EMPIRE OF CHAOS
The United States'
empire was at its peak following World War II. America ruled the
globe economically and militarily. It's influence was ubiquitous
and its soft power seemingly unlimited. But, arrogance and greed
transformed the United States into a pariah. We are feared for
our power, but no longer respected for our institutions. Inequality,
injustice, corruption, hypocrisy, betrayal and violence, have
turned much of the world against us.
Sanctions, structural-adjustment,
economic warfare. Coups, regime change, color revolutions. 'Responsibility-2-protect',
'coalitions-of-the-willing'. Counter-insurgencies, assassinations.
Weapons trade, drug trafficking. Napalm, cluster bombs, landmines,
depleted uranium, chemical and biological weapons.
This destructive legacy
has resulted in the suffering and death of millions, so that American
corporations and banks can extend their reach around the globe
and reap enormous profits, while the United States military achieves
strategic global hegemony.
As the United States
continues to demonstrate how easily it can manipulate elections,
exploit popular unrest and undermine economies around the world,
many developing nations are concluding that less freedom and more
authoritarianism may be their best option to withstand the 21st
century 'realpolitik' of U.S. 'democracy promotion'.
And, while U.S. financial
and military aggression escalates in reaction to America's economic,
societal and democratic decline, the global chaos that results
may leave millons in misery and a world in ruins.
THE 'INDISPENSIBLE
NATION'
"If we have to use force,
it is because we are America; we are the indispensible nation."
U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine
Albright (1998)
"Since World War Two the
United States has attempted to overthrow more than fifty foreign
governments, it has dropped bombs on the people of around thirty
countries, has attempted to assassinate some sixty foreign leaders,
helped to suppress dozens of populist or nationalist movements,
has tortured many thousands, and seriously and illegally intervened
in one way or another in virtually every country on the planet,
in the process of which the U.S. has caused the end of life for
several million people, and condemned many millions more to a
life of agony and despair."
William Blum, in a speech at the
University of Vermont, 2007
"Coming to grips with U.S./CIA
activities in broad numbers and figuring out how many people have
been killed in the jungles of Laos or the hills of Nicaragua is
very difficult. But, adding them up as best we can, we come up
with a figure of six million people killed-and this is a minimum
figure. Included are: one million killed in the Korean War, two
million killed in the Vietnam War, 800,000 killed in Indonesia,
one million in Cambodia, 20,000 killed in Angola ... and 22,000
killed in Nicaragua. These people would not have died if U.S.
tax dollars had not been spent by the CIA to inflame tensions,
finance covert political and military activities and destabilize
societies."
John Stockwell, CIA official in
the 1960s and 1970s
"The US spends almost half
of all the military spending in the entire world, equal to virtually
all the other countries combined. More than half of the weapons
sold in the world are sold by the United States. The US has more
than 700 military bases scattered across dozens of countries.
The US is the world's leading trainer of paramilitaries. The US
has a series of courses, from interrogators to generals, that
have graduated military people guilty of war crimes and crimes
against humanity in dozens upon dozens of countries. The US has
a series of covert paramilitary forces of its own that get almost
no attention. This is the U.S. military machine. In addition,
there's the support for repressive non-democratic governments
and for governments that commit aggression. There are about forty
of them that the US backs."
journalist Allan Nairn, 2010
"We are not hated because
we practice democracy, value freedom, or uphold human rights.
We are hated because our government denies these things to people
in Third World countries whose resources are coveted by our multinational
corporations."
Robert Bowman, Vietnam Veteran
"The crimes of the United
States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but
very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand
it to America. It has exercised a cynical manipulation of power
worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It's
a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis."
British playwright Harold Pinter,
2005 Nobel Lecture
"New military bases have
been built since 9/11 in Poland, Lithuania, Hungary, Bulgaria,
Romania, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, Kyrgyzstan, Qatar
and Bahrain. The US military has 737 bases in 63 countries according
to the 2005 Base Structure Report, but the actual number probably
exceeds 1,000."
Eric Walberg, 2011
"About ten days after 9/11,
I went through the Pentagon, and went downstairs just to say hello
to some of the people on the Joint Staff who used to work for
me, and one of the generals called me in. He said 'I just got
this from upstairs [meaning the Secretary of Defense's office]
today. This is a memo that describes how we're going to take out
seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria,
Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran'."
General Wesley Clark, 2007
"The real motivation behind
US military interventions during the cold war was not Soviet deterrence,
but the crushing of popular, indigenous nationalist movements
for independence, and the establishment of US control over strategic
regions."
Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed in his book
"Behind the War on Terror"
"It is the function of
the CIA to keep the world unstable, and to propagandize and teach
the American people to hate, so we will let the Establishment
spend any amount of money on arms."
John Stockwell, CIA official in
the 1960s and 1970s
"This is a very hard choice,
but we think the price is worth it."
U.S. Ambassador to the UN Madeleine
Albright
on "60 Minutes" (1996), when she was asked whether she
considered the deaths of half a million Iraqi children as the
result of U.S. sanctions - acceptable
"Do American leaders really
believe the utterances that emanate from their mouths? When the
words "god" and "prayer" are regularly invoked
in their talks, while American Hellfire missiles are sent screaming
into a city center or a village marketplace teeming with life
...when they carry on endlessly about democracy and freedom, while
American soldiers are smashing down doors, dragging off the men,
humiliating the women, traumatizing the children. When they proclaim
the liberation of a people and the bringing forth of a better
life, while vast quantities of American depleted uranium are exploding
into a fine vapor which will poison the air, the soil, the blood,
and the genes forever."
William Blum
"Stop talking so much about
democracy and instead support dictatorships of the right if their
policies are pro-American."
U.S. Treasury Secretary George
Humphrey, 1954
"Almost from the beginning,
the CIA engaged not only in the collection of intelligence information,
but also in covert operations which involved rigging elections
and manipulating labor unions abroad, carrying on paramilitary
operations, overturning governments, assassinating foreign officials,
protecting former Nazis and lying to Congress."
former Senator George McGovern,
1987
"In every country, embassies
are used for spying. So, it would be dumb for a country to put
its real intelligence-gathering officers inside an embassy or
consulate or attaché', because that is the first place
a hosting nation is going to look for spies. So, the number one
place the United States and other countries place their intelligence-gathering
officers and informants is NGOs. In Russia, Central Asia, the
Caucasus, and elsewhere in the world, United States' NGOs - over
90% of them - are operations bases for the CIA."
Sibel Edmonds
"With the end of the Cold
War and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact in 1991, NATO's real
role in the US empire has become clearer as, instead of disbanding,
it expanded to encompass, in conjunction with US military commands,
most of the world. It has become the centerpiece of the empire's
military presence around the world, moving quickly to respond
to US needs to intervene where the UN won't."
Eric Walberg, 2011
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