In the 1950s, it was driven from North Korea;
In the 1960s, Eisenhower was unable to defeat a revolution against the French colonial backed Laotian government in spite of bombing that country more than any nation in the history of air attacks, and the quick defeat of a U.S. invasion of Cuba was its first in Latin America.
In the 1970s, came the defeat in Vietnam after thirty years of funding war and the death of fifty-eight thousand American warriors (the millions of Vietnamese, Laotians and Cambodians are not considered of consequence).
In the 1980s, Carter's failed Operation Eagle Claw air commando raid against the Iranian revolutionary government cost him the election, and after an early invasion of Lebanon, Reagan withdrew after losing nearly three hundred servicemen to two suicide truck bombers.
In the 1990s, after it ordered some wild shooting it up in Somalia, it was faced with deadly citizen rage, and Clinton withdrew U.S. forces.
In 2000 the destroyer USS Cole was disabled in Yemen, and later saw its forces continually under attack in occupied Afghanistan and Iraq.
As all empires, the United States of America has obedient satellites and pressured allies willing or forced to participate in its occupations, in its aggrandizing of wealth and resources, some earning imperial gratitude or remuneration for engaging in proxy wars of occupation or providing troops or tribute for the empire's own military initiatives.
Presently, Ethiopia in Somalia, NATO in Afghanistan and Columbia in South America and an "international community' arrayed ready to aid an another attack on Iran are are examples prominently lauded in imperial news media.
Dramatic instances of broad and compliant acquiescence to U.S. moves within nations are manifold: its taking over from the British in Greece; the colossus' roaring blitzes of Panama, tiny Grenada, the Dominica Republic; its CIA funding and participating in civil wars all over the former colonial Third World, as in Angola; its overthrowing of democratic governments in Guatemala, Iran, Congo, Chile and Haiti, handling of pan-nationalists like Cheddi, Jagan, Nassar and Nkruma, and seeing to the installation of proxy indigenous occupiers; its almost infantile lies to justify invasions and bombing of Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen to cite only a very few during which little or no formal disapproval was voiced - perhaps the most striking of which was Washington having Saddam Hussein invade and war for eight years against upstart and oil rich Iran.
Part of this in international "cooperation' scenario is the U.N. being designated to provide medical aid and other humanitarian services in U.S. occupied countries, and to clean up afterward. The Empire easily dominates the U.N. Security Council and uses the U.N. name and organization to its own purposes. The U.S., during the absence of the Soviet Union on the Council, bombed, invaded and occupied Korea under the U.N. flag.
American bombings, invasions, occupations and control of many peoples across the world by economic leverage and covert destabilization and promoting civil wars will end someday relatively soon. In the meantime how many Americans will continue to be well adjusted to living with it and ignoring their responsibility for the crimes against humanity of their government. A government which proclaims that killing its designated bad guys everywhere, huge collateral death notwithstanding, is useful and necessary to the protection of the Empire's home nation.
At best, empires are amoral in their treatment of occupied populations . There were a few notable exceptions in the ancient world - that of a reformed and repentant great emperor Ashoka turning to Buddhism comes to mind.
Though today Germany and Japan have their small neo-fascist fringe groups on the margin as elsewhere, the general feeling in the public at large is now one of contrition for the atrocities committed in the name of their nations during brutal occupations accepted by their forefathers, who failed to prevent their country from falling under fascist domination. German and Japanese citizens feel some national complicity, not the innocence that most of their grandparents professed as they proclaimed themselves simply co-victims. Pride in their nations history as been diminished for its violent occupations of other nations.
One supposes that one day, a generation after all the U.S. troops, ships and planes have exited all
the places they didn't belong doing things that imperial armed forces
do, children in America will have a similar feeling and pangs of conscience, a bit of shame for the disappointing behavior of Americans that went before them.
In the 1960s, Eisenhower was unable to defeat a revolution against the French colonial backed Laotian government in spite of bombing that country more than any nation in the history of air attacks, and the quick defeat of a U.S. invasion of Cuba was its first in Latin America.
In the 1970s, came the defeat in Vietnam after thirty years of funding war and the death of fifty-eight thousand American warriors (the millions of Vietnamese, Laotians and Cambodians are not considered of consequence).
In the 1980s, Carter's failed Operation Eagle Claw air commando raid against the Iranian revolutionary government cost him the election, and after an early invasion of Lebanon, Reagan withdrew after losing nearly three hundred servicemen to two suicide truck bombers.
In 2000 the destroyer USS Cole was disabled in Yemen, and later saw its forces continually under attack in occupied Afghanistan and Iraq.
As all empires, the United States of America has obedient satellites and pressured allies willing or forced to participate in its occupations, in its aggrandizing of wealth and resources, some earning imperial gratitude or remuneration for engaging in proxy wars of occupation or providing troops or tribute for the empire's own military initiatives.
Presently, Ethiopia in Somalia, NATO in Afghanistan and Columbia in South America and an "international community' arrayed ready to aid an another attack on Iran are are examples prominently lauded in imperial news media.
Dramatic instances of broad and compliant acquiescence to U.S. moves within nations are manifold: its taking over from the British in Greece; the colossus' roaring blitzes of Panama, tiny Grenada, the Dominica Republic; its CIA funding and participating in civil wars all over the former colonial Third World, as in Angola; its overthrowing of democratic governments in Guatemala, Iran, Congo, Chile and Haiti, handling of pan-nationalists like Cheddi, Jagan, Nassar and Nkruma, and seeing to the installation of proxy indigenous occupiers; its almost infantile lies to justify invasions and bombing of Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen to cite only a very few during which little or no formal disapproval was voiced - perhaps the most striking of which was Washington having Saddam Hussein invade and war for eight years against upstart and oil rich Iran.
Part of this in international "cooperation' scenario is the U.N. being designated to provide medical aid and other humanitarian services in U.S. occupied countries, and to clean up afterward. The Empire easily dominates the U.N. Security Council and uses the U.N. name and organization to its own purposes. The U.S., during the absence of the Soviet Union on the Council, bombed, invaded and occupied Korea under the U.N. flag.
American bombings, invasions, occupations and control of many peoples across the world by economic leverage and covert destabilization and promoting civil wars will end someday relatively soon. In the meantime how many Americans will continue to be well adjusted to living with it and ignoring their responsibility for the crimes against humanity of their government. A government which proclaims that killing its designated bad guys everywhere, huge collateral death notwithstanding, is useful and necessary to the protection of the Empire's home nation.
At best, empires are amoral in their treatment of occupied populations . There were a few notable exceptions in the ancient world - that of a reformed and repentant great emperor Ashoka turning to Buddhism comes to mind.
Though today Germany and Japan have their small neo-fascist fringe groups on the margin as elsewhere, the general feeling in the public at large is now one of contrition for the atrocities committed in the name of their nations during brutal occupations accepted by their forefathers, who failed to prevent their country from falling under fascist domination. German and Japanese citizens feel some national complicity, not the innocence that most of their grandparents professed as they proclaimed themselves simply co-victims. Pride in their nations history as been diminished for its violent occupations of other nations.
One supposes that one day, a generation after all the U.S. troops, ships and planes have exited all
the places they didn't belong doing things that imperial armed forces
do, children in America will have a similar feeling and pangs of conscience, a bit of shame for the disappointing behavior of Americans that went before them.
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