“Yet there are fundamental moral and legal differences between Russia and America. Russian forces act with utter disregard for the laws of war. American forces go beyond the requirements of the laws of war to safeguard innocent life. Russia is acting on behalf of a genocidal tyrant, seeking to extend his reign. America acted to depose a genocidal tyrant, terminating his rule. America had just legal cause for war in Iraq – Saddam Hussein violated Gulf War cease-fire agreements and U.N. resolutions while continually shooting at American pilots and trying to kill an American president – while Russia had no just cause to invade the Ukraine. America’s wars are not like Russia’s wars, and American warriors cannot be lumped in with Putin’s killers.”  National Review, February 6, 2017

Donald Trump did something this week that was so brave and so true that he needs a medal.  Seriously, a medal.  The new president daily speaks truth to lies.  He is like the little boy in, Hans Christian Anderson’s, “The Emperor’s New Clothes”.  The emperor has been conned into thinking he is wearing the most beautiful garments, and only those unfit for their jobs or hopelessly stupid cannot see the magic garments.   The kind and his men do not want to appear stupid or unfit so they all pretend they can see the clothing.  However, there is no clothing at all.

The King wears new clothes

There is a big parade, the king is wearing his new clothes, and all the townspeople are ooohing and aaahing over how beautiful the king’s costume is.  Of course, they are pretending because really, the king has no clothes on at all. A cry is heard from the crowd, it is a young boy, he is shouting, “The emperor has no clothes on!”

This my faithful reader, is exactly what Donald J. Trump did this week.  He shouted out on the Bill O’Reilly show, “The emporer has no clothes on” only what he really said was this in response to  Bill O’Reilly talking about Vladimer Putin in an interview:

O’Reilly, “But he’s a killer, though. Putin’s a killer.”

Trump responded: “There are a lot of killers. We’ve got a lot of killers. What do you think? Our country’s so innocent?”

When O’Reilly says he doesn’t know any government leaders who are killers, Trump says “take a look at what we’ve done, too. We’ve made a lot of mistakes” and references the Iraq war.

For a country that is totally delusional about our American Exceptionalism and our being the savior of the world, the bastion of all things noble.  This is a lightening bolt of truth into the abyss of our national narcissism.

America is different

America actually thinks it is different than all other countries.  Our imperialism, our bombing over twenty nations (37 if you include wars that were started for our interests) since World War II, is rooted in this idea of our exceptionalism. We are special in the world, we have a right to force you into our liberty and our democracy.  We even have a right to bomb you and to kill millions of human beings if it is in our interest.  And, bomb and kill and maim we have.  And, every time we justify it with our special “mission” to the world.   Really this special  mission is about American might and interests.

Global Research did a study that showed the U. S. military killed about 10 to 15 million human beings during the Korean, Vietnam, and two Iraq Wars. This is including deaths in Cambodia and Laos.

America has also waged proxy wars for our interests. Places like Afghanistan, Angola, Democratic Republic of the Congo, East Timor, Guatemala, Indonesia, Pakistan and Sudan. It is estimated about about 10 million people died so that America could have her interests manifested in those countries.

These are the big countries we have dropped our bombs on, toppled leaders, and killed innocents.  There are smaller US “interventions” (the politically correct word when America bombs nations) all over the world.  About 37 countries have had the nefarious hand of America put them in harms way.  And, for what?  Oil, poppies, shore up the petro dollar, make sure the newly ensconced dictator is friendly to our corporations?

The overall conclusion reached is that the United States most likely has been responsible since WWII for the deaths of between 20 and 30 million people in wars and conflicts scattered over the world. This is not to mention the other ways we can manipulate countries, with sanctions, messing with infrastructure, and etc.

Due to American exceptionalism there is little thought given to how barbarous the United States has been and how many we have actually killed.  Basically the topic is a yawn, even to progressives and liberals.

This picture becomes even more macabre when you think that there are as many as 10 wounded for everyone who dies in a war. Couple this with the widows and orphans. The amount of pain the United States has spread throughout the world is incalculable.

And, what happens when we get a taste of our own medicine?  The fury of patriot rage at the audacity of someone who would attack our World Trade Center was unreal.  And, we respond to the attack with what?  Shock and Awe. On a country that had nothing to do with 9/11. Nothing.  Do the American’s weep with that mistake?  Not on your life. Do they mourn those innocents who died?  Sadly, the answer is generally, no.

George Bush went into Iraq for his own reasons.  And, they had nothing to do with 9/11 and everything to do with oil.

April 15, 2013 CNN:

“Of course it’s about oil; we can’t really deny that,” said Gen. John Abizaid, former head of U.S. Central Command and Military Operations in Iraq, in 2007. Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan agreed, writing in his memoir, “I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.” Then-Sen. and now Defense Secretary Chuck Hegel said the same in 2007: “People say we’re not fighting for oil. Of course we are.
From ExxonMobil and Chevron to BP and Shell, the West’s largest oil companies have set up shop in Iraq. So have a slew of American oil service companies, including Halliburton, the Texas-based firm Dick Cheney ran.”

Little of the profits have ended up in the hands of the Iraqis.  Score another big win for American Imperialism.

Everything in the Mid East, all of the horror, the civil wars, the destruction of cultures and countries can be traced back to the greed of the corporations and their US puppets, and the wars they waged to get oil.  The founding of terrorism by Hillary Clinton, her foundation, and her arms deals to Saudi Arabia.

Let’s go back to WWII.  On March 9-10, 1945, B-29 bombers dropped an estimated 1,665 tons of napalm on Tokyo, causing at least as many deaths as later at Hiroshima.  Who does that?  Who drops napalm on moms, schools, kids?
And, then the crowning jewel of American might. The only country in the world to drop an atomic bomb.

Over 100,000 people died in Hiroshima, about a third of the population, in the initial blast. Another 70,000 were injured.  And, then there were all those who died later from the effect of radiation poisoning.

Three days later, we bombed Nagasaki. We had no reason to do this.  We had made our point, but just for good measure we wanted to drop a second atomic weapon on another civilian population, the city of Nagasaki, about 250 miles southwest of Hiroshima.

WashingtonBlog, October 14, 2012:

The U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey group, assigned by President Truman to study the air attacks on Japan, produced a report in July of 1946 that concluded (52-56):

Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey’s opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945 and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated.

General (and later president) Dwight Eisenhower – then Supreme Commander of all Allied Forces, and the officer who created most of America’s WWII military plans for Europe and Japan – said:

The Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.

Newsweek, 11/11/63, Ike on Ike

Eisenhower also noted (pg. 380):

In [July] 1945…

..During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of ‘face’. The Secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude….

Admiral William Leahy – the highest ranking member of the U.S. military from 1942 until retiring in 1949 wrote:

It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons.

General Douglas MacArthur agreed (pg. 65, 70-71):

…. When I asked General MacArthur about the decision to drop the bomb, I was surprised to learn he had not even been consulted. What, I asked, would his advice have been? He replied that he saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb.”

Which brings us to the peace loving former President of the United States, Barack Obama who won the prestigious Nobel Peace Prize. A paragon of virtue and civility.

John Pilger in an address to the University of Sydney states:

“The Obama administration has built more nuclear weapons, more nuclear warheads, more nuclear delivery systems, more nuclear factories. Nuclear warhead spending alone rose higher under Obama than under any American president. The cost over thirty years is more than $1 trillion.

A mini nuclear bomb is planned. It is known as the B61 Model 12. There has never been anything like it. General James Cartwright, a former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has said, “Going smaller [makes using this nuclear]weapon more thinkable.

In the last eighteen months, the greatest build-up of military forces since World War Two – led by the United States – is taking place along Russia’s western frontier. Not since Hitler invaded the Soviet Union have foreign troops presented such a demonstrable threat to Russia.”

Obama had ten times more air strikes than Bush. In fact, Obama oversaw more strikes in his first year alone than Bush carried out during his entire presidency.  A total of 563 strikes, largely by drones, targeted Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen during Obama’s two terms, compared to 57 strikes under Bush. At least 384 civilians were killed.  So much for the Nobel Peace Prize and its winner, Mr. Obama.

Are you ready for this?  The USA closed hundreds of bases in Iraq and Afghanistan and we still have almost 800 military bases in more than 70 countries.  Now consider this, Russia, Britain, France and Russia COMBINED have about thirty bases.  That’s combined.  So when media pundits in America get all righteous about how imperialistic and evil Russia is, think about who has military bases all over the globe, and folks, it is not Russia.  Not even close…

So you see we have not learned much. And, the emperor really does has no clothes on. There is no moral high ground for America, a nation awash with the blood of the innocents.  A nation that needs to repent.

Donald Trump has taken a bold step forward as a truth teller. America is not exceptional, well, unless you consider our exceptional ability to bomb, drone and napalm. As Donald Trump has said, American is not innocent. America kills. The Native Americans slaughtered, the slaves and ensuing lynchings, and all the imperial wars that followed.

The world needs a rest from our relentless wars of imperial hubris.  We have utterly destroyed the Middle East and there are 45 million refugees with no home thanks to Bush/Clinton/Obama.  How this writer longs for peace.

One can only hope Mr. Trump’s acknowledgement that America is not innocent is a harbinger of a better way. One that uses diplomacy and not military might.  One that does not constitute dropping bombs and drones all over the globe.  May the blood that covers the globe from American imperialism cry out in mercy and not revenge.  Amen.

American imperialism is partly rooted in American exceptionalism, the idea that the United States is different from other countries due to its specific world mission to spread liberty and democracy. This theory often is traced back to the words of 1800s French observer Alexis de Tocqueville, who concluded that the United States was a unique nation, “proceeding along a path to which no limit can be perceived.”
Source: Boundless. “American Imperialism.” Boundless U.S. History Boundless, 20 Nov. 2016. Retrieved 08 Feb. 2017 from https://www.boundless.com/u-s-history/textbooks/boundless-u-s-history-textbook/the-gilded-age-1870-1900-20/american-imperialism-164/american-imperialism-896-3410/

 

Nancy O’Brien Simpson

Ms. Simpson was a radio personality in New York.  She was a staff writer for The Liberty Report.  A PBS documentary was done on her activism for human rights.  She is a psychotherapist and political commentator.