Saturday, August 07, 2004

United States Foreign Policy Exposed

By Rosemarie Jackowski

Killing Hope The official position of the government of the United States is that it invaded, and now occupies, Iraq because the U.S. wants to spread Freedom and Democracy in that region of the world. Only someone who does not know about U.S. escapades since WW 2, could ever fall for such a line of propaganda. Fortunately, many people around the world remember what happened when Iran DID have a Democracy. On August 19, 1953, Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh, the duly elected prime minister was overthrown in a CIA coup. The government of the United States took such action because Prime Minister Mossadegh wanted Iran’s oil to be used for the people of Iran. Even back then, the official U.S. policy was that the oil under Iran’s sands was the property of U.S. corporations. The U.S. coup in Iran was so successful, that soon after it, in 1954, the CIA was sent on a similar mission to Guatemala. Guatemala did not have oil, but it had something else that a U.S. corporation was coveting. The United Fruit Company wanted the soil upon which bananas were growing. The CIA accomplished its mission in Guatemala, and another Democracy was obliterated.

For the past 50-plus years, the foreign policy of the United States, has taken the U.S. military around the globe, exploiting one nation after another. This creeping imperialism is causing concern all around the world. Author Chalmers Johnson states that the U.S. has 6,000 bases in 130 countries. What the U.S. cannot get with bribes and indecent maneuvers in the UN, it gets with bombs. An updated list of the countries that the U.S. has bombed since WW 2, as compiled by historian William Blum follows: China (1945-46), Korea (1950-53), China (1950-53), Guatemala (1954), Indonesia (1958), Cuba (1959-60), Guatemala (1960), Congo (1964), Peru (1965), Laos (1964-73), Vietnam (1961-73), Cambodia (1969-70), Guatemala (1967-69), Grenada (1983), Libya (1986), El Salvador (1980), Panama (1989), Iraq (1991-2004), Sudan (1998), Afghanistan (1998-2003), Yugoslavia (1999). This is only a partial list. It does not contain the countries, such as Colombia, where the secret U.S. army of mercenaries is doing the bombing. It does not list locations that were bombed and contaminated as testing sites, such as Vieques.

Which country will be next? Will it be Korea or Cuba, France or Finland? No one knows, and no one is safe until U.S. foreign policy is changed. In studying the William Blum list of bombed countries, it becomes apparent that countries with a brown-eyed population are at increased risk. If you are not frightened yet, you have not been paying attention to recent world history. During the March 13, 2002 White House press conference, President Bush stated that all options were on the table. This comment, by President Bush, came just days after the Pentagon’s Revised Nuclear Posture Review was leaked to the Los Angles Times. In it, the Pentagon named seven countries that were potential targets of a U.S. NUCLEAR strike. Still not frightened? You better check out what happened to the people of Diego Garcia, when the U.S. military decided that it wanted their island as a military base.

For all of the people around the world, who are waiting for the citizens of the United States to stop this 50-year long killing and bombing spree, I have bad news. Most U.S. citizens know more about their favorite sports teams than they do about foreign policy. Do not look to them for help. Somehow, along the way, something happened to the U.S. national conscience. When the Pentagon used the dehumanizing term, “collateral damage,” to refer to the slaughter of civilians, not one member of the press ever spoke up and said, “No, not collateral damage. Those are human beings”. Even worse, the press adopted and repeated, without question, the language of the Pentagon. U.S. citizens never got to see the face of the little Iraqi girl, killed by a U.S. cluster bomb. The press is so deeply embedded in the government, that the Truth no longer exists.

It is time for the international community of nations to respond to military actions in which civilians are killed. A Global Campaign of Zero Tolerance is needed. When the first bomb hits the first civilian, that action should set off an immediate and automatic response from the entire world community. There are many non-violent responses that would be appropriate, such as economic boycotts etc., until the offending nation gives up all of its weapons. More than 13,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed since March 20, 2003.

The movement to safeguard humanity will have to come from outside of the U.S. In the U.S. there is no debate, no opposition party, and no dissent. Those who did try to raise their voices at the Democratic National Convention, in Boston, were silenced and caged. The United States will never bring Freedom and Democracy to the rest of the world. It cannot even bring freedom to Boston, or Democracy to Washington D.C., where the citizens still don’t have voting representation in Congress.

Rosemarie Jackowski lives in Bennington, Vt. She was arrrested in a peaceful protest against the U.S. invasion of Iraq on March 20, 2003 and is currently awaiting trial with the possibility of a prison sentence. She can be reached at dissent@sover.net.

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