A war is a feud
between two leaders. The science of sociology combined with history reflects
this simple fact that people generally avoid hostility and find ways to settle
conflicts in a peaceful manner. Reading through war documents, we realize that
the rulers of so called democratic countries go through so much fabrication and
unending explanations and struggles in order to convince people to participate
in wars. In dictatorships, people have no choice anyway. And, there are
multitude of reasons why leaders of a country ignite a war to begin with. At
the very beginning of the revolution in Iran, Khomeini had showed his true
identity to people, and Iranians realized that he was not the soft hearted
human loving religious man he claimed to be before the collapse of the old
regime, but a hard headed theocrat who did not have any love for his country or
people, and a brutal dictator. As people started demanding their rights at the beginning
of the post-revolution Iran, he realized that a war was the best thing to keep
the society under his leash. He started egging on Saddam Hussein, as it is
documented. Saddam, another brutal ruler, received American blessing and
support to start his aggression: “During
Iraq’s epic struggle against the Ayatollah Khomeini, the United States of
course had more than spoken to Baghdad. Washington- choosing Iraq as lesser
evil against Shiite extremism- was responsible for huge amounts of weaponry,
military training, sophisticated technology, satellite-photo intelligence, and
billions of dollars reaching a needy Hussein, who was also lavishly supported
by Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, they being concerned that Iran’s anti-monarchist
sentiments might spread to their own realms. Indeed, there is evidence that
Washington encouraged Iraq to attack Iran and ignite the war in the first
place. And during this period on American support of Hussein, he was certainly
the same odious, repressive, beastly thug as when he later came under American
moralistic rhetorical fire. Similarly, absent Washington’s prodding, the UN did
not condemn Iraq’s invasion, nor did it impose any sanctions or lay down any
demands. Even as it officially banned arms sales to either combatant, the US
secretly provided weapons to both. The other bête noire of the region, the
Ayatollah, received American arms and military intelligence on Iraq during the
war, so as to enhance the ability of the two countries to inflict maximum
devastation upon each other and stunt their growth as strong Middle-East
nations, (P. 332).” It is worth repeating this fact that Khomeini also went
to Iran as the leader of the revolution with American blessing, and the aim of
the war for the west was to destroy Shah’s ammunition stockpile.
Every person
reflects differently towards different situations and conditions. Sometimes, a
person’s action is in odds with some other actions, whether it is called peculiar
or hypocritical or duplicitous, or a dichotomy. When we hear names of Hitler or
Stalin, we picture in our minds a face with blood dripping down the teeth. But
George Bush (both father and son), Reagan, Obama, and many other US presidents whose
hands are dipped in blood of South American and Middle Eastern people don’t
look like murderers to us. When Hitler and Stalin were in power, they looked
normal to people of their countries as well. However, none of these people may
have killed anyone with their own hands, but by orders. The dichotomy is in
fact the two or more faces any of these people can have. They may even be
soft-hearted and don’t feel the pain and suffrage of their victims: “Josef Stalin studied for the priesthood…
Adolf Hitler was a vegetarian and anti-smoking… Herman Goering, while his
Luftwaffe rained death upon Europe, kept a sign in his office that read: ‘He
who tortures animas wounds the feelings of the German people.’… This fact Elie
Wiesel called the greatest discovery of the war: that Adolf Eichmann was
cultured, read deeply, played the violin… Mussolini also played the violin…
Charles Manson was a staunch anti-vivisectionist, (P.333).”
One of the
bloodiest regime of the 20th century that caused people to result in
guerilla warfare was El Salvador: “on 28
January 1982, President Reagan certified to Congress that the El Salvador
government was ‘making a concerted and significant effort to comply with
internationally recognized human rights’… Two days earlier, the American and
foreign press had carried the story of how government troops had engaged in a
massacre of the people of the village of El Mozote in December. From 700 to
1,000 persons were reported killed, mostly the elderly, women and children…
people hacked to death by machetes, many beheaded, a child thrown in the air
and caught on a bayonet, an orgy of rapes of very young girls before they were
killed…Both immediately and thereafter, the massacre was attended by denials
and a coverup by the State Department, with abundant media complicity… Officers
of National Guard were also trained in the United States. In august 1986, CBS
Television reported that three senior Guard officers who had been linked to
rightwing death squads received training at a police academy in Phoenix… In
light of the above, and many other reports of a similar nature, it can be
appreciated that the Reagan administration had to exercise some creativity in
getting around congressional hesitation about continued military aid to the
government of El Salvador, (P. 360, 361).”
Uprisings in
Haiti have been demolished many times by CIA and United States military. A
section of the book is devoted to Haiti. It describes how the most popular
government of Aristide was toppled by direct involvement of the United States
government. It also counts numerous ways Haitian officials have been on CIA payroll:
“From the mid-1980s until at least the
1991 coup, key members of Haiti’s military and political leadership were on the
Agency’s payroll…Moreover, one has to wonder what the defenders of the payments
would have thought upon learning during the cold war that congressmen and high
officials in the White House were on the KGB payroll…When Qaddafi of Libya did
this, it was called ‘supporting terrorism’… In 1986 the CIA created a new organization;
the National Intelligence Service (SIN)…Amongst the worst violation of human
rights in Haiti was the Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti
(FRAPH), actually a front for the army. The paramilitary group spread deep fear
amongst the Haitian people with its regular murders, public beatings, arson
raids on poor neighborhoods, and mutilation by machete. FRAPH’s leader,
Emannuel Constant, went onto the CIA payroll in early 1992 and, according to
the Agency, this relation ended in mid-1994. Whatever truth lies in that claim,
the fact is that by October the American Embassy in Haiti was openly
acknowledging that Constant- now a born-again democrat- was on its payroll,
(P.375,376).”
Empires of the
world have always thought of themselves as more intelligent and more studious
than those they dominate. They also convince their own nations to consider
themselves above other nations. When they conquer a country by force, they
install a garrison or a military base in order to keep their presence, and
crush any opposition: “Following its
bombing of Iraq in 1991, the United States wound up with military bases in
Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman and the United Arab Emirates. Following
its bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999, the United States wound up with military
bases in Kosovo, Albania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Hungary, Bosnia and Croatia. Following
its bombing of Afghanistan in 2001-2, the United States wound up with military
bases in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan; Kyrgyzstan,
Georgia, Yemen and Djibouti. Following its bombing and invasion of Iraq in
2003, the United States wound up with Iraq. This is not very subtle foreign
policy. Certainly not covert. The men who run the American Empire are not
easily embarrassed. And that is the way the empire grows- a base in every
neighborhood, ready to be mobilized to put down any threat to imperial rule, real
or imagined. Fifty-eight years after World War II ended, the United States
still has major bases in Germany and Japan; fifty years after the end of the
Korean War, tens of thousands of American armed forces continue to be stationed
in South Korea, (P. 383).”
Obama was the
first black man to become the President of the United States. This did not
settle easily with those who consider black people slaves, before and after the
emancipation. Those who envisioned themselves as the only rightful residents of
this country, were suddenly encountered with a shame they did not know how to
deal with. When McCain was running for presidency against Obama, a woman told
McCain that she had read about Obama and concluded that Obama was an Arab.
McCain responded by saying: “he is a decent family man, citizen, that I happened
to be in disagreement with…” implying that Arabs are not decent family men! With
such mentality, Americans can easily be persuaded to accept killing of
thousands and millions of Arabs through a US aggression: “The subsequent attack on Iraq- a war nobody wanted except the imperial
mafia- may have recruited thousands more throughout the Muslim world as the
next generation of terrorists to carry out the jihad against The Great Satan. Has
the American power elite learned anything from being the frequent target of
terrorism over the years? Here’s James Woolsey, former Director of the CIA and
member of Defense Department’s Policy Board, speaking two months after the
beginning of the US bombing of Afghanistan, advocating an invasion of Iraq and
unconcerned about the response of the Arab world: The silence of the Arab
public in the wake of America’s victories in Afghanistan, Woolsey said, proves
that ‘only fear will re-establish respect for the U.S.’… From 1945 to 2003, the
United States attempted to overthrow more than 40 foreign governments, and to
crush more than 30 populist-nationalist movements fighting against intolerable
regimes. In the process, the US bombed some 25 countries, caused the end of
life for several million people, and condemned many millions more to a life of
agony and despair, (P. 392).”
“Killing Hope” is
a document disclosing how hopes of people in various parts of the globe, for a
decent and democratic government, has been shattered since the second world war,
through the United States government’s overt and covert involvements. The book
was first published in 1987. All the mentioned quotations in this article are
from the 2004 updated edition. William Blum enriches his book with recorded
documents from hundreds of sources, and if there is a doubt in any part of a
story, it is directly mentioned. Table of contents of the book lists 55
chapters, each dedicated to a different country whose democracy, or its
struggle for democracy, has been prevented by the US government through 1995. The
last chapter reviews such actions from 1996 to 2004. Hopefully, naked
aggression of the United State governments in the past fourteen years, which
overshadows all previous ones in extent and brutality, will be published as
well.
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