It seems to me that the United States is the world’s main “terrorist-producing” country.
Look at the list of “Asians killed as a result of direct and indirect US action, 1950-2003″ in the References section of the book The World According to Washington, An Asian View by Indian writer Patwant Singh, 2005. His total, which does not include Iraq after 2004 or the current Afganistan war, comes to over 10 million.
His figures on Cambodia surprised me as they’re rather different from what we usually hear, and I’m not sure what his source is, although he lists the books he consulted. On that subject, however, I recommend the documentary, “The Trials of Henry Kissenger” from Netflix. The movie denies that we were directly responsible for the killing fields of the Khmer Rouge, but says we prepared the way with Nixon’s massive bombing, which helped to destabilize the country, and a CIA-backed coup.
On Iraq, estimates of excess deaths caused by the Bill Clinton-backed economic sanctions of the 1990s, according to Wikipedia, vary widely. The highest, by the Iraq government, is 1.5 million. (1)
A 2008 survey by Opinion Research Business estimated Iraqi deaths from the current war at over a million.(2) The majority were caused by Iraqis killing each other but we set off the civil war, and we did a lot of the killing. There was a brutal indifference, on our part, to killing noncombatants. Check out the documentary “The Ground Truth” from Netflix, which has some soul searching interviews with American veterans of the Iraq war.
An October 5 article in Common Dreams says that, “While it is difficult to know exactly how many civilians have been killed in Afghanistan, estimates range from 12,000 to 32,000 deaths directly and indirectly caused by war.” (3)
We have a lot of blood on our hands, and most Americans seem to be in denial. I would like to see you campaign against the American Empire, which requires mass murder to keep it going, mostly for the benefit of American corporate business interests.
I’m not impressed by Obama’s rhetoric. There is always a massive gap in American politics between what the politicians say and what they do. Obama is killing people, just like every other American president has done. Mass murder seems to be one of the perks of the job. And Ron Wyden has not been willing to vote against war funding (4), which should be one of the two main focal points of your campaign, the other being health care.
Even if the Democrats’ health care plan passes, and actually works, which is doubtful, it won’t even start to increase health insurance coverage until 2013. With a third of the country either uninsured or underinsured, this is unacceptable. Working-class people can’t wait for this. We need help now.
Eugene resident Lynn Porter is an activist working on peace, health care and environmental issues.
(1). “Iraq sanctions,” Wikipedia.
(2). “Iraq Conflict Has Killed A Million Iraqis: Survey,” Reuters via Common Dreams, January 31, 2008.
(3). “On the 8th Anniversary, 8 Things to Remember About the War in Afghanistan,” Rebecca Griffin, Common Dreams, October 5, 2009.
(4). From December of 2005 to June of 2008, Oregon Senator Ron Wyden voted for six out of eight war funding bills. In addition, this year he has voted for a supplemental and the Department of Defense Authorization and Appropriations bills, all of which contained money for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
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Thanks, Lynn. You are very right in saying that US foreign policy has been misdirected since before Eisenhower left office warning us of the perils of an uncheckes military-industrial complex.
We now have a government of the corporations, by the corporations and for the corporations. The medical industrial complex, planet-destroying international energy industries and other major players call the shots in Washington and when any of their interests are threatened overseas, war is the result.
Americans do bear a share of the blame for electing corporate tools like Wyden to the Senate and following the logic that we will somehow benefit from re-electing men of his experienced “leadership,” as the editorial board of the Eugene Register Guard once opined, somewhat to my surprise given that paper’s generally sensible positions.
However, it is hard to blame the average voter struggling in an economy devasated by forces they cannot understand because the corproate media and most of our politicians do not tell them enough of the truth to make up their own minds. It is up to us who have a burning passionto change the status quo to educate our fellow citizens through passionate but reasoned and friendly debate.
I hope that I can count on your becoming active on behalf of my candidacy for the US Senate. Identifying the problem in government is only the first step. Please help me build a fusion coalition that can put me in the Senate, where I might actually be able to do something about the problem.
I haven’t heard much enthusiasm from the Green Party about my idea to introduce a Constitutional amendment to abolish corproate personhood. It seems to me that if I did, any of the corproate tools in the Senate who opposed it would be easy pickings when they come up for re-election. I am trying to give voters in Oregon that choice in November.