If there is one thing that American lefties and righties agree on, it is warmongering. We are hearing a helluva lot of it today. From CNN to Newsmax, the self-righteous talking heads preach to us that the United States must do everything in its power to help tough little Ukraine wage war against big bad Vladimir Putin. Even old crooked-faced Greta Van Susteren was recently brought back from cable limbo by Newsmax to give us lessons about Putin’s “atrocities,” thereby seeking to justify that Fox-wannabe network’s constant warmongering for this US-provoked conflict.
If both the right-wing and left-wing talking heads weren’t so blissfully oblivious to the actual truths that history and current events teach us, they would have a clearer perspective on what is really going on in this country and in this world today.
Last gasps of a dying empire
The main unspoken truth is that the US-provoked war in Ukraine represents one of the last desperate gasps of the dying American empire. The United States and its global imperialist empire are in an advanced pathological condition of decline and collapse. Evidence of this collapse is seen at home with our increasingly immoral, decadent, perverse, ignorant, and hopeless society. And evidence of this collapse is seen globally with our continual warmongering, stoking the flames of conflict and chaos all around the world in vain efforts to assert perpetual American dominance, even as China, Russia, Iran, and other “enemy” nations are laughing at our stupidity and silliness.
Of course, the American military-industrial complex and the American corporate globalist elitists do not care about the laughter. They will keep profiting from all the war and social chaos that they create. And after America is eventually totally obliterated thanks to them, they will simply move on and set up their little shops of horror elsewhere, probably in China, which will surely be the new dominant world power. The individuals who are left to pay the price for the recklessness of the American war profiteers are the regular, common people in the United States and in the various countries where the elitists do their globalist dirty work. Common people can only watch in impotence as society collapses into chaos, perversion, and overall daily hell all around them.
But, yes indeed, the great American collapse is now upon us. Someday, authoritative history texts will be written about the decline and fall of America and its empire. When they are written, they will likely have one predominant theme: The USA was probably the most warmongering nation in history, causing the greatest amount of human suffering and death throughout the world.
Those history books aren’t written yet, but many of the facts and war crimes are already available for those who seek to know the truth, despite the establishment’s best efforts at information suppression, distortion, and censorship.
Facts about Ukraine
Let’s start with the ongoing Ukraine war. This war was totally avoidable, if the US government wasn’t led by warmongers. The US should have respected and addressed Russia’s frequently expressed and legitimate security concerns about NATO expansion and hostile Ukrainian actions near the Russian border. That would have prevented the war from ever starting. But after the war started, instead of supplying Ukraine with massive amounts of weapons and money to prolong the ugly conflict, the US government should have ordered its puppet Zelensky regime to reach a negotiated settlement with Russia, giving up territory that is historically Russian land anyway. And the US should have guaranteed to Russia that there would be no further NATO expansion. But instead of taking these wise, responsible steps to eliminate the threats to Russia and to prevent or quickly end the war, the US first provoked the war and is now prolonging it indefinitely—directly causing untold thousands upon thousands of deaths and massive destruction in the country it purports to want to save.
Needless to say, none of the US actions in Ukraine are deterring Putin from methodically proceeding with accomplishing his primary goal behind the war—ensuring Russia’s national security. Furthermore, the US actions have prompted Russia to become more economically self-sufficient, to detach itself from the rot of American/Western culture, and to strengthen its alliances with China and other US adversaries. These are all substantial benefits for Russia, even as the people of the US and Western Europe endure the economic hardships stemming from their governments’ hysterical anti-Russia policies.
Meanwhile, the regular Ukrainian people are suffering. This human suffering is exactly what the American warmongers want. Death and destruction are the fertilizers that grow their profits and power. This has been true since at least the end of World War II. Ever since then, the US has been very good at starting and waging wars, but very bad at ending them. The US always ultimately loses the wars it starts, then withdraws and leaves the countries worse off than before the American intervention.
Iraq, Afghanistan, War on Terror
Next in our review of the horrors of US warmongering, we might consider the recent (post-2001) deception-based conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and Pakistan. American invasions, occupations, and aerial attacks in those countries have killed well over a million people, hundreds of thousands of whom were noncombatants. And these numbers don’t take into account the millions of innocent people who have suffered serious injuries and property losses. Tens of millions of people have been displaced from their homes and forced to flee as refugees as a result of the chaos purposefully caused by the American policies and actions in those nations, as well as in other recent conflicts in Somalia, Libya, the Philippines, and the overall “war on terror.” In countless cases, attacks by US forces or their proxy fighters in these countries were deliberately targeted on civilians and civilian infrastructure, including food distribution and health systems. So, who has been the biggest terrorist around the world?
After thousands of American soldiers have been killed or mutilated in the pointless fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan over many years, those nations have been left more chaotic and less free than they were before US troops invaded. Moreover, the whole Middle East region has been left more unstable and violent because of US actions there, including the supplying of weapons by US arms merchants to all sides of the endless conflicts. Despite of—or because of—all this American “help,” hatred for and threats against America in the region have grown. This is what happens whenever the United States says it is spreading “democracy” and fighting “autocracy.”
Vietnam War
Before the “war on terror,” there was much other US imperialist meddling around the world from the 1960s through the 1990s—the worst of which happened in Vietnam in the 60s and 70s. In the tragically stupid Vietnam War (which was longest US war until Afghanistan), approximately 4 million people were killed, including about 58,000 Americans, as the US claimed to battle the spread of communism. End result: the communists won. This was one of the few wars in which the mainstream American media eventually showed some honesty, reporting on the many atrocities that US troops committed against civilians, including blatant murder, mutilation, and torture. The infamous My Lai massacre, in which some 500 unarmed Vietnamese civilians were shot dead by US soldiers, became representative of US brutality and inhumanity. The US deployed chemical warfare in Vietnam with the Agent Orange poison, which contaminated crops and water, sickened and killed civilians and soldiers alike, caused birth defects, and continues to cause serious environmental and medical problems today.
After displaying rare credibility in their reporting of the Vietnam War, American journalists weirdly returned to their propagandistic tendencies in subsequent conflicts—as is all too evident today. I suppose they came to realize that being loyal government propagandists can be better for your career than being subversive honest reporters.
Korean War, World War II
Going back further, during the Korean War, an estimated 20 percent of the civilian population in Korea was killed by US napalm and firebomb attacks during three short years in the 1950s. Almost all Korean cities were left as piles of blown-up rubble and burnt wreckage. Independent foreign journalists reported on the barbarity of US forces shooting anything that moved, including peasants working in fields. Ultimately, after the deaths of more than 3 million people, the war settled nothing, and the US and North Korea remain in an official state of war 70 years later.
American war atrocities did not begin after World War II. During that war, American saturation bombing killed tens of thousands of civilians in city after city, including Dresden, Hamburg, and Tokyo. Well, the “bad guys” did it, so we had to do it too. But they lost, so they got prosecuted as war criminals. We won, so we got away with it. Needless to say, the US was responsible for the two greatest war crimes in history—the hundreds of thousands of innocent people killed by the American atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
American war criminals
There have been numerous American war criminals responsible for the many US war atrocities committed over the past several decades, among the most prominent being Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Hillary Clinton, Madeleine Albright, Henry Kissinger, Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, and McGeorge Bundy. That’s just to name a few. (Donald Trump may be the only president who hasn’t been a war criminal in the past 60 years, which is why the establishment hates him so much.) Additional American war criminals are the CEOs and other executives of the giant defense contractor companies who have promoted and profited off of wars, such as the heads of Lockheed Martin, Raytheon Technologies, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, and General Dynamics. Numerous American so-called journalists who serve as propagandists for the US government should also be regarded as war criminals.
Of course, none of these American war criminals were, or ever will be, held accountable, because the Western elitists—despite their collapsing societies—still exercise practical control over such international organizations as the United Nations and the International Criminal Court in the Hague.
In contrast to the cowardly, criminal, lying, phony American journalists of today, Julian Assange is a genuine journalist and hero who reported boldly and honestly on US war crimes. Consequently, he has been ruthlessly punished and persecuted by US authorities and their European accomplices. So much for freedom of the press under “democracy.”
What about the millions of American veterans—the regular people that the US government sent to foreign lands to fight its dumb wars? Should we blame them for the US war crimes? Most of them do not share the blame, but they are not “heroes” either. They did not fight these horrific, senseless, losing battles ever since 1945 to defend American “freedom” or “democracy.” Rather, whether they realized it or not, they fought for the profits of the military-industrial complex in deadly exercises that had nothing to do with the freedom of American citizens. The point of these conflicts was never to win; it was merely to fight and make profits for the rich executives and grow power for the corrupt politicians. That was the only point.
Therefore, rather than being regarded as heroes, American veterans should be regarded as victims. They sacrificed their lives or their physical or mental health for stupid, meaningless causes. They deserve pity, but not praise. And the warmongering politicians and executives that sent them to slaughter deserve hatred and contempt.
During the Vietnam era, the young guys in the American military had no choice because they were drafted. But since then, the US military has been made up of volunteers. So, they had a choice, right? Not really. The fact is that if the US crony-capitalist economic system wasn’t as crooked and stacked against regular Americans as it is, most of these volunteers, who are mostly poor people, would not feel the need to sign up to the military as their only viable employment option.
Remember Eisenhower and Washington
Is there anything we can do to stop this American warmongering and to turn the disastrous direction of America around? Well, it might help to heed the long-ago warnings of two US presidents who understood the horrors of war first-hand.
In his farewell address in 1961, President Dwight Eisenhower warned about the greed, dangers, and recklessness of the US military-industrial complex. And in his farewell address in 1796, President George Washington warned of the dangers of foreign entanglements. These were both wise, war-weary men who knew that the wicked warmongers would easily have their way if the weakling politicians and ignorant population let them.
But at this late point in US decadence in 2022, it is clear that the warnings of Eisenhower and Washington will continue to be ignored and even ridiculed. Our evil entrenched ruling class and their self-centered policies ensure that the American people and the people of the world will keep paying the heavy price for the elitists’ greed as the American society and American empire head straight for their spectacular, inevitable crash. Meanwhile, the US warmongers will keep blaming other nations and other people for the wars, atrocities, and disasters that they purposefully cause.
Note: For corroborating and additional information, please see this essay by Chris Hedges, this report by the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, and this page by the World Future Fund.
War. What is it good for? Absolutely nothing.
