George Washington ordered the Six Nations of the Indigenous Peoples in New York attacked with orders to kill or capture civilians of all ages:
"The immediate objects are the total destruction and devastation of their settlements, and the capture of as many prisoners of every age and sex as possible. It will be essential to ruin their crops now in the ground and prevent their planting more. I would recommend, that some post in the center of the Indian Country, should be occupied with all expedition, with a sufficient quantity of provisions whence parties should be detached to lay waste all the settlements around, with instructions to do it in the most effectual manner, that the country may not be merely overrun, but destroyed. But you will not by any means listen to any overture of peace before the total ruinment of their settlements is effected."
In Vietnam does anyone think that the widespread use of napalm did not result in mass killings of civilians? From 1965 to 1973, eight million tons of napalm bombs were dropped over Vietnam. And, Agent Orange, the chemical poison that not only kills people, causing serious health problems for generations, but poisons the land was also used. Between 1962 and 1971, the United States military sprayed nearly 20,000,000 gallons of Agent Orange over Vietnam. By 1971, 12 percent of the total area of South Vietnam had been sprayed with defoliating chemicals, at an average concentration of 13 times the recommended level of use. Five million acres, 20 percent of forests and 24 million acres of agricultural land were destroyed.
And, Tom Hayden asks in Democracy Journal whether people remember "the US bombing of Hanoi's Bach Mai hospital on December 22, 1972, when 28 doctors and nurses lay dead among the civilian casualties? That sparked American and global outrage, caused the Pentagon to go into a defensive crouch, and spurred the mass movement for medical aid to Indochina [MAI]."
During the Iraq War, when the US attacked Fallujah, days after George Bush won re-election, health services were the initial targets of attack.
"By Saturday, November 6, the assault on Falluja began. U.S. rockets took out their first target: the Hai Nazal Hospital, a new facility that was just about ready to open its doors. A spokesman for the First Marines Expeditionary Force said, 'A hospital was not on the target list.' But there it is, reduced to a pile of rubble. Then on Sunday night the Special Forces stormed the Falluja General Hospital. They rounded up all the doctors, pushed them face down on the floor and handcuffed them with plastic straps behind their backs. With the hospital occupied, those wounded by the U.S. aerial bombings headed to the Falluja Central Health Clinic. And so at 5:30 a.m. on Tuesday, November 9, U.S. warplanes bombed that clinic as well, killing 35 patients, 15 medics, 4 nurses, 5 support staff and 4 doctors, according to a doctor who survived (The Nation, 13 December). U.S. fire also targeted an ambulance, killing five patients and the driver."
Jon Schwarz of the Intercept provides a series of examples of the bombing of civilian facilities since 1991 including: Infant Formula Production Plant, Abu Ghraib, Iraq (January 21, 1991), Air Raid Shelter, Amiriyah, Iraq (February 13, 1991), Al Shifa pharmaceutical factory, Khartoum, Sudan (August 20, 1998), Train bombing, Grdelica, Serbia (April 12, 1999), Radio Television Serbia, Belgrade, Serbia (April 23, 1999), Chinese Embassy, Belgrade, Serbia (May 7, 1999), Red Cross complex, Kabul, Afghanistan (October 16 and October 26, 2001), Al Jazeera office, Kabul, Afghanistan (November 13, 2001), Al Jazeera office, Baghdad, Iraq (April 8, 2003), and the Palestine Hotel, Baghdad, Iraq (April 8, 2003).
Throughout the Obama presidency and during the end of the Bush presidency, the US has been using drones to bomb multiple countries. There have consistent reports of drones killing civilians including Obama killing at least 8 Americans. This week the Obama administration took these killings a step further, trying to deny legal access to the victims' families by seeking dismissal of their case. The US is seeing protests even in allied Germany against their use of drones. Efforts to bring transparency to the use of drones have resulted in blacked-out responses to FOIA requests.
This week the US moved toward direct confrontation with Russia and China. In Syria, the US is engaged in an unauthorized war supposedly against the Islamic State in Syria, but also to achieve its long term goal of putting in place a US friendly government in Syria. There is a lot of misinformation and confusion about this war, which has now been joined by Russian aerial attacks. Unlike the US, Russia was asked by the Syrian government to help prevent terrorist attacks in Syria. The US has been covertly using the CIA for ground operations with supposed moderate Syrian terrorists while also conducting an aerial campaign. There are widespread deaths of civilians and a massive exodus of refugees. Rhetoric is escalating, former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski is calling for retaliation against Russia while Senator John McCain says the US is in a proxy war with Russia. Talks in Geneva, without any preconditions as to the status of President Assad, are urgently needed.
Regarding China, last week the US announced that within the next two weeks it was going to send US war ships inside the 12-nautical-mile zones that China claims as territory around islands it has built in the Spratly Chain. The next day China responded that it would not tolerate violations of its territorial waters and told the US not to take any provocative actions. This sets up a potential conflict that the US has been stoking in the region, using allies like the Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia and Vietnam as proxies for conflicts with China over the Islands.
War Is Not the Answer, Time to End US War Culture
Ralph Nader points to the recent war losses in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria and says there are lessons for the United States. The US has been unrestrained by international law and used "military power anywhere and everywhere, regardless of national boundaries and the resulting immense civilian casualties." The US has created "wonton destruction and violent chaos" and destroyed functioning governments.
Nader describes the blowback caused by "reckless slaughter of civilians -- wedding parties, schools, clinics, peasant boys collecting fire-wood on a hillside -- from supposedly pinpoint, accurate airplanes, helicopter gunships, drones, or missiles. Hatred of the Americans spreads as people lose their loved ones." As a result, the US is perceived as "invaders on a rampage" resulting in countries producing an endless supply of "motivated fighters" and "suicide bombers." US wars' "'blowback' policies are fueling the expansion of al-Qaeda offshoots and new violent groups in over 20 countries."
Nader points out that "all this could have been avoided" as there were scores of retired military officials who warned all-out war was a mistaken course. Further, al-Qaeda, the Taliban and their off shoots are not winning the 'hearts and minds' of the people with their brutal policies but their promise of law and order is better than the chaos of US militarism.
These war policies seeking to achieve full spectrum dominance have also had negative effects at home. Nader points to "the harm to and drain on our soldiers, our domestic economy, the costly, boomeranging, endless wars overseas and what empire building has done to spread anxieties and lower the expectation level of the American people for their public budgets and public services."
How do we get out of these depraved quagmires of our own self-creation? Nader gives an answer -- a change in approach to the world, an end to war culture and a move toward a humanitarian culture. As Nader says it:
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
2
1
1
