HAPPY BIRTHDAY, AMERICA 227 YEARS OF WARFARE .......
By JOHN STANTON " Only the American people can stop war. What
will they do? The world waits "
Senate CRIMES P***** Broad War Funding Measure
http://www.leg.wa.gov/Senate/Senators/
In a 92 to 6 vote, the Senate yesterday approved unrestricted funding
for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that allows continuation of the
current military course of action through the end of President Bush's
term and beyond.
Map of U.S. military bases surrounding oil-rich Iran)
http://www.mimico-by-the-lake.com/us%20military%20bases%20surround%20...
WAR CRIMES COMMITTED IN IRAQ
WAR CRIMES COMMITTED IN AFGHANISTAN
http://www.robert-fisk.com/the_evidence.htm
9-11 Was An Inside Job - A Call To True Patriots
http://www.911sharethetruth.com/
How do you teach your child right from Wrong
President of the United States - George W. Bush ?
are you teaching future or next genaration ?
Bush: Kill! Kill! Kill! <- U.S. GUILTY
http://badamerican.wordpress.com/2008/06/03/bush-kill-kill-kill/
"Great power imposes the obligation of exercising restraint, and we
did not live up to this obligation." That according to Leo Szilard,
the Manhattan Project physicist commenting on the United States and
its decision in August of 1945 to obliterate non-military targets
Hiro****ma (70,000 dead instantly with 210,000 total deaths) and
Nagasaki (40,000 dead instantly with 200,000 total deaths) in Japan.
When the United States of America takes its place in the graveyard of
empires, its tombstone will display Szilard's words alongside the
inscription, "Born in violence, practiced violence and came to a
violent end." Americans fancy their society as a peaceful, freedom
loving enterprise when the reality is that Americans are brutally
competitive and adversarial in every aspect of their lives. And they
are warlike to the core. Is it any wonder that in America, the
easiest
act for the US government to carry out is war?
As Americans prepare to celebrate their Independence Day this July 4,
2003, with a grandiose glorification of ongoing wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan-and wars from days past--it's worth remembering those
millions of civilians and/or non-combatants who have died at the
hands
of unconstrained and psychopathic American power. The US government
has a long history of reengineering and downsizing populations that
get in the way of freedom loving Americans and their business
interests. Each and every American has the blood of the world on his/
her hands. And freedom is going to get even bloodier as history, it
turns out, is an excellent guide.
Kill 'Em All
Prior to those fateful days in August of 1945, the US Target
Committee
met in May of 1945 and discussed the need for following up those two
days of nuclear infamy with B-29 incendiary raids. "The feasibility
of
following the raid by an incendiary mission was discussed. This has
the great advantage that the enemies' fire fighting ability will
probably be paralyzed by the gadget [atomic bomb] so that a very
serious conflagration should be capable of being started." The US
Target Committee, anxious to collect data on the "gadget's"
performance recommended a 24 hour waiting period before letting loose
the B-29's to va****ize any humans or structures that might have
survived the "gadget's" output.
In February of 1945 in Dresden, Germany, the United States--and its
coalition partner Great Britain--were engaged in the firebombing
slaughter of scores of German civilians and refugees fleeing the
Soviet Army's advance. According to rense.com. "Dresden was a
hospital
city for wounded soldiers. Not one military unit, not one anti-
aircraft battery was deployed in the city. Together with the 600, 000
refugees from Breslau, Dresden was filled with nearly 1.2 million
people. Churchill had asked for "suggestions on how to blaze 600,000
refugees. He wasn't interested in how to target military
installations
60 miles outside of Dresden. More than 700,000 phosphorus bombs were
dropped on 1.2 million people. One bomb for every 2 people. The
temperature in the center of the city reached 1600 degrees
centigrade.
More than 260,000 bodies and residues of bodies were counted. But
those who perished in the center of the city could not be traced.
Approximately 500,000 children, women, the elderly, wounded soldiers
and the animals of the zoo were slaughtered in one nightOthers hiding
below ground died. But they died painlessly--they simply glowed
bright
orange and blue in the darkness. As the heat intensified, they either
disintegrated into cinders or melted into a thick liquid--often three
or four feet deep in spots."
Writing in World War II magazine, Christopher Lew points out that the
Americans incinerated Tokyo, Japan in March of 1945 via firebombing
raids killing 100,000 civilians. The US government engaged in
military
campaigns such as Operation Starvation meant to deny food supplies to
the population. Every city in Japan was targeted in a ruthless,
murderous and calculated manner. Yet, the Emperor of Japan's
residence
was considered off limits by US commanders (the rationale being he
would be an asset in the post-war era "For three hours over Tokyo,
334
B-29s unleashed their cargo [including napalm] upon the dense city
below. The fires raged out of control in little less than 30 minutes,
aided by a 28-mph wind. Even the water in the rivers reached the
boiling point. The fire was so intense that it created updrafts that
tossed the gigantic B-29s around as if they were feathers. Officially
the Japanese listed 83,793 killed and 40,918 injured. A total of
265,171 buildings were destroyed, and 15.8 square miles of the city
were burned to ashes. It was the greatest urban disaster, man-made or
natural, in all of history." The slaughter of the Japanese and their
cities was unrelenting and so insidiously effective that the US
military ran out of targets.
Of course, the US government has never been content just to
annihilate
those pesky civilians in other lands. There's always work to be done
right here in the United States. Whether rounding up Arabs in 2003
and
locking them away or engaging in genocide in the 1800's, the US
government has a long history of reengineering and downsizing
populations that get in the way of freedom loving Americans. For
example, in 1830 the Congress of the United States passed the Indian
Removal Act according to understandingprejudice.org. President Andrew
Jackson quickly signed the bill into law. In the summer of 1838, US
Army General Winfield Scott led his men in the invasion of the
Cherokee Nation. In one of many bloody episodes in US history, men,
women, and children were taken from their land, herded into make****ft
forts with minimal facilities and food, then forced to march a
thousand miles--some made part of the trip by boat in equally
horrible
conditions. Under the indifferent US Army commanders, an estimated
5,000 native Americans would die on the Trail of Tears.
The Tradition Continues: Make War Not Love
Thanks to its penchant for war and belief in its divine
invincibility,
worldwide polls now show that the United States is a reviled nation.
Little surprise there. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld shrugs
off
the deaths of 10,000 civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan. He is equally
without pity for the American troops now dying each day in both
failed
military campaigns. Attorney General John Ashcroft-who now likes to
be
addressed as General Ashcroft-presides over an American justice
system
which has stripped away the rights of all Americans to due process
and
other rights formerly guaranteed under the Bill of Rights. In the US,
accused serial killers and rapists have more access to legal
assistance than an individual suspected of terrorism. And for the
first time, America has more of its citizens incarcerated and
executed
than any nation on the planet. "With liberty and justice for all"
seems meaningless as the United States flaunts the fact that it runs
a
death camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and that its foreign and domestic
policies include torture, assassination, and eavesdropping on any
person it deems a threat to national security.
America has been at war since 1775. Indeed, the US has never been at
peace. The following are considered major conflicts: Revolutionary
War
(1775-1783), War of 1812 (1812-1815), Mexican War (1846-1848), Civil
War (1861-1865), Spanish American War (1898), World War I
(1917-1918),
World War II (1941-1945), Korean War (1950-1953), Vietnam War
(1964-1972), and the Gulf War I (1990-1991). And that list excludes
the invasion of Panama, Grenada, Serbia, Gulf War II and a whole slew
of covert actions that overthrew governments the world over. The
future holds Iran, North Korea, Syria, Colombia, Nepal, Sri Lanka
and,
arguably, the entire planet.
Unfortunately, war is the defining characteristic of the US
government
and a majority of its people. American freedom depends on war and
their economic system demands it. "Under capitalism, cor****ations
that
produce weapons make huge profits from these weapons of war and
therefore are happy both to prepare for war and to engage in war. You
prepare for war, you have all these government contracts, and make
all
this money, and you engage in war and you use up all these products
and you have to replace them," according to Howard Zinn.
Is there any hope of breaking away from a bloody history celebrated
mindlessly each July 4th? Will Americans ever live up to the ideals
set forth in the US Constitution? Can they break the habit of war?
"War has always diminished our freedom," says Zinn. "When our freedom
has expanded, it has not come as a result of war or of anything the
government has done but as a result of what citizens have done. The
best test of that is the history of black people in the United
States,
the history of slavery and segregation. It wasn't the government that
initiated the movement against slavery but white and black
abolitionists. It wasn't the government that initiated the battle
against racial segregation in the 1950s and 1960s, but the movement
of
people in the South. It wasn't the government that gave the people
the
freedom to work eight hours a day instead of twelve hours a day. It
was working people themselves who organized into unions, went out on
strike, and faced the police. The government was on the other side;
the government was always in sup****t of the employers and the
cor****ations.
The freedom of working people, the freedom of black people has always
depended on the struggles of people themselves against the
government.
So, if we look at it historically, we certainly cannot depend on
governments to maintain our liberties. We have to depend on our own
organized efforts."
Only the American people can stop war. What will they do? The world
waits.
John Stanton is the author (along with Wayne Madsen) of America's
Nightmare: The Presidency of George Bush II, May 2003, available at
booksurge.com and barnesandnoble.com.
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