, including "dangerous rogue states" like Libya with its ragtag army of 50,000 and North Korea with its economy on the brink of collapse.
“The real intentions of US national security state leaders can be revealed in part by noting whom they assist and whom they attack. US leaders have consistently supported rightist regimes and organizations and opposed leftist ones.
“The terms "Right" and "Left" are seldom specifically defined by policymakers or media commentators-and with good reason. To explicate the politico-economic content of leftist governments and movements is to reveal their egalitarian and usually democratic goals, making it much harder to demonize them.
“The "Left," as I would define it, encompasses those individuals, organizations, and governments that oppose the privileged interests of wealthy propertied classes, while advocating egalitarian redistributive policies and a common development beneficial to the general populace.“
(Michael Parenti’s understandings of the advocates who work to generate a national discussion on the merits of an autocratic economic and political system, as is capitalism and this Federal Government, compared to a genuine democracy in both our government institutions, and our socially necessary industrial and service work places are in complete accord with the content of …http://www.peopleforanewsociety.org/)
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