American dishonor
From Issuepedia
Contents |
[edit] Navigation
- countries: United States of America: dishonor
[edit] Overview
This page is about stains on America's honor. Those who either care about America or who claim to represent America's interests must learn from these lessons and prevent the mistakes of the past from being repeated.
[edit] The List
[edit] Agreed Items
[edit] domestic
- two centuries of slavery
- a further century of apartheid (Jim Crow laws, separate but equal...)
- internment of Japanese-descended American citizens during World War II
- the genocide of the American Indians
[edit] foreign
- George H.W. Bush urging Iraqi Shiites to rise up against Saddam Hussein with the promise that we were "on our way" and would protect them, and then backing off – thus allowing Saddam to murder almost a million of his own people (while our own General Schwarzkopf pleaded for just 12 more hours to reach Basra) [1]
- "There is another way for the bloodshed to stop: And that is, for the Iraqi military and the Iraqi people to take matters into their own hands and force Saddam Hussein, the dictator, to step aside and then comply with the United Nations' resolutions and rejoin the family of peace-loving nations." -- GHWB, 1991-02-15, on the Voice of America; sources: CNN, here, here, here, here, and Wikipedia but mysteriously missing from the George (H.W.) Bush Presidential Library archives for Feb. 1991 (a search for "Voice of America" also does not find it).
- further reading: The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East by Robert Fisk Amazon (unchecked; submitted by 3rd party)
[edit] To Be Researched
- starting two wars with Mexico
- Spanish-American war
- conquest of the Philippines
- "The War Prayer", a short piece by Mark Twain, was apparently written in outraged reaction to the US intervention in the Philippines (is this the same thing as the "conquest"?)
- conquest of the Sandwich Islands
- overthrowing the Mossadeq government
- training the Savak
- overthrowing the Arbenz government
- overthrowing the Allende government
- killing three million Vietnamese (see Vietnam War)
- supplying the PKI's membership list to our new puppet government so that a half million Indonesians could be killed
- supplying the Indonesian government weapons so that they could invade and terrorize East-Timor for twenty years
- training death squads and torturers at the School of the Americas (now renamed)
- financing and training the Contras in Nicaragua
- financing and training the death squads in El Salvador
- overthrowing the Aristide government - twice
- attempting to overthrow the Chavez government (Venezuela)
[edit] Links
[edit] Filed Links
- 2008-07-02 /S/D/ Believe Me, It’s Torture “One used to be told—and surely with truth—that the lethal fanatics of al-Qaeda were schooled to lie, and instructed to claim that they had been tortured and maltreated whether they had been tortured and maltreated or not. Did we notice what a frontier we had crossed when we admitted and even proclaimed that their stories might in fact be true? I had only a very slight encounter on that frontier, but I still wish that my experience were the only way in which the words “waterboard” and “American” could be mentioned in the same (gasping and sobbing) breath.” Direct link to video: YouTube Comments: Pharyngula
- 2008-05-16 /S/D/ Is the U.S. the World's Largest State Sponsor of Terrorism? Some highlights of American terrorism, past and present. We owe it to ourselves to put a stop to this. -W.
- 2008-03-21 /S/D/ The full story behind Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s 9/11 sermon by Roland Martin: “One of the most controversial statements in this sermon was when he mentioned “chickens coming home to roost.” He was actually quoting Edward Peck, former U.S. Ambassador to Iraq and deputy director of President Reagan’s terrorism task force, who was speaking on FOX News. That’s what he told the congregation.” The "chickens" metaphor implied that 9/11 was possibly just part of the harvest America has sown with its many acts of terrorism abroad, of which he listed a handful. Opponents of Barack Obama have been attacking him for not distancing himself more forcefully from Rev. Wright's statements.
- 2005-07-25 /S/D/ Guardsman: CIA beat Iraqis with hammer handles “CIA officials used a sledgehammer handle to beat various prisoners in Iraq, and one official, whose name is classified, would often brag about his abuse of prisoners, according to testimony in a closed session of a military hearing. ... In the March hearing, Sgt. 1st Class Gerold Pratt of the Utah National Guard said he saw classified personnel use a 15-inch wooden sledgehammer handle to hit prisoners. .. "They'd ask you a question, and if they didn't like it, they'd hit you," he said.”
