All the United States Military commercials advertise an opportunity to “defend freedom abroad.” That we employ our Armed Forces to “protect human rights the world over.” This country gets right up on its soapbox and cries out of all the humanitarian efforts we’re involved in. And demands that the rest of the world follow our example.
Too bad that’s all bullshit. The fact is the United States has not once entered a war to protect oppressed people, to stop genocide, to get food to the hungry, or to overthrow a tyrant.
Take Desert Storm, for example. Saddam Hussein was a tyrant, and few people will argue that. He was even a genocidal tyrant, for as most people will remember, he was using chemical weapons on the Kurds within his own country. We put a stop to this with Desert Storm. But, that wasn’t the reason for the war. That war started because Saddam invaded Kuwait, a particularly American-friendly oil-producing and exporting country that ships a good sized portion of the oil to the United States. Helping the Kurds was only a nice side effect. “Oh, by the way, while we’re pointing guns at you, would you mind letting up on the Kurds a bit? ‘Preciate it.”
Another very good example would be World War II. Everyone knows about the Holocaust, and even though there’s some surprisingly ignorant people who have tried to say it never happened, most people are at least smart enough to know better. We did not enter WW2 to save the Jews from eradication. We didn’t even enter the war to save the Allies already getting their asses kicked in Europe. We got into that war because the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. If you’re wondering why this meant fighting Germany and Japan at the same time, it’s because if Germany was left to conquer all of Europe, we’d have a much stronger opponent coming at us from the Atlantic. And that nearly happened anyways, despite our involvement in Europe – it was dumb luck that Hitler was stupid enough to try to invade Russia (in the middle of winter) before finishing off the already bombed-to-hell Britain. And also dumb luck that the Russians retreated and burned any food supplies on their way so the Germans have nothing to eat on their march to Moscow. You just have to admire the crazy bastards for that.
We knew about the Holocaust long before we entered the war. And our opinion of that was: “well, I guess it just sucks to be a Jew, doesn’t it?” Maybe people thought that if we stayed out of the war, Japan and Germany would just let us be. But, fortunately for the Jews (and the rest of Europe) the Japanese got itchy trigger fingers and shot us first.
In both cases, the United States got some really great PR for stopping genocides. And in both cases, it was just a nice side-effect of us protecting our own greedy asses.
Now you can also apply this to the current wars in the Middle East, except it’s worse – we’re not protecting anything of ours, just taking from them more than what we had before. Hussein had no ties to Al Qaeda (aside from maybe cheering them on,) nor was he developing WMDs. So why did he tell the UN inspectors that were looking for WMDs to piss off? Well, he was a tyrant… he has his image to consider. How can you hold your head up and oppress your people while your pants are down and the UN’s rubber-gloved finger is giving you a cavity search? (Two points to anyone who answered “with a rifle in one hand, a glass of gin in the other, a long t-shirt, and a shit-eating grin on your face.”) Yet we did overthrow Saddam, and we did hand him over to our newly appointed pocket government (who is more than willing to let our American oil companies come in and appropriate some oil derricks,) and he did get the rope. Certainly is something to feel good about, especially when every goddamned reason we went to war with Iraq in the first place turned out to be a load of shit, isn’t it?
So keep this all in mind every time you watch the news and hear about an oppressive regime taking over [insert-random-African-or-Asian-country-name-here] and your great humanitarian military sits back and does nothing. Oh, wait… you don’t see that sort of thing on the news, do you? It’s too depressing; it won’t get good ratings.
She asked to take my hand
I turned, just keep on walking
But you'd do the same thing in the circumstance
I'm sure you'll understand
- Nine Inch Nails, Survivalism
3 comments:
Nicely boiled down to the nitty-gritty.
I do recall hearing that we had some sort of do-not-get-involved policy at the time of WWII as the excuse of why we didn't go interfere with the extermination of all the Jews. I think it's kind of a Republican thing - we'll give you the guns, but not the soldiers to shoot them. Great excuse, eh?
No, we've never entered into a military action for human rights as the main reason. Never. Yet, our soldiers are led to believe that that is the reason. If we were fighting for human rights, Saudi Arabia and Egypt would be blown off the globe. Like that will ever happen.
Saudi Arabia and Egypt are nothing compared to some of the countries in the rest of Africa. Not to mention North Korea... see how they keep your mind on just the Middle East, and not the rest of the suffering world? I'm sure I don't even know the half of the kind of atrocities that go on in the world, but watching as the Big Western Capitalist Pig ain't throwing its weight around to stop some of the shit when it would be so damned easy... it's more than enough to make me sick.
The policy of staying out of foreign affairs is not a Republican thing... it's far older. It was in George Washington's "will" for the country, and he's right. We use our superior military like a bully on the playground, and I figure he knew we would. Just like there's far fewer big kids defending their meek classmates, we were never likely to use our military might to defend those that can't defend themselves. That's the stuff of noble dreams and inspirational stories. The reality of human society is greed.
Marketing nobility as a reason to enlist may not be as effective as flat-out conscription, but it is much better for coming out smelling like roses instead of smelling like shit. Why overtly force people to do something when you can lie and make them want to do it?
And as far as the United States giving guns to people... ah hell, don't even get me started on that.
Oh, I agree. My personal favorite to bitch about is Tibet! There's no excuse for genocide, or even if the people themselves aren't flat-out murdered, the loss of the culture is a horrendous wrong done to all of mankind.
If George Washington wanted the country to be isolationist, it worked until the Industrial Revolution quite well. Except, he had no idea just how greedy man can be.
Well, it's not only arming countries, it's helping to overthrow existing governments to replace them with ones that are more compliant to our capitalists' wish to exploit their people and resources.
I will never understand greed enough to figure out how some people can justify all the wrongs they do in greed's name.
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