American dishonor
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- 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 round-up was apparently aided by confidential census information
- the genocide of the American Indians
- McCarthyism
[edit] foreign
These items also fall into the category of American imperialism, something which conservatives generally deny exists.
- 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)
- 1953: Overthrowing the democratically-elected leader of Iran, Mohammed Mosaddeq (or Mosaddegh or Mossadegh), and replacing him with a compliant monarch (the Shah), because we wanted more control over Iranian oil
[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
- 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] Lists
- FROM WOUNDED KNEE TO IRAQ: A CENTURY OF U.S. MILITARY INTERVENTIONS by Dr. Zoltan Grossman: not all of these were dishonorable, but certainly many of them were -- and all probably qualify as American "chickens coming home to roost"
[edit] Filed Links
[refresh]
- 2008-07-02 :more:talk: 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.” more...
- 2008-05-16 :more:talk: 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. more...
- 2008-03-21 :more:talk: The full story behind Rev. Jeremiah Wright's 9/11 sermon § “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.” more...
- 2005-07-25 :more:talk: 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.” more...
