I recently opened a thread concerning the John Kennedy assassination and the conspiracies behind it. While there are people who will devote loads of time debating that specifically, I think the point I like to fight for overall is how far the Johnson administration brought down this country, and how much farther we've dropped since then. LBJ had a good run for civil rights (a continuation of JFK's policies), then began to escalate the war [we had been funding since 1954] in the French monument of failure we called Indochina. He milked the Military-Industrial Complex for bribes and sent half a million of our brothers to die for the biggest nothing in history. They told us there was a chain of dominoes pushed by a communist world revolution, and that we had to stop the reaction in a backwater Asian land led by a nationalist with communist policies who wanted the Soviets and the Chinese out along with us. They didn't matter in the grand scale of the Cold War, but they were a valuable colony. Viet Nam was an imperial struggle.
America is not an empire in a classical sense because the world has changed enough that they can no longer operate that way. When the Belgians, for instance, claimed the Congo, it was a very backwards and primitive place. With a few guns and a bit of greed, they could land and do anything they wanted. They went there to poach ivory and harvest rubber, and they could do it efficiently and without trouble because they were organized and heavily armed. Today, places like that are different; they have guns, organization, and government. Although they are third world countries, rifles have long since replaced the wooden spears. We can't go in and add them to the red of our map because they aren't easy to mess with anymore, and we technically aren't supposed to. So we do it by means of war.
In the old days, entities like the faceless ivory companies from Brussels and the East India Company from London were able to go over themselves because it was easy to. However, you give native people guns and you get something like the Sepoy Rebellion. John Company wasn't able to handle it themselves, so they called out the government to help. Today, they are all dangerous to rob, so the defense industries here, the natural resources companies here, and et cetera will pay off people in the government or have government men take financial interest in their companies. Then we go to war.
Belgian men were not sent on a mission to fight for their country against foreign aggressors in the Congo, they were there to poach ivory and make profit, but everybody knew it; good for the Belgians, and bad for the Africans. Now, you take the French and Viet Nam, the British and India, and you get the same thing all around. There was a time when an American could be mistakenly shot by the Viet Minh if he looked British, but would be greeted warmly if he looked American. Now, that colonial heritage has been passed on to us. We are the British, the 'sharp noses'. But we live in an empire where we are given obligation without authority, where every other empire in history had the opposite.
When we colonize a territory, we do it to 'fight wars for our country', 'protect from communists' and 'protect from terrorists'. And once the government clears out an area like Viet Nam or Iraq, the companies move in and start robbing the countries we've invaded. It didn't quite work like we planned in Viet Nam, but it works better in the middle east. Unlike the Europeans who all volunteered, were sent by the companies themselves, and were given a cut of what was stolen, the soldiers are given nothing. In Viet Nam, they were drafted and forced to go over there, then come home with nothing while companies were stacked with profits from being in the business of 'defense'. Today, we are tricked into going over to these places because the government makes believe that there is something to fight against. Unlike with those that came before us, these imperial expansions aren't good for anybody over there. It's bad for the people who go over, and it's bad for the people who are over.
Saying that American wars after World War II are more disgusting than Leopold's colonization of the Congo is a particularly nasty comment and a pretty far leap, but it's one I can back up. And in that - strange as it may seem - I only say it with love for my country and a desire to see it improve. I believe in our ideals of freedom and democracy, and I love the people who live in the land under them. I think the government today is more anti-American than not, and I see their imperial efforts as an assault on almost every aspect of the American way. As a patriotic American, I see it as my duty to stand against war and all the death and destruction it brings. As a patriotic American, I will not help my country commit suicide.
