THE UNITED STATES OF AMNESIA, Part 2

 

Professor Nguyen Thi Ngoc Phuong, at Tu Du Obstetrics and Gynecology Hospital is pictured with a group of handicapped children, most of them victims of Agent Orange. Author: Alexis Duclos. In the public domain.

by Stefan Schindler

Anti-factoid American history, continued

5 – Vietnam was America’s ally in World War Two.  After Japan’s defeat, Vietnam persistently sought American friendship.  Vietnam was, briefly, an independent and united country with a newly written constitution and plans for democratic elections.  If post-war America was paranoid about Chinese communist expansion into Southeast Asia, no better ally could be had than the Vietnamese, who had fought the Chinese for two thousand years.  Yet, shortly after Japan’s surrender, President Truman helped the French do to the Vietnamese what the Nazis had just done to them.

6 – Note the moral contradiction in saying that German, Italian, and Japanese imperialism is not OK, but that British, French, and American imperialism is just fine.  Most American citizens remain oblivious to the ethical absurdity of presidents saying for decades that we have to support dictatorships to make the world safe for democracy.

7 – The Eisenhower Administration, in direct violation of the Constitution, promoted the insertion of “In God We Trust” on America’s coins.  The Eisenhower Administration walked out of the Geneva Peace Conference of 1954 after the Vietnamese won their eight-year war against the French; then the U.S. undermined the 1956 Vietnamese democratic election guaranteed by the Conference, installing  in a mostly Buddhist “South Vietnam,” an American financed Catholic puppet dictator  who immediately began killing and imprisoning those Vietnamese who fought the eight-year war of independence – 1946 to 1954 – against the French.

8 – The Eisenhower Administration overthrew social democracy in Iran in 1953, supporting a subsequent, 26-year dictatorship that profoundly contributed to Middle Eastern hatred of America.  Eisenhower’s CIA did same in Guatemala in 1954.

9 – Nelson Mandela spent 26 years in a South African prison thanks to the Central Intelligence Agency’s informing the South African apartheid government of Mandela’s whereabouts, leading to his arrest and imprisonment.

10 – After the assassination of President Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson had a full two months to respond favorably to a South Vietnamese call for peace and the withdrawal of America’s military.  Instead of making peace possible, Lyndon Johnson did what President Kennedy never did: he launched a full scale war, during which, in violation of international law, and constituting an indisputable war crime, America sprayed 20 million tons of Agent Orange across the Vietnamese landscape, and dropped more bombs on Vietnam than all the bombs dropped everywhere in World War Two.

Co-founder of The National Registry for Conscientious Objection, a Woodrow Wilson Fellow, a recipient of The Boston Baha’i Peace Award, and a Trustee of The Life Experience School and Peace Abbey Foundation, Dr. Schindler received his Ph.D. in Philosophy from Boston College, worked one summer in a nature preserve, lived in a Zen temple for a year, did the pilot’s voice in a claymation video of St. Exupery’s The Little Prince, acted in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf,” and performed as a musical poet in Philadelphia, Boston, and New York City.  He also wrote The Peace Abbey Courage of Conscience Awards for Howard Zinn and John Lennon.  He is now semi-retired and living in Salem, Massachusetts.

 

Self-evident or reserved for the power elite? Part 2.

Fourth of July fireworks seen across the Potomac River at Washington, D.C., USA, July 4, 2011. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. Author: Joe Ravi. license CC-BY-SA 3.0 .

by Kathie Malley-Morrison

For our July 4, 2016, post, we asked whether Americans have honored and promulgated the principles stated in our Declaration of Independence. Our answer: Not unless it suited the interests of the ruling powers within the nation to do so. Which is, relatively speaking, almost never.

The grievous failure of successive US governments to promote life and liberty (let alone the pursuit of happiness) is appalling not only in relation to their tolerance of slavery (officially “legal” in this country until the Emancipation Proclamation, illegal but continuing in various forms ever since) but also in their violent opposition to such pursuits in peoples trying to overthrow vicious and unjust governments elsewhere.

The failures to support liberation movements are numerous but here are two ignominious examples that at least some Americans know about:

The Philippines  Over 100 years ago, the United States replaced Spain as the foreign power occupying the Philippines. American forces went to the Philippines in 1898 purportedly to help Filipino rebels achieve independence from the yoke of imperial Spain; instead, the US government, pursuing its own imperialistic goals, initiated a vicious war against the rebels, took over control of the Philippines, and occupied the islands for decades, not until July 4, 1946, did it finally recognize Philippines independence.

Vietnam: Over 50 years ago, the United States replaced France as the imperialistic power occupying Vietnam, purportedly to save “South Vietnam” from the “ruthless Communists” of “North Vietnam” (the  Vietminh).  A lot of good books and articles have been written concerning this particular crushing of an indigenous people’s efforts to gain liberty and justice from foreign occupiers, but Noam Chomsky summarizes it well in this interview with Paul Shannon.

To understand what all those fireworks on the Fourth of July really signify, just check out this Global Policy Forum summary of US military activity since, in the course of events,  the early colonialists declared their independence from Great Britain. Perhaps it is time for the US to pursue a new path, truly honoring life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness with a new holiday and a new symbol (Flag of Peace (Proposal).  Author: Julius C. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Flag_of_Peace_(Proposal).PNG).)