If you believe George W. Bush, and what’s not to believe from the president who lied us into a war killing over one million people on the basis of non-existent weapons of mass destruction, they (specifically Muslims, Socialists and Communists and anyone else we don’t like) hate us for our “freedoms.” Much closer to the mark is another smarmy character from an earlier era with a similar resume — wanton killing of millions of people of color. Although war criminals in Washington are as numerous as ants at a picnic, at the top of the list is Henry Kissinger who just passed his hundredth year on this planet, much of it furthering US imperial dreams. “The illegal we do immediately; the unconstitutional takes a little longer.” He ought to know. He orchestrated the campaign of political and economic sabotage which led to the overthrow of the democratically elected Socialist president Salvatore Allende in Chile and the installation of the dictator General Augusto Pinochet who pillaged and plundered the Chilean people for 17 years. Kissinger was also the brains behind Argentina’s “dirty wars” against dissidents and the larger and filthier Operation Condor, a CIA directed reign of terror consisting of coups d’état, repression, torture, and the murders of tens of thousands of Socialists, students, and other activists across Latin America. Clearly his credentials as a bag man for the empire and a rapacious thug qualify him to know why they hate us.
Don’t believe him? How about the MAGA maestro who can’t help but tell the truth…sometimes. When Joe Scarborough, a cheerleader and stenographer for the Democrats, lugged out that tired old chestnut: “But again, he [Putin] kills journalists that don’t agree with him.” To his barely disguised horror, Trump shot back “I think our country does plenty of killing also, Joe.”
Maybe he was thinking of the six million people around the world who died as a result of the US-led global war on terror (“Cost of War Project,” Brown University). Or maybe his historical memory went back to President Lyndon Johnson who saw himself as a “man of peace” on his way to orchestrating the killing of millions of innocent Vietnamese civilians and 58,000 American soldiers.
[In Vietnam] there were some two million civilians killed and some five million wounded; the United States…expended 30 billion pounds of munitions releasing the equivalent in explosive force of 640 Hiroshima bombs…episodes of devastation, murder, massacre, rape, and torture…were the norm…a continuous stream of atrocity. [Kill Anything that Moves by Nick Turse]
Who wouldn’t love a country that perpetrates such horrors? It doesn’t stop there. The United States has a bad habit of relegating to second place negotiation and other forms of diplomacy in favor of pre-emptive strikes — a bipartisan malady. In 2003, President George W. Bush launched his preemptive shock and awe attack on Iraq based on their having weapons of mass destruction (they didn’t). That strike directly countermanded Article 51 of the UN charter (which the U.S. signed in 1945 and which at the same time became a US law) forbidding attacks against another country for building up its military or having “hostile intent” to do so. In 2016, Barack Obama considered a preemptive strike against North Korea after its fifth nuclear test. According to journalist Bob Woodward, Obama put the question to his National Security Council — “Was it possible to launch a preemptive military strike, supported by cyberattacks on North Korea to take out their nuclear and missile programs?”
Although he ultimately decided against a preemptive military strike in this case, it was always on his mind. Three years earlier in 2012, he mulled over partnering with Israel in launching a preemptive strike against Iran in response to a threat to weaponize its nuclear program. At first he made a show of saying “there is too much loose talk of war.” That sentiment quickly bit the dust as he announced his true preference “I will take no options off the table,” [including] “a military effort.”
Was Barack Obama an outlier on the foreign policy scene? Not really. He was just another American president with imperial delusions of a uni-polar world ruled by the United States. Like all modern presidents, he spoke of the United States as a benevolent nation but included the usual caveat that the “use of force [is sometimes] not only necessary but morally justified… leaving himself and succeeding presidents wiggle room to wage all the war their corrupt hearts crave whether in Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, or a proxy war in Ukraine. It goes without saying that all these wars are violations of the U.N. charter and U.S. law.
What about the 800 US military bases (or more) located in dozens of countries on every continent? A clear threat to the sovereignty of these countries. If that weren’t enough to make them love us, the U.S. has imposed punishing economic sanctions on most of the global south, China and Russia. And the blows keep coming. The U.S. has refused to return the money Venezuela, Russia and Afghanistan had on deposit in US and British financial institutions. Squirreling away billions of dollars of other countries’ funds hardly makes the US a hero to the rest of the world.
As we’ve touched on earlier, US foreign policy usually takes the form of helping a wannabee dictator, usually a member of the military, overthrow a democratically elected leader (to name only a few of the most egregious) in Guatemala, Iran, Chile, Vietnam, the Congo, Indonesia, Panama [condemned by the U.N. as a “flagrant violation of international law,”], Iraq [the UN called it an “illegal war.”) Although this is only a snapshot of the mayhem the US has perpetrated around the globe, the message sent to the nations of the world is one they take to heart — the United States will not and has not hesitated to overthrow governments that stand in the way of its political and economic goals, which usually involve stealing the resources of poor countries.
What if a country defies the will of the self-described hegemon? As the world saw in Libya, if the US cannot bring a country into its imperialist fold peacefully, it will without a second thought destroy it as a clear signal to other nations that might be tempted to thwart the US ground game.
Proving that the US leopard never changes its spots, recently the US had its hand in the dirty dealings which toppled and eventually jailed Pakistan’s prime minister replacing him with a military junta. The US loves a military-takeover. Dollars and weapons cement US primacy in the future direction of the country.
In a pathetic attempt to “whitewash” its image, the US does a little virtue signaling sending American young people to help the poor often in countries the U.S. helped impoverish. In an ironic twist it’s called the Peace Corps. The only people convinced by this gaudy display of virtue are Americans.
U.S. foreign policy has become a victim of its own excesses as its power to affect the direction of other countries rapidly diminishes. Yet it continues to strut its stuff as a modern-day Captain America making war and fomenting coups to establish what it calls American democracy. Fewer and fewer of the world’s countries are convinced.
The more things change the more they remain the same. Six decades ago, President John F. Kennedy declared that the U.S. is the world’s policeman as well as its judge and jury. “Any potential aggressor contemplating an attack on any part of the free world…must know that our (US) response will be suitable, selective, swift and efficient,” as Vietnam, Cuba, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and numerous other nations of color in the Global South, Africa and the Mideast learned to their sorrow.
Why do they hate us? The answer is written in the mountains of blood, tears, ruined cities and wretched people the U.S. has left on the road to enforcing the “[US defined] rule of law.” Is there a kinder, gentler way to organize the world? It appears that change is in the wind and America’s days as the sole hegemon are numbered:
The order is rapidly fadin’
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin’
(Bob Dylan)
