Give an example of such a Japanese official document which states that they
intended to surrender.

"Sir Arthur C. B. E. Wholeflaffers A.S.A." <nospam@newsranger.com> wrote in
message news:kFO0b.16545$cJ5.1969@www.newsranger.com...

In article <_7M0b.1588$pW3.130993@twister.austin.rr.com>, James Oberg

says...

Find a single Japanese who claims they were about to surrender

Of course you are ingoring official documents.  But as a UFO
"State" debunker (and no doubt well paid for it- which would
explain your multi-millionaire$$ status) you have no use for
documents: UFO, military or otherwise.  Rule #1 of the
debunker: Don't bother me with the facts. Rule #2:
What the public doesn't know (which is a lot-since
most military operations are classified) we won't tell them.

Now please quit posting here, official "State" debunkers
have their own newsgroup: alt.skeptic.
Stay there.

is a tactic of tyrants
and monsters, and we've seen it from Japan to Vietnam to Palestine to

Iraq,

and we'll see it again.

And the good ol' USA is fighting for freedom and democracy.

I guess if the corporate faction was giving me millions of dollars,
like they are giving you, PERHAPS I would give out the party
lie, or party line.  But some of us human factions have
souls and conscience, which you sold out yours long
long ago.

How about a little history lesson Jim:

A Brief History of U.S. Interventions: 1945 to the Present
by William Blum
Z magazine , June 1999
The engine of American foreign policy has been fueled not by a devotion to

any

kind of morality, but rather by the necessity to serve other imperatives,

which

can be summarized as follows:
* making the world safe for American corporations;
* enhancing the financial statements of defense contractors at home who

have

contributed generously to members of congress;
* preventing the rise of any society that might serve as a successful

example of

an alternative to the capitalist model;
* extending political and economic hegemony over as wide an area as

possible, as

befits a "great power."

This in the name of fighting a supposed moral crusade against what cold

warriors

convinced themselves, and the American people, was the existence of an

evil

International Communist Conspiracy, which in fact never existed, evil or

not.

The United States carried out extremely serious interventions into more

than 70

nations in this period.
China, 1945-49:
Intervened in a civil war, taking the side of Chiang Kai-shek against the
Communists, even though the latter had been a much closer ally of the

United

States in the world war. The U.S. used defeated Japanese soldiers to fight

for

its side. The Communists forced Chiang to flee to Taiwan in 1949.
Italy, 1947-48:
Using every trick in the book, the U.S. interfered in the elections to

prevent

the Communist Party from coming to power legally and fairly. This

perversion of

democracy was done in the name of "saving democracy" in Italy.  The

Communists

lost. For the next few decades, the CIA, along with American corporations,
continued to intervene in Italian elections, pouring in hundreds of

millions of

dollars and much psychological warfare to block the specter that was

haunting

Europe.
Greece, 1947-49:
Intervened in a civil war, taking the side of the neo-fascists against the

Greek

left which had fought the Nazis courageously. The neo-fascists won and
instituted a highly brutal regime, for which the CIA created a new

internal

security agency, KYP. Before long, KYP was carrying out all the endearing
practices of secret police everywhere, including systematic torture.
Philippines, 1945-53:
U.S. military fought against leftist forces (Huks) even while the Huks

were

still fighting against the Japanese invaders. After the war, the U. S.
continued its fight against the Huks, defeating them, and then installing

a

series of puppets as president, culminating in the dictatorship of

Ferdinand

Marcos.
South Korea, 1945-53:
After World War II, the United States suppressed the popular progressive

forces

in favor of the conservatives who had collaborated with the Japanese.

This led

to a long era of corrupt, reactionary, and brutal governments.
Albania, 1949-53:
The U.S. and Britain tried unsuccessfully to overthrow the communist

government

and install a new one that would have been pro-Western and composed

largely of

monarchists and collaborators with Italian fascists and Nazis.
Germany, 1950s:
The CIA orchestrated a wide-ranging campaign of sabotage, terrorism, dirty
tricks, and psychological warfare against East Germany. This was one of

the

factors which led to the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961.
Iran, 1953:
Prime Minister Mossadegh was overthrown in a joint U.S./British operation.
Mossadegh had been elected to his position by a large majority of

parliament,

but he had made the fateful mistake of spearheading the movement to

nationalize

a British-owned oil company, the sole oil company operating in Iran. The

coup

restored the Shah to absolute power and began a period of 25 years of

repression

and torture, with the oil industry being restored to foreign ownership, as
follows: Britain and the U.S., each 40 percent, other nations 20 percent.
Guatemala, 1953-1990s:
A CIA-organized coup overthrew the democratically-elected and progressive
government of Jacobo Arbenz, initiating 40 years of death-squads, torture,
disappearances, mass executions, and unimaginable cruelty, totaling well

over

100,000 victims -indisputably one of the most inhuman chapters of the 20th
century. Arbenz had nationalized the U.S. firm, United Fruit Company,

which had

extremely close ties to the American power elite. As justification for the

coup,

Washington declared that Guatemala had been on the verge of a Soviet

takeover,

when in fact the Russians had so little interest in the country that it

didn't

even maintain diplomatic relations. The real problem in the eyes of

Washington,

in addition to United Fruit, was the danger of Guatemala's social

democracy

spreading to other countries in Latin America.
Middle East, 1956-58:
The Eisenhower Doctrine stated that the United States "is prepared to use

armed

forces to assist" any Middle East country "requesting assistance against

armed

aggression from any country controlled by international communism." The

English

translation of this was that no one would be allowed to dominate, or have
excessive influence over, the middle east and its oil fields except the

United

States, and that anyone who tried would be, by definition, "Communist." In
keeping with this policy, the United States twice attempted to overthrow

the

Syrian government, staged several shows-of-force in the Mediterranean to
intimidate movements opposed to U.S.-supported governments in Jordan and
Lebanon, landed 14,000 troops in Lebanon, and conspired to overthrow or
assassinate Nasser of Egypt and his troublesome middle-east nationalism.
Indonesia, 1957-58:
Sukarno, like Nasser, was the kind of Third World leader the United States

could

not abide. He took neutralism in the cold war seriously, making trips to

the

Soviet Union and China (though to the White House as well). He

nationalized many

private holdings of the Dutch, the former colonial power.  He refused to

crack

down on the Indonesian Communist Party, which was walking the legal,

peaceful

road and making impressive gains electorally.  Such policies could easily

give

other Third World leaders "wrong ideas." The CIA began throwing money into

the

elections, plotted Sukarno's assassination, tried to blackmail him with a

phony

sex film, and joined forces with dissident military officers to wage a
full-scale war against the government. Sukarno survived it all.
British Guiana/Guyana, 1953-64:
For 11 years, two of the oldest democracies in the world, Great Britain

and the

United States, went to great lengths to prevent a democratically elected

leader

from occupying his office. Cheddi Jagan was another Third World leader who

tried

to remain neutral and independent. He was elected three times. Although a
leftist-more so than Sukarno or Arbenz-his policies in office were not
revolutionary. But he was still a marked man, for he represented

Washington's

greatest fear: building a society that might be a successful example of an
alternative to the capitalist model. Using a wide variety of tactics-from
general strikes and disinformation to terrorism and British legalisms, the

U. S.

and Britain finally forced Jagan out in 1964.  John F. Kennedy had given a
direct order for his ouster, as, presumably, had Eisenhower.
One of the better-off countries in the region under Jagan, Guyana, by the

1980s,

was one of the poorest. Its principal export became people.
Vietnam, 1950-73:
The slippery slope began with siding with ~ French, the former colonizers

and

collaborators with the Japanese, against Ho Chi Minh and his followers who

had

worked closely with the Allied war effort and admired all things American.

Ho

Chi Minh was, after all, some kind of Communist. He had written numerous

letters

to President Truman and the State Department asking for America's help in
winning Vietnamese independence from the French and finding a peaceful

solution

for his country. All his entreaties were ignored. Ho Chi Minh modeled the

new

Vietnamese declaration of independence on the American, beginning it with

"All

men are created equal. They are endowed by their Creator with ..." But

this

would count for nothing in Washington. Ho Chi Minh was some kind of

Communist.

Twenty-three years and more than a million dead, later, the United States
withdrew its military forces from Vietnam. Most people say that the U.S.

lost

the war. But by destroying Vietnam to its core, and poisoning the earth

and the

gene pool for generations, Washington had achieved its main purpose:

preventing

what might have been the rise of a good development option for Asia. Ho

Chi Minh

was, after all, some kind of communist.
Cambodia, 1955-73:
Prince Sihanouk was yet another leader who did not fancy being an American
client. After many years of hostility towards his regime, including
assassination plots and the infamous Nixon/Kissinger secret "carpet

bombings" of

1969-70, Washington finally overthrew Sihanouk in a coup in 1970. This was

all

that was needed to impel Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge forces to enter the

fray.

Five years later, they took power. But five years of American bombing had

caused

Cambodia's traditional economy to vanish. The old Cambodia had been

destroyed

forever.
Incredibly, the Khmer Rouge were to inflict even greater misery on this

unhappy

land. To add to the irony, the United States supported Pol Pot, militarily

and

diplomatically, after their subsequent defeat by the Vietnamese.
The Congo/Zaire, 1960-65:
In June 1960, Patrice Lumumba became the Congo's first prime minister

after

independence from Belgium. But Belgium retained its vast mineral wealth in
Katanga province, prominent Eisenhower administration officials had

financial

ties to the same wealth, and Lumumba, at Independence Day ceremonies

before a

host of foreign dignitaries, called for the nation's economic as well as

its

political liberation, and recounted a list of injustices against the

natives by

the white owners of the country. The man was obviously a "Communist." The

poor

man was obviously doomed.
Eleven days later, Katanga province seceded, in September, Lumumba was

dismissed

by the president at the instigation of the United States, and in January

1961 he

was assassinated at the express request of Dwight Eisenhower. There

followed

several years of civil conflict and chaos and the rise to power of Mobutu

Sese

Seko, a man not a stranger to the CIA. Mobutu went on to rule the country

for

more than 30 years, with a level of corruption and cruelty that shocked

even his

CIA handlers. The Zairian people lived in abject poverty despite the

plentiful

natural wealth, while Mobutu became a multibillionaire.
Brazil, 1961-64:
President Joao Goulart was guilty of the usual crimes: He took an

independent

stand in foreign policy, resuming relations with socialist countries and
opposing sanctions against Cuba; his administration passed a law limiting

the

amount of profits multinationals could transmit outside the country; a
subsidiary of ITT was nationalized; he promoted economic and social

reforms. And

Attorney-General Robert Kennedy was uneasy about Goulart allowing

"communists"

to hold positions in government agencies. Yet the man was no radical. He

was a

millionaire land-owner and a Catholic who wore a medal of the Virgin

around his

neck. That, however, was not enough to save him. In 1964, he was

overthrown in a

military coup which had deep, covert American involvement. The official
Washington line was...yes, it's unfortunate that democracy has been

overthrown

in Brazil...but, still, the country has been saved from communism.
For the next 15 years, all the features of military dictatorship that

Latin

America has come to know were instituted: Congress was shut down,

political

opposition was reduced to virtual extinction, habeas corpus for "political
crimes" was suspended, criticism of the president was forbidden by law,

labor

unions were taken over by government interveners, mounting protests were

met by

police and military firing into crowds, peasants' homes were burned down,
priests were brutalized...disappearances, death squads, a remarkable

degree and

depravity of torture...the government had a name for its program: the

"moral

rehabilitation" of Brazil.
Washington was very pleased. Brazil broke relations with Cuba and became

one of

the United States' most reliable allies in Latin America.
Dominican Republic, 1963-66:
In February 1963, Juan Bosch took office as the first democratically

elected

president of the Dominican Republic since 1924. Here at last was John F.
Kennedy's liberal anti-Communist, to counter the charge that the U.S.

supported

only military dictatorships. Bosch's government was to be the long sought

"

showcase of democracy " that would put the lie to Fidel Castro. He was

given the

grand treatment in Washington shortly before he took office.
Bosch was true to his beliefs. He called for land reform, low-rent

housing,

modest nationalization of business, and foreign investment provided it was

not

excessively exploitative of the country and other policies making up the

program

of any liberal Third World leader serious about social change. He was

likewise

serious about civil liberties: Communists, or those labeled as such, were

not to

be persecuted unless they actually violated the law.
A number of American officials and congresspeople expressed their

discomfort

with Bosch's plans, as well as his stance of independence from the United
States. Land reform and nationalization are always touchy issues in

Washington,

the stuff that "creeping socialism" is made of. In several quarters of the

U.S.

press Bosch was red-baited.
In September, the military boots marched. Bosch was out. The United

States,

which could discourage a military coup in Latin America with a frown, did
nothing.
Nineteen months later, a revolt broke out which promised to put the exiled

Bosch

back into power. The United States sent 23,000 troops to help crush it.
Cuba, 1959 to present:
Fidel Castro came to power at the beginning of 1959. A U.S. National

Security

Council meeting of March 10, 1959 included on its agenda the feasibility

of

bringing "another government to power in Cuba." There followed 40 years of
terrorist attacks, bombings, full-scale military invasion, sanctions,

embargoes,

isolation, assassinations...Cuba had carried out The Unforgivable

Revolution, a

very serious threat of setting a "good example" in Latin America.
The saddest part of this is that the world will never know what kind of

society

Cuba could have produced if left alone, if not constantly under the gun

and the

threat of invasion, if allowed to relax its control at home. The idealism,

the

vision, the talent were all there. But we'll never know. And that of

course was

the idea.
Indonesia, 1965:
A complex series of events, involving a supposed coup attempt, a

counter-coup,

and perhaps a counter-counter-coup, with American fingerprints apparent at
various points, resulted in the ouster from power of Sukarno and his

replacement

by a military coup led by General Suharto. The massacre that began
immediately-of Communists, Communist sympathizers, suspected Communists,
suspected Communist sympathizers, and none of the above-was called by the

New

York Times "one of the most savage mass slayings of modern political

history."

The estimates of the number killed in the course of a few years begin at

half a

million and go above a million.
It was later learned that the U.S. embassy had compiled lists of

"Communist"

operatives, from top echelons down to village cadres, as many as 5,000

names,

and turned them over to the army, which then hunted those persons down and
killed them. The Americans would then check off the names of those who had

been

killed or captured. "It really was a big help to the army. They probably

killed

a lot of people, and I probably have a lot of blood on my hands," said one

U.S.

diplomat. "But that's not all bad. There's a time when you have to strike

hard

at a decisive moment. "
Chile, 1964-73:
Salvador Allende was the worst possible scenario for a Washington

imperialist.

He could imagine only one thing worse than a Marxist in power-an elected

Marxist

in power, who honored the constitution, and became increasingly popular.

This

shook the very foundation stones on which the anti-Communist tower was

built:

the doctrine, painstakingly cultivated for decades, that "communists" can

take

power only through force and deception, that they can retain that power

only

through terrorizing and brainwashing the population.
After sabotaging Allende's electoral endeavor in 1964, and failing to do

so in

1970, despite their best efforts, the CIA and the rest of the American

foreign

policy machine left no stone unturned in their attempt to destabilize the
Allende government over the next three years, paying particular attention

to

building up military hostility. Finally, in September 1973, the military
overthrew the government, Allende dying in the process.
They closed the country to the outside world for a week, while the tanks

rolled

and the soldiers broke down doors; the stadiums rang with the sounds of
execution and the bodies piled up along the streets and floated in the

river;

the torture centers opened for business; the subversive books were thrown

into

bonfires; soldiers slit the trouser legs of women, shouting that "In Chile

women

wear dresses!"; the poor returned to their natural state; and the men of

the

world in Washington and in the halls of international finance opened up

their

check- books. In the end, more than 3,000 had been executed, thousands

more

tortured or disappeared.
Greece, 1964-74:
The military coup took place in April 1967, just two days before the

campaign

for j national elections was to begin, elections which appeared certain to

bring

the veteran liberal leader George Papandreou back as prime minister.

Papandreou

had been elected in February 1964 with the only outright majority in the

history

of modern Greek elections. The successful machinations to unseat him had

begun

immediately, a joint effort of the Royal Court, the Greek military, and

the

American military and CIA stationed in Greece. The 1967 coup was followed
immediately by the traditional martial law, censorship, arrests, beatings,
torture, and killings, the victims totaling some 8,000 in the first month.

This

was accompanied by the equally traditional declaration that this was all

being

done to save the nation from a "Communist takeover." Corrupting and

subversive

influences in Greek life were to be removed. Among these were miniskirts,

long

hair, and foreign newspapers; church attendance for the young would be
compulsory.

It was torture, however, which most indelibly marked the seven-year
Greek nightmare. James Becket, an American attorney sent to Greece by

Amnesty

International, wrote in December 1969 that "a conservative estimate would

place

at not less than two thousand" the number of people tortured, usually in

the

most gruesome of ways, often with equipment supplied by the United States.
Becket reported the following: Hundreds of prisoners have listened to the

little

speech given by Inspector Basil Lambrou, who sits behind his desk which

displays

the red, white, and blue clasped-hand symbol of American aid.  He tries to

show

the prisoner the absolute futility of resistance: "You make yourself

ridiculous

by thinking you can do anything. The world is divided in two. There are

the

communists on that side and on this side the free world.  The Russians and

the

Americans, no one else. What are we? Americans. Behind me there is the
government, behind the government is NATO, behind NATO is the U.S. You

can't

fight us, we are Americans."
George Papandreou was not any kind of radical. He was a liberal

anti-Communist

type. But his son Andreas, the heir-apparent, while only a little to the

left of

his father had not disguised his wish to take Greece out of the Cold War,

and

had questioned remaining in NATO, or at least as a satellite of the United
States.
East Timor, 1975 to present:
In December 1975, Indonesia invaded East Timor, which lies at the eastern

end of

the Indonesian archipelago, and which had proclaimed its independence

after

Portugal had relinquished control of it. The invasion was launched the day

after

U. S. President Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger had

left

Indonesia after giving Suharto permission to use American arms, which,

under

U.S. Iaw, could not be used for aggression. Indonesia was Washington's

most

valuable tool in Southeast Asia.
Amnesty International estimated that by 1989, Indonesian troops, with the

aim of

forcibly annexing East Timor, had killed 200,000 people out of a

population of

between 600,000 and 700,000. The United States consistently supported
Indonesia's claim to East Timor (unlike the UN and the EU), and downplayed

the

slaughter to a remarkable degree, at the same time supplying Indonesia

with all

the military hardware and training it needed to carry out the job.
Nicaragua, 1978-89:
When the Sandinistas overthrew the Somoza dictatorship in 1978, it was

clear to

Washington that they might well be that long-dreaded beast-"another Cuba."

Under

President Carter, attempts to sabotage the revolution took diplomatic and
economic forms. Under Reagan, violence was the method of choice. For eight
terribly long years, the people of Nicaragua were under attack by

Washington's

proxy army, the Contras, formed from Somoza's vicious National Guard and

other

supporters of the dictator. It was all-out war, aiming to destroy the
progressive social and economic programs of the government, burning down

schools

and medical clinics, raping, torturing, mining harbors, bombing and

strafing.

These were Ronald Reagan's "freedom fighters." There would be no

revolution in

Nicaragua.
Grenada, 1979-84:
What would drive the most powerful nation in the world to invade a country

of

110,000? Maurice Bishop and his followers had taken power in a 1979 coup,

and

though their actual policies were not as revolutionary as Castro's,

Washington

was again driven by its fear of "another Cuba," particularly when public
appearances by the Grenadian leaders in other countries of the region met

with

great enthusiasm.
U. S. destabilization tactics against the Bishop government began soon

after the

coup and continued until 1983, featuring numerous acts of disinformation

and

dirty tricks. The American invasion in October 1983 met minimal

resistance,

although the U.S. suffered 135 killed or wounded; there were also some 400
Grenadian casualties, and 84 Cubans, mainly construction workers.
At the end of 1984, a questionable election was held which was won by a

man

supported by the Reagan administration. One year later, the human rights
organization, Council on Hemispheric Affairs, reported that Grenada's new
U.S.-trained police force and counter-insurgency forces had acquired a
reputation for brutality, arbitrary arrest, and abuse of authority, and

were

eroding civil rights.
In April 1989, the government issued a list of more than 80 books which

were

prohibited from being imported. Four months later, the prime minister

suspended

parliament to forestall a threatened no-confidence vote resulting from

what his

critics called "an increasingly authoritarian style."
Libya, 1981-89:
Libya refused to be a proper Middle East client state of Washington. Its

leader,

Muammar el-Qaddafi, was uppity. He would have to be punished. U.S.  planes

shot

down two Libyan planes in what Libya regarded as its air space.  The U. S

. also

dropped bombs on the country, killing at least 40 people, including

Qaddafi's

daughter. There were other attempts to assassinate the man, operations to
overthrow him, a major disinformation campaign, economic sanctions, and

blaming

Libya for being behind the Pan Am 103 bombing without any good evidence.
Panama, 1989:
Washington's bombers strike again. December 1989, a large tenement barrio

in

Panama City wiped out, 15,000 people left homeless. Counting several days

of

ground fighting against Panamanian forces, 500-something dead was the

official

body count, what the U.S. and the new U.S.-installed Panamanian government
admitted to; other sources, with no less evidence, insisted that thousands

had

died; 3,000-something wounded. Twenty-three Americans dead, 324 wounded.
Question from reporter: "Was it really worth it to send people to their

death

for this? To get Noriega?"
George Bush: "Every human life is precious, and yet I have to answer, yes,

it

has been worth it."
Manuel Noriega had been an American ally and informant for years until he
outlived his usefulness. But getting him was not the only motive for the

attack.

Bush wanted to send a clear message to the people of Nicaragua, who had an
election scheduled in two months, that this might be their fate if they
reelected the Sandinistas. Bush also wanted to flex some military muscle

to

illustrate to Congress the need for a large combat-ready force even after

the

very recent dissolution of the "Soviet threat." The official explanation

for the

American ouster was Noriega's drug trafficking, which Washington had known

about

for years and had not been at all bothered by.
Iraq, 1990s:
Relentless bombing for more than 40 days and nights, against one of the

most

advanced nations in the Middle East, devastating its ancient and modern

capital

city; 177 million pounds of bombs falling on the people of Iraq, the most
concentrated aerial onslaught in the history of the world; depleted

uranium

weapons incinerating people, causing cancer; blasting chemical and

biological

weapon storage and oil facilities; poisoning the atmosphere to a degree

perhaps

never matched anywhere; burying soldiers alive, deliberately; the

infrastructure

destroyed, with a terrible effect on health; sanctions continued to this

day

multiplying the health problems; perhaps a million children dead by now

from all

of these things, even more adults.
Iraq was the strongest military power among the Arab states. This may have

been

their crime. Noam Chomsky has written: "It's been a leading, driving

doctrine of

U.S. foreign policy since the 1940s that the vast and unparalleled energy
resources of the Gulf region will be effectively dominated by the United

States

and its clients, and, crucially, that no independent, indigenous force

will be

permitted to have a substantial influence on the administration of oil
production and price. "
Afghanistan, 1979-92:
Everyone knows of the unbelievable repression of women in Afghanistan,

carried

out by Islamic fundamentalists, even before the Taliban. But how many

people

know that during the late 1970s and most of the 1980s, Afghanistan had a
government committed to bringing the incredibly backward nation into the

20th

century, including giving women equal rights? What happened, however, is

that

the United States poured billions of dollars into waging a terrible war

against

this government, simply because it was supported by the Soviet Union.

Prior to

this, CIA operations had knowingly increased the probability of a Soviet
intervention, which is what occurred.  In the end, the United States won,

and

the women, and the rest of Afghanistan, lost. More than a million dead,

three

million disabled, five million refugees, in total about half the

population.

El Salvador, 1980-92:
El Salvador's dissidents tried to work within the system. But with U.S.
support, the government made that impossible, using repeated electoral

fraud and

murdering hundreds of protesters and strikers. In 1980, the dissidents

took to

the gun, and civil war.
Officially, the U.S. military presence in El Salvador was limited to an

advisory

capacity. In actuality, military and CIA personnel played a more active

role on

a continuous basis. About 20 Americans were killed or wounded in

helicopter and

plane crashes while flying reconnaissance or other missions over combat

areas,

and considerable evidence surfaced of a U.S.  role in the ground fighting

as

well. The war came to an official end in 1992; 75,000 civilian deaths and

the

U.S. Treasury depleted by six billion dollars. Meaningful social change

has been

largely thwarted. A handful of the wealthy still own the country, the poor
remain as ever, and dissidents still have to fear right-wing death squads.
Haiti, 1987-94:
The U.S. supported the Duvalier family dictatorship for 30 years, then

opposed

the reformist priest, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Meanwhile, the CIA was

working

intimately with death squads, torturers, and drug traffickers. With this

as

background, the Clinton White House found itself in the awkward position

of

having to pretend-because of all their rhetoric about "democracy"-that

they

supported Aristide's return to power in Haiti after he had been ousted in

a 1991

military coup. After delaying his return for more than two years,

Washington

finally had its military restore Aristide to office, but only after

obliging the

priest to guarantee that he would not help the poor at the expense of the

rich,

and that he would stick closely to free-market economics. This meant that

Haiti

would continue to be the assembly plant of the Western Hemisphere, with

its

workers receiving literally starvation wages.
Yugoslavia, 1999:
The United States is bombing the country back to a pre-industrial era. It

would

like the world to believe that its intervention is motivated only by
"humanitarian" impulses. Perhaps the above history of U.S. interventions

can

help one decide how much weight to place on this claim.

THE LIST: Bombing people into democracy

[To test the theory that a good way to bring democracy to a country is
to bomb it to smithereens, Vietnam Veterans Against the War offer this
list of countries compiled by William Blum where we used tried
percussive education. In no case did a democratic government, respectful
of human rights, occur as a direct result]

China 1945-46
Korea 1950-53
China 1950-53
Guatemala 1954
Indonesia 1958
Cuba 1959-60
Guatemala 1960
Congo 1964
Peru 1965
Laos 1964-73
Vietnam 1961-73
Cambodia 1969-70
Guatemala 1967-69
Grenada 1983
Libya 1986
El Salvador 1980s
Nicaragua 1980s
Panama 1989
Iraq 1991-99, 2003
Sudan 1998
Afghanistan 1998
Yugoslavia 1999
- - -
TERRORISM : A CENTURY OF U.S. MILITARY INTERVENTIONS From Wounded
Knee to Afghanistan Compiled by Zoltan Grossman (revised 09/20/01)

The following is a partial list of U.S. military interventions from
1890 to 1999. This guide does NOT include:

_ Demonstration duty by military police _ Mobilizations of the
National Guard _ Offshore shows of naval strength _ Reinforcements
of embassy personnel _ The use of non-Defense Department personnel
(such as the DEA) _ Military exercises _ Non-combat mobilizations
_ The permanent stationing of armed forces _ Covert actions where
the U.S. did not play a command and control role _ The use of small
hostage rescue units _ Most uses of proxy troops _ U.S. piloting
of foreign warplanes _ Foreign disaster assistance _ Military
training and advisory programs not involving direct combat _ Civic
action programs and many other military activities.

Among sources used, besides news reports, are the Congressional
Record (23 June 1969), 180 Landings by the U.S. Marine Corps History
Division, Ege & Makhijani in Counterspy (July-Aug. 1982), and Daniel
Ellsberg in Protest & Survive. "Instances of Use of United States
Forces Abroad, 1798-1993" by Ellen C. Collier of the Library of
Congress Congressional Research Service.

SOUTH DAKOTA 1890 (-?) Troops 300 Lakota Indians massacred at
Wounded Knee.

ARGENTINA 1890 Troops Buenos Aires interests protected.

CHILE 1891 Troops Marines clash with nationalist rebels.

HAITI 1891 Troops Black workers revolt on U.S.-claimed Navassa
Island defeated.

IDAHO 1892 Troops Army suppresses silver miners' strike.

HAWAII 1893 (-?) Naval, troops Independent kingdom overthrown,
annexed.

CHICAGO 1894 Troops Breaking of rail strike, 34 killed.

NICARAGUA 1894 Troops Month-long occupation of Bluefields.

CHINA 1894-95 Naval, troops Marines land in Sino-Japanese War.

KOREA 1894-96 Troops Marines kept in Seoul during war.

PANAMA 1895 Troops, naval Marines land in Colombian province.

NICARAGUA 1896 Troops Marines land in port of Corinto.

CHINA 1898-1900 Troops Boxer Rebellion fought by foreign armies.

PHILIPPINES 1898-1910(-?) Naval, troops Seized from Spain, killed
600,000 Filipinos.

CUBA 1898-1902(-?) Naval, troops Seized from Spain, still hold Navy
base.

PUERTO RICO 1898(-?) Naval, troops Seized from Spain, occupation
continues.

GUAM 1898(-?) Naval, troops Seized from Spain, still use as base.

MINNESOTA 1898(-?) Troops Army battles Chippewa at Leech Lake.

NICARAGUA 1894 Troops Month-long occupation of Bluefields.

CHINA 1894-95 Naval, troops Marines land in Sino-Japanese War.

KOREA 1894-96 Troops Marines kept in Seoul during war.

PANAMA 1895 Troops, naval Marines land in Colombian province.

NICARAGUA 1896 Troops Marines land in port of Corinto.

CHINA 1898-1900 Troops Boxer Rebellion fought by foreign armies.

PHILIPPINES 1898-1910(-?) Naval, troops Seized from Spain, killed
600,000 Filipinos.

CUBA 1898-1902(-?) Naval, troops Seized from Spain, still hold Navy
base.

PUERTO RICO 1898(-?) Naval, troops Seized from Spain, occupation
continues.

GUAM 1898(-?) Naval, troops Seized from Spain, still use as base.

MINNESOTA 1898(-?) Troops Army battles Chippewa at Leech Lake.

NICARAGUA 1898 Troops Marines land at port of San Juan del Sur.

SAMOA 1899(-?) Troops Battle over succession to throne.

NICARAGUA 1899 Troops Marines land at port of Bluefields.

IDAHO 1899-1901 Troops Army occupies Coeur d'Alene mining region.

OKLAHOMA 1901 Troops Army battles Creek Indian revolt.

PANAMA 1901-14 Naval, troops Broke off from Colombia 1903, annexed
Canal Zone 1914-99.

HONDURAS 1903 Troops Marines intervene in revolution.

DOMINICAN REP.

1903-04 Troops U.S. interests protected in Revolution.

KOREA 1904-05 Troops Marines land in Russo-Japanese War.

CUBA 1906-09 Troops Marines land in democratic election.

NICARAGUA 1907 Troops "Dollar Diplomacy" protectorate set up.

HONDURAS 1907 Troops Marines land during war with Nicaragua.

PANAMA 1908 Troops Marines intervene in election contest.

NICARAGUA 1910 Troops Marines land in Bluefields and Corinto.

HONDURAS 1911 Troops U.S. interests protected in civil war.

CHINA 1911-41 Naval, troops Continuous occupation with flare-ups.

CUBA 1912 Troops U.S. interests protected in Havanna.

PANAMA 19l2 Troops Marines land during heated election.

HONDURAS 19l2 Troops Marines protect U.S. economic interests.

NICARAGUA 1912-33 Troops, bombing 20-year occupation, fought
guerrillas.

MEXICO 19l3 Naval Americans evacuated during revolution.

DOMINICAN REPUBLIC 1914 Naval Fight with rebels over Santo Domingo.

COLORADO 1914 Troops Breaking of miners' strike by Army.

MEXICO 1914-18 Naval, troops Series of interventions against
nationalists.

HAITI 1914-34 Troops, bombing 19-year occupation after revolts.

DOMINICAN REPUBLIC 1916-24 Troops 8-year Marine occupation.

CUBA 1917-33 Troops Military occupation, economic protectorate.

WORLD WAR I 19l7-18 Naval, troops Ships sunk, fought Germany

RUSSIA 1918-22 Naval, troops Five landings to fight Bolsheviks.

PANAMA 1918-20 Troops "Police duty" during unrest after elections.

YUGOSLAVIA 1919 Troops Marines intervene for Italy against Serbs
in Dalmatia.

HONDURAS 1919 Troops Marines land during election campaign.

GUATEMALA 1920 Troops 2-week intervention against unionists.

WEST VIRGINIA 1920-21 Troops, bombing Army intervenes against
mineworkers.

TURKEY 1922 Troops Fought nationalists in Smyrna (Izmir).

CHINA 1922-27 Naval, troops Deployment during nationalist revolt.

HONDURAS 1924-25 Troops Landed twice during election strife.

PANAMA 1925 Troops Marines suppress general strike.

CHINA 1927-34 Troops Marines stationed throughout the country.

EL SALVADOR 1932 Naval Warships sent during Faribundo Marti revolt.

WASHINGTON DC 1932 Troops Army stops WWI vet bonus protest.

WORLD WAR II 1941-45 Naval,troops, bombing, nuclear Fought Axis
for 3 years;  Over 200,000 civilian casualties in 1st nuclear
strikes.

DETROIT 1943 Troops Army puts down Black rebellion.

IRAN 1946 Nuclear threat Soviet troops told to leave north (Iranian
Azerbaijan).

YUGOSLAVIA 1946 Naval Response to shooting-down of U.S. plane.

URUGUAY 1947 Nuclear threat Bombers deployed as show of strength.

GREECE 1947-49 Command operation U.S. directs extreme-right in
civil war.

CHINA 1948-49 Troops Marines evacuate Americans before Communist
victory.

GERMANY 1948 Nuclear threat Atomic-capable bombers guard Berlin
Airlift.

PHILIPPINES 1948-54 Command operation CIA directs war against Huk
Rebellion.

PUERTO RICO 1950 Command operation Independence rebellion crushed
in Ponce.

KOREA 1950-53 Troops, naval, bombing, nuclear threats U.S.& South
Korea fight China & North Korea to stalemate; A-bomb threat in
1950, & vs. China in 1953. Still have bases.

IRAN 1953 Command operation CIA overthrows democracy, installs
Shah.

VIETNAM 1954 Nuclear threat Bombs offered to French to use against
siege.

GUATEMALA 1954 Command operation, bombing, nuclear threat CIA
directs exile invasion after new gov't nationalizes U.S. company
lands; bombers based in Nicaragua.

EGYPT 1956 Nuclear threat, troops Soviets told to keep out of Suez
crisis;  marines evacuate foreigners

LEBANON 1958 Troops, naval Marine occupation against rebels.

IRAQ 1958 Nuclear threat Iraq warned against invading Kuwait.

CHINA 1958 Nuclear threat China told not to move on Taiwan isles.

PANAMA 1958 Troops Flag protests erupt into confrontation.

VIETNAM 1960-75 Troops, naval, bombing, nuclear threats Fought
South Vietnam revolt & North Vietnam; 1-2 million killed in longest
U.S. war; atomic bomb threats in 1968 and 1969.

CUBA 1961 Command operation CIA-directed exile invasion fails.

GERMANY 1961 Nuclear threat Alert during Berlin Wall crisis.

CUBA 1962 Nuclear threat Naval Blockade during missile crisis;

near-war with USSR.

LAOS 1962 Command operation Military buildup during guerrilla war.

PANAMA 1964 Troops Panamanians shot for urging canal's return.

INDONESIA 1965 Command operation Million killed in CIA-assisted
army coup.

DOMINICAN REPUBLIC 1965-66 Troops, bombing Marines land during
election campaign.

GUATEMALA 1966-67 Command operation Green Berets intervene against
rebels.

DETROIT 1967 Troops Army battles Blacks, 43 killed.

UNITED STATES 1968 Troops After King is shot; over 21,000 soldiers
in cities.

CAMBODIA 1969-75 Bombing, troops, naval Up to 2 million killed in
decade of  bombing, starvation, and political chaos.

OMAN 1970 Command operation U.S. directs Iranian marine invasion.

LAOS 1971-73 Command operation, bombing U.S. directs South Vietnamese
invasion;

"carpet-bombs" countryside.

SOUTH DAKOTA 1973 Command operation Army directs Wounded Knee siege
of Lakotas.

MIDEAST 1973 Nuclear threat World-wide alert during Mideast War.

CHILE 1973 Command operation CIA-backed coup ousts elected marxist
president.

CAMBODIA 1975 Troops, bombing Gas captured ship, 28 die in copter
crash.

ANGOLA 1976-92 Command operation CIA assists South African-backed
rebels.

IRAN 1980 Troops, nuclear threat, aborted bombing Raid to rescue
Embassy hostages;  8 troops die in copter-plane crash. Soviets
warned not to get involved in revolution.

LIBYA 1981 Naval jets Two Libyan jets shot down in maneuvers.

EL SALVADOR 1981-92 Command operation, troop advisors, overflights
aid anti-rebel war, soldiers briefly involved in hostage clash.

NICARAGUA 1981-90 Command operation, naval CIA directs exile (Contra)
invasions, plants harbor mines against revolution.

LEBANON 1982-84 Naval, bombing, troops Marines expel PLO and back
Phalangists,  Navy bombs and shells Muslim and Syrian positions.

HONDURAS 1983-89 Troops Maneuvers help build bases near borders.

GRENADA 1983-84 Troops, bombing invasion four years after revolution.

IRAN 1984 Jets Two Iranian jets shot down over Persian Gulf.

LIBYA 1986 Bombing, naval Air strikes to topple nationalist gov't.

BOLIVIA 1986 Troops Army assists raids on cocaine region.

IRAN 1987-88 Naval, bombing US intervenes on side of Iraq in war.

LIBYA 1989 Naval jets Two Libyan jets shot down.

VIRGIN ISLANDS 1989 Troops St. Croix Black unrest after storm.

PHILIPPINES 1989 Jets Air cover provided for government against
coup.

PANAMA 1989-90 Troops, bombing Nationalist government ousted by
27,000 soldiers, leaders arrested, 2000+ killed.

LIBERIA 1990 Troops Foreigners evacuated during civil war.

SAUDI ARABIA 1990-91 Troops, jets Iraq countered after invading
Kuwait; 540,000 troops also stationed in Oman, Qatar, Bahrain, UAE,
Israel.

IRAQ 1990-?

Bombing, troops, naval Blockade of Iraqi and Jordanian ports, air
strikes;

200,000+ killed in invasion of Iraq and Kuwait; no-fly zone over
Kurdish north, Shiite south, large-scale destruction of Iraqi
military.

KUWAIT 1991 Naval, bombing, troops Kuwait royal family returned to
throne.

LOS ANGELES 1992 Troops Army, Marines deployed against anti-police
uprising.

SOMALIA 1992-94 Troops, naval, bombing U.S.-led United Nations
occupation during civil war;

raids against one Mogadishu faction.

YUGOSLAVIA 1992-94 Naval Nato blockade of Serbia and Montenegro.

BOSNIA 1993-95 Jets, bombing No-fly zone patrolled in civil war;

downed jets, bombed Serbs.

HAITI 1994-96 Troops, naval Blockade against military government;

troops restore President Aristide to office three years after coup.

CROATIA 1995 Bombing Krajina Serb airfields attacked before Croatian
offensive.

ZAIRE (CONGO) 1996-97 Troops Marines at Rwandan Hutu refuge camps,
in area where Congo revolution begins.

LIBERIA 1997 Troops Soldiers under fire during evacuation of
foreigners.

ALBANIA 1997 Troops Soldiers under fire during evacuation of
foreigners.

SUDAN 1998 Missiles Attack on pharmaceutical plant alleged to be
"terrorist" nerve gas plant.

Over 30, 000 civilian casualties. US blocks UN war-crimes inquiry
at the security council.

AFGHANISTAN 1998 Missiles Attack on former CIA training camps used
by Islamic fundamentalist groups alleged to have attacked embassies.

IRAQ 1998-?

Bombing, Missiles Four days of intensive air strikes after weapons
inspectors allege Iraqi obstructions.

YUGOSLAVIA 1999-?

Bombing, Missiles Heavy NATO air strikes after Serbia declines to
withdraw from Kosovo.

YEMEN 2000 Naval Suicide bomb attack on USS Cole.

MACEDONIA 2001 Troops NATO troops shift and partially disarm Albanian
rebels.

UNITED STATES 2001 Jets, naval Response to hijacking attacks.

AFGHANISTAN 2001 Massive U.S. mobilization to attack Taliban, Bin
Laden. War could expand to Iraq, Sudan, and beyond.

__________________________________________ For more information or
with comments and additions please contact:

Zoltan Grossman, 1705 Rutledge, Madison, WI 53704 Phone/Fax
(608)246-2256.

mtn@igc.apc.org Permission to reproduce this list in its entirety
is granted by the author, please send any published copy to the
above address.
- - - - - -
RECOVERED HISTORY: AMERICA'S RECORD OF FAKING EVIDENCE

VETERAN INTELLIGENCE PROFESSIONALS FOR SANITY - The U.S. has a long
history of fabricating evidence to justify foreign adventures. Faked
evidence was a hallmark of post-World War II U.S. covert operations in
Latin America. In 1954, for example, it was instrumental in overthrowing
the Arbenz government in Guatemala. Arbenz, who was suspected of having
Communist leanings, had tried to make the United Fruit Company comply
with Guatemalan law. At President Dwight D. Eisenhower's direction, the
CIA organized and armed a force of malcontent Guatemalans living in
Nicaragua to invade their home country. The invasion was explained and
justified when a cache of Soviet-made weapons planted by the CIA was
discovered on Nicaragua's Atlantic coast. Washington alleged that the
weapons were intended to support an attempt by Arbenz to overthrow the
Nicaraguan government.

One of the more egregious and embarrassing uses of fake material
evidence occurred on the eve of the Bay of Pigs fiasco in 1961, when
Alabama National Guard B-26 bombers attacked a Cuban Air Force base in
Havana. When Cuba's UN ambassador protested, US Ambassador Adlai
Stevenson (himself misinformed by the White House) insisted that the
attacking planes were those of defecting Cuban Air Force pilots. Two of
the aircraft were shot down in Cuba, however, and others were forced to
land in Miami where they could be examined. When it became clear that
the planes were not Cuban, Washington's hand was shown and Stevenson was
in high dudgeon.

The war in Vietnam is replete with examples of fabrication and/or
misrepresentation of intelligence to justify U.S. government policies
and actions. The best-known case, of course, is the infamous Tonkin Gulf
incident the one that did not happen but was used by President Lyndon
Johnson to strong-arm Congress into giving him carte blanche for the
war. Adding insult to injury, CIA current intelligence analysts were
forbidden to report accurately on what had happened (and not happened)
in the Tonkin Gulf in their daily publication the next morning, on
grounds that the President had already decided to use the non-incident
to justify launching the air war that very day. The analysts were aghast
when their seniors explained that they had decided that they did not
want to wear out their welcome at the White House.

With William Casey at the helm of the CIA during the Reagan presidency,
the planting of evidence to demonstrate that opponents of governments in
Central America were sponsored by the USSR reached new heights or
depths. The following are representative examples:

(a) In January 1981 four dugout canoes were discovered on a Salvadoran
beach. The U.S. claimed that the boats had carried 100 armed Sandinista
guerrillas from Nicaragua to support leftist insurgents in El Salvador.
Neither weapons nor Nicaraguans traceable to the boats were ever found,
but Washington drew attention to the fact that the wood from which the
boats were made was not native to El Salvador.

(b) In February 1981, the State Department issued a sensational white
paper based on alleged Salvadoran rebel documents. Authored by a young,
eager-to-please Foreign Service officer named John Glassman, the paper
depicted damning links between the insurgents, Nicaragua, Cuba, and the
Soviet Union. A smoking gun. Unfortunately for Glassman and the Reagan
administration, Wall Street Journal reporter Jonathan Kwitny got access
to the same documents and found little resemblance to what was contained
in Glassman's paper. Glassman admitted to Kwitny that he had made up
quotes and guessed at figures for the Soviet weapons supposedly coming
to the Salvadoran insurgents.

(c) Certainly among the most extraordinary attempts to plant evidence
was the Barry Seal affair, a complicated operation designed to
incriminate the Nicaraguan Sandinista government for international drug
trafficking. The operation began in 1982, when CIA Director Casey
created the position of National Intelligence Officer for Narcotics.
Casey's handpicked NIO wasted no time telling representatives of other
agencies that high priority was to be given to finding evidence linking
both Castro and the Sandinistas to the burgeoning cocaine trade.

Coast Guard and Drug Enforcement Agency officers protested that this
might be counterproductive since Cuba was the most cooperative
government in the Caribbean in the fight against drugs and there was no
evidence showing that the Nicaraguan government played any significant
role. Never mind, said the NIO, the task was to put black hats on our
enemies.

In 1986 Barry Seal, a former TWA pilot who had trained Nicaraguan Contra
pilots in the early eighties, was facing a long sentence after a federal
drug conviction in Florida. Seal made his way to the White House's
National Security Council to make the following proposition to officials
there. He would fly his own plane to Colombia and take delivery of
cocaine. He would then make an emergency landing in Nicaragua and make
it appear that Sandinista officials were aiding him in drug trafficking.
Seal made it clear that he would expect help with his legal problems.

The Reagan White House jumped at the offer. Seal's plane was flown to
Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, where it was fitted with secret cameras
to enable Seal to photograph Nicaraguan officials in the act of
assisting him with the boxes of cocaine.

The operation went as planned. Seal flew to Colombia and then to
Nicaragua where he landed at a commercial airfield. There he was met by
a Nicaraguan named Federico Vaughan, who helped with the offloading and
reloading of boxes of cocaine and was duly photographed not very well,
it turned out, because the special cameras malfunctioned. Though blurred
and grainy, the photos were delivered to the White House, and a
triumphant Ronald Reagan went on national TV to show that the
Sandinistas were not only Communists but also criminals intent on
addicting America s youth.

Again, the Wall Street Journal's Jonathan Kwitny played the role of
skunk at the picnic, pointing out substantial flaws in the concocted
story. Vaughan, who according to the script was an assistant to
Nicaraguan Interior Minister Tomas Borge, was shown not to be what he
claimed. Indeed, congressional investigators found that the telephone
number called by Seal to contact Vaughn belonged to the U.S. embassy in
Managua. It was yet another fiasco, and Seal paid for it with his life.
His Colombian drug suppliers were not amused when the Reagan
administration identified him publicly as a US undercover agent. As he
awaited trial on other narcotics charges in Louisiana, Seal was ambushed
and killed by four gunmen who left his body riddled with 140 bullets.

Fabricated evidence also played an important role in the first President
Bush's attempt to secure congressional and UN approval for the 1991 Gulf
War.

(a) Few will forget the heart-rending testimony before a congressional
committee by the sobbing 15 year-old Kuwaiti girl called Nayirah on
October 10, 1990. No congressperson, no journalist took the trouble to
probe the identity of Nayirah, who was said to be an escapee from Kuwait
but was later revealed to be the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador in
Washington. With consummate skill, the story had been manufactured out
of whole cloth and the 15 year-old coached by the PR firm Hill &
Knowlton, which has a rich history of being imbedded in Republican
administrations. Similar unsubstantiated yarns made their debut several
weeks later at the UN, where a team of seven witnesses, also coached by
Hill & Knowlton, testified about atrocities in Iraq. (It was later
learned that the seven had used false names.) And in an unprecedented
move, the UN Security Council allowed the U.S. to show a video created
by Hill & Knowlton.

All to good effect. The PR campaign had the desired impact, and Congress
voted to authorize the use of force against Iraq on January 12, 1991.
(The UN did so on November 29, 1990.) Nayirah's true identity did not
become known until two years later.

Interestingly, the General Manager of Hill & Knowlton's Washington, DC
office at the time was a woman named Victoria Clarke. She turned out to
be less successful in her next job, as Press Secretary for the
re-election campaign of President George Bush in 1992. But she is now
back in her element as Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public
Affairs.

There was a corollary fabrication that proved equally effective in
garnering support in Congress for the war resolution in 1991. The White
House claimed there were satellite photos showing Iraqi tanks and troops
massing on the borders of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, threatening to invade
Saudi Arabia. This fueled the campaign for war and frightened the Saudis
into agreeing to cooperate fully with U.S. military forces.

On September 11, 1990, President George H. W. Bush, addressing a joint
session of Congress, claimed 120,000 Iraqi troops with 850 tanks have
poured into Kuwait and moved south to threaten Saudi Arabia. But an
enterprising journalist, Jean Heller, reported in the St. Petersburg
Times on January 6, 1991 (a bare ten days before the Gulf War began)
that commercial satellite photos taken on September 11, the day the
president spoke, showed no sign of a massive buildup of Iraqi forces in
Kuwait. When the Pentagon was asked to provide evidence to support the
president s claim, it refused to do so and continues to refuse to this
day.

http://www.guerrillanews.com/intelligence/doc1785.html

Against Empire by Michael Parenti  Chapter 3: Intervention: Whose gain?

Whose

pain?

Today, the United States is the foremost proponent of recolonization and

leading

antagonist of revolutionary change throughout the world. Emerging from

World War

II relatively unscathed and superior to all other industrial countries in
wealth, productive capacity, and armed might, the United States became the

prime

purveyor and guardian of global capitalism.  Judging by the size of its
financial investments and military force, judging by every imperialist

standard

except direct colonization, the U.S. empire is the most formidable in

history,

far greater than Great Britain in the nineteenth century or Rome during
antiquity.

A Global Military Empire

The exercise of U.S. power is intended to preserve not only the

international

capitalist system but U.S. hegemony of that system.  The Pentagon's

"Defense

Planning Guidance" draft (1992) urges the United States to continue to

dominate

the international system by "discouraging the advanced industrialized

nations

from challenging our leadership or even aspiring to a larger global or

regional

role." By maintaining this dominance, the Pentagon analysts assert, the

United

States can insure "a market-oriented zone of peace and prosperity that
encompasses more than two- thirds of the world's economy".

This global power is immensely costly. Today, the United States spends

more on

military arms and other forms of "national security" than the rest of the

world

combined. U.S. leaders preside over a global military apparatus of a

magnitude

never before seen in human history. In 1993 it included almost a

half-million

troops stationed at over 395 major military bases and hundreds of minor
installations in thirty-five foreign countries, and a fleet larger in

total

tonnage and firepower than all the other navies of the world combined,
consisting of missile cruisers, nuclear submarines, nuclear aircraft

carriers,

destroyers, and spy ships that sail every ocean and make port on every
continent. U.S. bomber squadrons and long-range missiles can reach any

target,

carrying enough explosive force to destroy entire countries with an

overkill

capacity of more than 8,000 strategic nuclear weapons and 22,000 tactical

ones.

U.S. rapid deployment forces have a firepower in conventional weaponry

vastly

superior to any other nation's, with an ability to slaughter with

impunity--as

the massacre of Iraq demonstrated in 1990-91.

Since World War II, the U.S. government has given more than $200 billion

in

military aid to train, equip, and subsidize more than 2.3 million troops

and

internal security forces in more than eighty countries, the purpose being

not to

defend them from outside invasions but to protect ruling oligarchs and
multinational corporate investors from the dangers of domestic

anti-capitalist

insurgency. Among the recipients have been some of the most notorious

military

autocracies in history, countries that have tortured, killed or otherwise
maltreated large numbers of their citizens because of their dissenting

political

views, as in Turkey, Zaire, Chad, Pakistan, Morocco, Indonesia, Honduras,

Peru,

Colombia, El Salvador, Haiti, Cuba (under Batista), Nicaragua (under

Somoza),

Iran (under the Shah), the Philippines (under Marcos), and Portugal (under
Salazar).

U.S. leaders profess a dedication to democracy. Yet over the past five

decades,

democratically elected reformist governments in Guatemala, Guyana, the

Dominican

Republic, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Syria, Indonesia (under Sukarno),

Greece,

Argentina, Bolivia, Haiti, and numerous other nations were overthrown by
pro-capitalist militaries that were funded and aided by the U.S. national
security state.

The U.S. national security state has participated in covert actions or

proxy

mercenary wars against revolutionary governments in Cuba, Angola,

Mozambique,

Ethiopia, Portugal, Nicaragua, Cambodia, East Timor, Western Sahara, and
elsewhere, usually with dreadful devastation and loss of life for the

indigenous

populations. Hostile actions have been directed against reformist

governments in

Egypt, Lebanon, Peru, Iran, Syria, Zaire, Jamaica, South Yemen, the Fiji
Islands, and elsewhere.

Since World War II, U.S. forces have directly invaded or launched aerial

attacks

against Vietnam, the Dominican Republic, North Korea, Laos, Cambodia,

Lebanon,

Grenada, Panama, Libya, Iraq, and Somalia, sowing varying degrees of death

and

destruction.

Before World War II, U.S. military forces waged a bloody and protracted

war of

conquest in the Philippines in 1899-1903. Along with fourteen other

capitalist

nations, the United States invaded socialist Russia in 1918-21. U.S.
expeditionary forces fought in China along with other Western armies to

suppress

the Boxer Rebellion and keep the Chinese under the heel of European and

North

American colonizers. U.S. Marines invaded and occupied Nicaragua in 1912

and

again in 1926 to 1933; Cuba, 1898 to 1902; Mexico, 1914 and 1916;

Honduras, six

invasions between 1911 to 1925; Panama, 1903-1914, and Haiti, 1915 to

1934.

Why Intervention?

Why has a professedly peace-loving, democratic nation found it necessary

to use

so much violence and repression against so many peoples in so many places?

An

important goal of U.S. policy is to make the world safe for the Fortune

500 and

its global system of capital accumulation. Governments that strive for any

kind

of economic independence or any sort of populist redistributive politics,

who

have sought to take some of their economic surplus and apply it to
not-for-profit services that benefit the people--such governments are the

ones

most likely to feel the wrath of U.S. intervention or invasion.

The designated "enemy" can be a reformist, populist, military government

as in

Panama under Torrijo (and even under Noriega), Egypt under Nasser, Peru

under

Velasco, and Portugal under the MFA; a Christian socialist government as

in

Nicaragua under the Sandinistas; a social democracy as in Chile under

Allende,

Jamaica under Manley, Greece under Papandreou, and the Dominican Republic

under

Bosch; a Marxist-Leninist government as in Cuba, Vietnam, and North Korea;

an

Islamic revolutionary order as in Libya under Qaddafi; or even a

conservative

militarist regime as in Iraq under Saddam Hussein--if it should get out of

line

on oil prices and oil quotas.

The public record shows that the United States is the foremost

interventionist

power in the world. There are varied and overlapping reasons for this:

Protect Direct Investments.-- In 1907, Woodrow Wilson recognized the

support

role played by the capitalist state on behalf of private capital: Since

trade

ignores national boundaries and the manufacturer insists on having the

world as

a market, the flag of his nation must follow him, and the doors of the

nations

which are closed against him must be battered down. Concessions obtained

by

financiers must be safeguarded by ministers of state, even if the

sovereignty of

unwilling nations be outraged in the process.  Colonies must be obtained

or

planted, in order that no useful corner of the world may be overlooked or

left

unused.

Later, as president of the United States, Wilson noted that the United

States

was involved in a struggle to "command the economic fortunes of the

world."

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, large U.S.

investments

in Central America and the Caribbean brought frequent military

intercession,

protracted war, prolonged occupation, or even direct territorial

acquisition, as

with Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and the Panama Canal Zone. The investments were

often

in the natural resources of the country: sugar, tobacco, cotton, and

precious

metals. In large part, the interventions in the Gulf in 1991 and in

Somalia in

1993 were respectively to protect oil profits and oil prospects.

In the post cold-war era, Admiral Charles Larson noted that, although U.S.
military forces have been reduced in some parts of the world, they remain

at

impressive levels in the Asia-Pacific area because U.S. trade in that

region is

greater than with either Europe or Latin America. Naval expert Charles

Meconis

also pointed to "the economic importance of the region" as the reason for

a

major U.S. military presence in the Pacific (see Daniel Schirmer, Monthly
Review, July/August 1994). In these instances, the sword follows the

dollar.

Create Opportunities for New Investments -- Sometimes the dollar follows

the

sword, as when military power creates opportunities for new investments.

Thus,

in 1915, U.S. leaders, citing "political instability," invaded Haiti and

crushed

the popular militia. The troops stayed for nineteen years. During that

period

French, German, and British investors were pushed out and U.S. firms

tripled

their investments in Haiti.

More recently, Taiwanese companies gave preference to U.S. firms over

Japanese

ones because the U.S. military was protecting Taiwan. In 1993, Saudi

Arabia

signed a $6 billion contract for jet airliners exclusively with U.S.

firms.

Having been frozen out of the deal, a European consortium charged that
Washington had pressured the Saudis, who had become reliant on Washington

for

their military security in the post-Gulf War era.

Preserving Politico-Economic Domination and the International Capital
Accumulation System-  Specific investments are not the only imperialist

concern.

There is the overall commitment to safeguarding the global class system,

keeping

the world's land, labor, natural resources, and markets accessible to
transnational investors. More important than particular holdings is the

whole

process of investment and profit. To defend that process the imperialist

state

thwarts and crushes those popular movements that attempt any kind of
redistributive politics, sending a message to them and others that if they

try

to better themselves by infringing upon the prerogatives of corporate

capital,

they will pay a severe price.

In two of the most notable U.S. military interventions, Soviet Russia in

1918-20

and Vietnam in 1954-73, most of the investments were European, not

American. In

these and other such instances, the intent was to prevent the emergence of
competing social orders and obliterate all workable alternatives to the
capitalist client-state. That remains the goal to this day. The countries

most

recently targeted being South Yemen, North Korea, and Cuba.

Ronald Reagan was right when he avowed that his invasion of Grenada was

not to

protect the U.S. nutmeg supply. There was plenty of nutmeg to be got from
Africa. He was acknowledging that Grenada's natural resources were not

crucial.

Nor would the revolutionary collectivization of a poor nation of 102,000

souls

represent much of a threat or investment loss to global capitalism. But if
enough countries follow that course, it eventually would put the global
capitalist system at risk.

Reagan's invasion of Grenada served notice to all other Caribbean

countries that

this was the fate that awaited any nation that sought to get out from

under its

client-state status.  So the invaders put an end to the New Jewel

Movement's

revolutionary programs for land reform, health care, education, and
cooperatives. Today, with its unemployment at new heights and its poverty

at new

depths, Grenada is once again firmly bound to the free market world.

Everyone

else in the region indeed has taken note.

The imperialist state's first concern is not to protect the direct

investments

of any particular company, although it sometimes does that, but to protect

the

global system of private accumulation from competing systems. The case of

Cuba

illustrates this point. It has been pointed out that Washington's embargo
against Cuba is shutting out U.S. business from billions of dollars of
attractive investment and trade opportunities. From this it is mistakenly
concluded that U.S. policy is not propelled by economic interests. In

fact, it

demonstrates just the opposite, an unwillingness to tolerate those states

that

try to get out from under the global capitalist system.

The purpose of the capitalist state is to do things for the advancement of

the

entire capitalist system that individual corporate interests cannot do.

Left to

their own competitive devices, business firms are not willing to abide by
certain rules nor tend to common systemic interests. This is true both for

the

domestic economy and foreign affairs. Like any good capitalist

organization, a

business firm may have a general long-range interest in seeing Cuban

socialism

crushed, but it might have a more tempting immediate interest in doing a
profitable business with the class enemy. It remains for the capitalist

state to

force individual companies back in line.  What is at stake is not the
investments within a particular Third World country but the long-range

security

of the entire system of transnational capitalism. No country that pursues

an

independent course of development shall be allowed to prevail as a

dangerous

example to other nations.

Common Confusions -- Some critics have argued that economic factors have

not

exerted an important influence on U.S. interventionist policy because most
interventions are in countries that have no great natural treasures and no

large

U.S. investments, such as, Grenada, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Vietnam.

This is

like saying that police are not especially concerned about protecting

wealth and

property because most of their actions take place in poor neighborhoods.
Interventionist forces do not go where capital exists as such; they go

where

capital is threatened. They have not intervened in affluent Switzerland,

for

instance, because capitalism in that country is relatively secure and
unchallenged. But if leftist parties gained power in Bern and attempted to
nationalize Swiss banks and major properties, it very likely would invite

the

strenuous attentions of the Western industrial powers.

Some observers maintain that intervention is bred by the national-security
apparatus itself, the State Department, the National Security Council, and

the

CIA. These agencies conjure up new enemies and crises because they need to
justify their own existence and augment their budget allocations. This

view

avoids the realities of class interest and power. It suggests that

policymakers

serve no purpose other than policymaking for their own bureaucratic
aggrandizement. Such a notion reverses cause and effect. It is a little

like

saying the horse is the cause of the horse race. It treats the national

security

state as the originator of intervention when in fact it is but one of the

major

instruments. U.S. leaders were engaging in interventionist actions long

before

the CIA and NSC existed.

One of those who argues that the state is a self-generated aggrandizer is
Richard Barnet, who dismisses the "more familiar and more sinister

motives" of

economic imperialism. Whatever their economic systems, all large

industrial

states, he maintains, seek to project power and influence in a search for
security and domination. To be sure, the search for security is a real
consideration for every state, especially in a world in which capitalist

power

is hegemonic and ever threatening. But the capital investments of

multinational

corporations expand in a far more dynamic way than the economic expansion
manifested by socialist or precapitalist governments.

In fact, the case studies in Barnet's book Intervention and Revolution

point to

business, rather than the national security bureaucracies, as the primary

motive

of U.S. intervention. Anti-communism and the Soviet threat seem less a

source

for policy than a propaganda ploy to frighten the American public and

rally

support for overseas commitments. The very motives Barnet dismisses seem

to be

operative in his case studies of Greece, Iran, Lebanon, and the Dominican
Republic, specifically the
desire to secure access to markets and raw materials and the need,

explicitly

stated by various policymakers, to protect free enterprise throughout the

world.

Some might complain that the foregoing analysis is "simplistic" because it
ascribes all international events to purely economic and class motives and
ignores other variables like geopolitics, culture, ethnicity, nationalism,
ideology, and morality. But I do not argue that the struggle to maintain
capitalist global hegemony explains everything about world politics nor

even

everything about U.S. foreign policy. However, it explains quite a lot; so

is it

not time we become aware of it?  If mainstream opinion makers really want

to

portray political life in all its manifold complexities, then why are they

so

studiously reticent about the immense realities of imperialism?

The existence of other variables such as nationalism, militarism, the

search for

national security, and the pursuit of power and hegemonic dominance,

neither

compels us to dismiss economic realities, nor to treat these other

variables as

insulated from class interests. Thus, the desire to extend U.S. strategic

power

into a particular region is impelled at least in part by a desire to

stabilize

the area along lines that are favorable to politico-economic elite
interests--which is why the region becomes a focus of concern in the first
place.

In other words, various considerations work with circular effect upon each
other. The growth in overseas investments invite a need for military

protection.

This, in turn, creates a need to secure bases and establish alliances with

other

nations. The alliances now expand the "defense" perimeter that must be
maintained. So a particular country becomes not only an "essential" asset

for

our defense but must itself be defended, like any other asset.

Inventing Enemies -- As noted in the previous chapter, the U.S. empire is
neoimperialist in its operational mode. With the exception of a few

territorial

possessions, U.S. overseas expansion has relied on indirect control rather

than

direct possession. This is not to say that U.S. leaders are strangers to
annexation and conquest.  Most of what is now the continental United

States was

forcibly wrested from Native American nations. California and all of the
Southwest USA were taken from Mexico by war. Florida and Puerto Rico were

seized

from Spain.

U.S. leaders must convince the American people that the immense costs of

empire

are necessary for their security and survival. For years we were told that

the

great danger we faced was "the World Communist Menace with its

headquarters in

Moscow."  U.S. citizens accepted a crushing tax burden to pay for

"defense," to

win the superpower arms race and "contain Soviet aggression wherever it

might

arise." Since the demise of the USSR, our political leaders have been

warning us

that the world is full of other dangerous adversaries, who apparently had

been

previously overlooked.

Who are these evil adversaries who wait to spring upon the USA the moment

we

drop our guard or the moment we make real cuts in our gargantuan military
budget? Why do they stalk us instead of, say, Denmark or Brazil? This

scenario

of a world of enemies was used by the rulers of the Roman empire and by
nineteenth-century British imperialists. Enemies always had to be

confronted,

requiring more interventions and more expansion. And if enemies were not

to be

found, they would be invented.

Americans have little cause to take pride in being part of "our" mighty

empire,

for what that empire does to peoples abroad is nothing to be proud of. And

at

home, the policies of empire benefit the dominant interests rather than

the

interests of the common citizenry. When Washington says "our" interests

must be

protected abroad, we might question whether all of us are represented by

the

goals pursued. Far-off countries, previously unknown to most Americans,

suddenly

become vital to "our" interests. To protect "our" oil in the Middle East

and

"our" resources and "our" markets elsewhere, our sons and daughters have

to

participate in overseas military ventures, and our taxes
are needed to finance these ventures.

The next time "our" oil in the Middle East is in jeopardy, we might

remember

that relatively few of us own oil stock. Yet even portfolio-deprived

Americans

are presumed to have a common interest with Exxon and Mobil because they

live in

an economy dependent on oil. It is assumed that if the people of other

lands

wrested control of their oil away from the big U.S. companies, they would

refuse

to sell it to us. Supposedly they would prefer to drive us into the arms

of

competing producers and themselves into ruination, denying themselves the
billions of dollars they might earn on the North American market.

In fact, nations that acquire control of their own resources do not act so
strangely. Cuba, Vietnam, North Korea, Libya, and others would be happy to

have

access to markets in this country, selling at prices equal to or more

reasonable

than those offered by the giant multinationals. So when Third World

peoples,

through nationalization, revolution, or both, take over the oil in their

own

land, or the copper, tin, sugar, or other industries, it does not hurt the
interests of the U.S. working populace. But it certainly hurts the

multinational

conglomerates that once profited so handsomely from these enterprises.

Who Pays? Who Profits? -- We are made to believe that the people of the

United

States have a common interest with the giant multinationals, the very

companies

that desert our communities in pursuit of cheaper labor abroad. In truth,

on

almost every issue the people are not in the same boat with the big

companies.

Policy costs are not equally shared; benefits are not equally enjoyed. The
"national" policies of an imperialist country reflect the interests of

that

country's dominant socio-economic class. Class rather than nation-state

more

often is the crucial unit of analysis in the study of imperialism.

The tendency to deny the existence of conflicting class interests when

dealing

with imperialism leads to some serious misunderstandings. For example,

liberal

writers like Kenneth Boulding and Richard Barnet have pointed out that

empires

cost more than they bring in, especially when wars are fought to maintain

them.

Thus, from 1950 to 1970, the U.S. government spent several billions of

dollars

to shore up a corrupt dictatorship in the Philippines, hoping to protect

about

$1 billion in U.S. investments in that country. At first glance it does

not make

sense to spend $3 billion to protect $1 billion. Saul Landau has made this

same

point in regard to the costs of U.S. interventions in Central America:

they

exceed actual U.S. investments. Barnet notes that "the costs of

maintaining

imperial privilege always exceed the gains." From this it has been

concluded

that empires simply are not worth all the expense and trouble. Long before
Barnet, the Round Table imperialist policymakers in Great Britain wanted

us to

believe that the empire was not maintained because of profit; indeed "from

a

purely material point of view the Empire is a burden rather than a source

of

gain" (Round Table, vol 1, 232-39, 411).

To be sure, empires do not come cheap. Burdensome expenditures are needed

for

military repression and prolonged occupation, for colonial administration,

for

bribes and arms to
native collaborators, and for the development of a commercial

infrastructure to

facilitate extractive industries and capital penetration. But empires are

not

losing propositions for everyone. The governments of imperial nations may

spend

more than they take in, but the people who reap the benefits are not the

same

ones who foot the bill. As Thorstein Veblen pointed out in The Theory of

the

Business Enterprise (1904), the gains of empire flow into the hands of the
privileged business class while the costs are extracted from "the industry

of

the rest of the people." The transnationals monopolize the private returns

of

empire while carrying little, if any, of the public cost. The expenditures
needed in the way of armaments and aid to make the world safe for General
Motors, General Dynamics, General Electric, and all the other generals are

paid

by the U.S. government, that is, by the taxpayers.

So it was with the British empire in India, the costs of which, Marx noted

a

half-century before Veblen, were "paid out of the pockets of the people of
England," and far exceeded what came back into the British treasury. He
concluded that the advantage to Great Britain from her Indian Empire was

limited

to the "very considerable" profits which accrued to select individuals,

mostly a

coterie of stockholders and officers in the East India Company and the

Bank of

England.

Likewise, beginning in the late nineteenth century and carrying over into

the

twentieth, the German conquest of Southwest Africa "remained a loss-making
enterprise for the German taxpayer," according to historian Horst

Drechsler, yet

"a number of monopolists still managed to squeeze huge profits out of the

colony

in the closing years of German colonial domination." And imperialism is in

the

service of the few monopolists not the many taxpayers.

In sum, there is nothing irrational about spending three dollars of public

money

to protect one dollar of private investment--at least not from the

perspective

of the investors.  To protect one dollar of their money they will spend

three,

four, and five dollars of our money. In fact, when it comes to protecting

their

money, our money is no object.

Furthermore, the cost of a particular U.S. intervention must be measured

not

against the value of U.S. investments in the country involved but against

the

value of the world investment system. It has been noted that the cost of
apprehending a bank robber may occasionally exceed the sum that is stolen.

But

if robbers were allowed to go their way, this would encourage others to

follow

suit and would put the entire banking system in jeopardy.

At stake in these various wars of suppression, as already noted, is not

just the

investments in any one country but the security of the whole international
system of finance capital. No country is allowed to pursue an independent

course

of self-development. None is permitted to go unpunished and undeterred.

None

should serve as an inspiration or source of material support to other

nations

that might want to pursue a politico-economic path other than the

maldevelopment

offered by global capitalism.

The Myth of Popular Imperialism -- Those who think of empire solely as an
expression of national
interests rather than class interests are bound to misinterpret the nature

of

imperialism. In his American Diplomacy 1900-1950, George Kennan describes

U.S.

imperialist expansion at the end of the nineteenth century as a product of
popular aspiration: the American people "simply liked the smell of

empire"; they

wanted "to bask in the sunshine of recognition as one of the great

imperial

powers of the world."

In The Progressive (October 1984), the liberal writers John Buell and

Matthew

Rothschild comment that "the American psyche is pegged to being biggest,

best,

richest, and strongest. Just listen to the rhetoric of our politicians."

But

does the politician's rhetoric really reflect the sentiments of most

Americans,

who in fact come up as decidedly noninterventionist in most opinion polls?

Buell

and Rothschild assert that "when a Third World nation--whether it be Cuba,
Vietnam, Iran, or Nicaragua--spurns our way of doing things, our egos

ache. . ."

Actually, such countries spurn the ways of global corporate

capitalism--and this

is what U.S. politico-economic leaders will not tolerate. Psychologizing

about

aching collective egos allows us to blame imperialism on ordinary U.S.

citizens

who are neither the creators nor beneficiaries of empire.

In like fashion, the historian William Appleman Williams, in his Empire As

a Way

of Life, scolds the American people for having become addicted to the

conditions

of empire. It seems "we" like empire. "We" live beyond our means and need

empire

as part of our way of life. "We" exploit the rest of the world and don't

know

how to get back to a simpler life. The implication is that "we" are

profiting

from the runaway firms that are exporting our jobs and exploiting Third

World

peoples. "We" decided to send troops into Central America, Vietnam, and

the

Middle East and thought to overthrow democratic governments in a dozen or

more

countries around the world. And "we" urged the building of a global

network of

counterinsurgency, police torturers, and death squads in numerous

countries.

For Williams, imperialist policy is a product of mass thinking. In truth,
ordinary Americans usually have opposed intervention or given only

lukewarm

support. Opinion polls during the Vietnam War showed that the public

wanted a

negotiated settlement and withdrawal of U.S. troops. They supported the

idea of

a coalition government in Vietnam that included the communists, and they
supported elections even if the communists won them.

Pollster Louis Harris reported that, during 1982-84 Americans rejected

increased

military aid for El Salvador and its autocratic military machine by more

than 3

to 1. Network surveys found that 80 percent opposed sending troops to that
country; 67 percent were against the U.S. mining of Nicaragua's harbors;

and 2

to 1 majorities opposed aid to the Nicaraguan contras (the rightwing
CIA-supported mercenary army that was waging a brutal war of attrition

against

Nicaraguan civilians). A 1983 Washington Post/ABC News poll found that, by

a 6

to 1 ratio, our citizens opposed any attempt by the United States to

overthrow

the Nicaraguan government. By more than 2 to 1 the public said the

greatest

cause of unrest in Central America was not subversion from Cuba,

Nicaragua, or

the Soviet Union but "poverty and the lack of human rights in the area."

Even the public's superpatriotic yellow-ribbon binge during the more

recent Gulf

War of 1991 was not the cause of the war itself. It was only one of the
disgusting and disheartening by-products. Up to the eve of that conflict,
opinion polls showed Americans favoring a negotiated withdrawal of Iraqi

troops

rather than direct U.S. military engagement. But once U.S. forces were

committed

to action, then the "support-our-troops" and "go for victory" mentality

took

hold of the public, pumped up as always by a jingoistic media propaganda
machine.

Once war comes, especially with the promise of a quick and easy victory,

some

individuals suspend all critical judgment and respond on cue like mindless
superpatriots. One can point to the small businessman in Massachusetts,

who

announced that he was a "strong supporter" of the U.S. military

involvement in

the Gulf, yet admitted he was not sure what the war was about. "That's

something

I would like know," he stated. "What are we fighting about?" (New York

Times,

November 15, 1990)

In the afterglow of the Gulf triumph, George Bush had a 93 percent

approval

rating and was deemed unbeatable for reelection in 1992. Yet within a

year,

Americans had come down from their yellow ribbon binge and experienced a
postbellum depression, filled with worries about jobs, money, taxes and

other

such realities. Bush's popularity all but evaporated and he was defeated

by a

scandal-plagued, relatively unknown governor from Arkansas.

Whether they support or oppose a particular intervention, the American

people

cannot be considered the motivating force of the war policy. They do not

sweep

their leaders into war on a tide of popular hysteria. It is the other way
around. Their leaders take them for a ride and bring out the worst in

them.

Even then, there are hundreds of thousands who remain actively opposed and
millions who correctly suspect that such ventures are not in their

interest.

Cultural Imperialism -- Imperialism exercises control over the

communication

universe. American movies, television shows, music, fashions, and consumer
products inundate Latin America, Asia, and Africa, as well as Western and
Eastern Europe. U.S. rock stars and other performers play before wildly
enthusiastic audiences from Madrid to Moscow, from Rio to Bangkok. U.S.
advertising agencies dominate the publicity and advertising industries of

the

world.

Millions of news reports, photographs, commentaries, editorials,

syndicated

columns, feature stories from U.S. media, saturate most other countries

each

year. The average Third World nation is usually more exposed to U.S. media
viewpoints than to those of neighboring countries or its own backlands.

Millions

of comic books and magazines, condemning communism and boosting the

wonders of

the free market, are translated into dozens of languages and distributed

by U.S.

(dis)information agencies. The CIA alone owns outright over 200

newspapers,

magazines, wire services and publishing houses in countries throughout the
world.

U.S. government-funded agencies like the National Endowment for Democracy

and

the Agency for International Development, along with the Ford Foundation

and

other such organizations, help maintain Third World universities,

providing

money for academic programs, social science institutes, research, student
scholarships, and textbooks supportive of a free market ideological

perspective.

Right-wing Christian missionary agencies preach political quiescence and
anticommunism to native populations. The AFL-CIO's American Institute for

Free

Labor Development (AIFLD), with ample State Department funding, has

actively

infiltrated Third World labor organizations or built compliant unions that

are

more anticommunist than pro-worker.

AIFLD graduates have been linked to coups and counterinsurgency work in

various

countries. Similar AFL-CIO undertakings operate in Africa and Asia.

The CIA has infiltrated important political organizations in numerous

countries

and maintains agents at the highest levels of various governments,

including

heads of state, military leaders, and opposition political parties.

Washington

has financed conservative political parties in Latin America, Asia,

Africa, and

Western and Eastern Europe. Their major qualification is that they be

friendly

to Western capital penetration. While federal law prohibits foreigners

from

making campaign contributions to U.S. candidates, Washington policymakers
reserve the right to interfere in the elections of other countries, such

as

Italy, the Dominican Republic, Panama, Nicaragua, and El Salvador, to name

only

a few. U.S. leaders feel free to intrude massively upon the economic,

military,

political, and cultural practices and institutions of any country they so
choose. That's what it means to have an empire.