In my opinion the most important argument against imperialist wars is their immorality. It’s a terrible shame that U.S. politicians don’t use this argument more often. I guess they feel that they will be accused of being “weak” or “soft on defense”, or some such nonsense if they do so.
How do we know when our wars are based on imperialist motives, when we’re always told that they are based on some noble motive or need for self-preservation? President McKinley, attempting to justify our occupation of the Philippines in 1899, said:
We could not leave them to themselves – they were unfit for self-government – and they would soon have anarchy and misrule… there was nothing left for us to do but to take them all, and to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and civilize and Christianize them… blah blah blah.
Our justification for our
Vietnam War was Communism. Though the
Geneva Conference Agreements of 1954 provided for general elections which were to bring about the unification of Vietnam, U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles
intervened to prevent those elections from taking place. From the time that we prevented the Vietnamese from holding elections in 1956 until our withdrawal from Vietnam 17 years later, the justification for our imperial policies there was always to help the Vietnamese throw of the yolk of Communism, and also to prevent the spread of Communism to other countries.
So how do we know when we’re involved in an imperialist war?One thing is for certain. Whenever we (or any other country) attempt to occupy another country, we’re told that we do so for their own good. How do we know if that’s true? Well, if we kill hundreds of thousands of civilians or if we create millions of refugees in the country that we’re trying to “civilize” or bring “democracy” to, or whatever, it doesn’t seem too likely that our leaders are telling us the truth about their noble motives.
For example, an
April 2007 article in
The Nation by Dahr Jamail noted about 4 million Iraqi refugees as of that date. Add
one million dead to that figure, and we can calculate that about one fifth of the original Iraqi population since the 2003 U.S. invasion has either died as a result of the war or occupation or become refugees. Jamail’s article explains at least one reason for so many refugees:
On all measurable levels, life in Baghdad, now well into the fifth year of U.S. occupation, has become hellish for Iraqis who have attempted to remain, which, of course, only adds to the burgeoning numbers who daily become part of the exodus to neighboring lands. It is generally agreed that the delivery of security, electricity, potable water, health care, and jobs – that is, the essentials of modern urban life – are all significantly worse than during the last years of the reign of Saddam Hussein… "The Americans are detaining so many people," Ali Hassan, a 41-year-old from the Hay Jihad area of Baghdad said as we spoke…
That doesn’t sound like a very good way to “bring democracy” to a country, does it?
We also have opinion polls of Iraqis, in the event that any of our leaders care to look at them. An
opinion poll of Iraqis in September 2006 should have told us all we needed to know about the success and legitimacy of our “liberation” effort:
78% said that the U.S. military presence is provoking more conflict than it is preventing.
61% said that U.S. military withdrawal would
increase security for ordinary Iraqis.
61% approved of violent attacks on U.S. led forces.
91% said that U.S. forces should withdraw within two years or less.
Atrocities associated with imperialist guerilla warsWhen a powerful country attempts to occupy a militarily weaker country against the will of its people, a tragic cycle of events tends to take place. Because of the disparity in traditional military strength, the occupied country tends to resort to guerilla warfare. If resentment against the occupier is widespread, which it often is, guerilla warfare tends to be widely dispersed, and large portions of the population participate in it. It therefore becomes difficult or impossible for the occupier to differentiate civilians from fighters. That increases the tendency of the occupier to respond with massacres and other atrocities, which increases the resentment of the occupied people and causes an increasing number of them to join the insurgency.
A report in the
Philadelphia Ledger in 1901 gave the American people their first glimpse of the atrocities committed during the American-Philippine War:
Our men have been relentless; have killed to exterminate men, women, children, prisoners and captives, active insurgents and suspected people, from lads of ten and up, an idea prevailing that the Filipino, as such, was little better than a dog… Our soldiers have pumped salt water into men to “make them talk,” have taken prisoner people who held up their hands and peacefully surrendered, and an hour later… shot them down one by one…
The Mai Lai massacre during the Vietnam War is the most well known atrocity of that war, though it was only the tip of the iceberg. Here is a
brief summary of it:
When Charlie Company entered Mai Lai they encountered no resistance from Viet Cong Soldiers, yet three hours later there were over 500 civilian Vietnamese, men, women and children, dead. Lieutenant William Calley, for whatever reason, ordered his men to kill, burn and destroy everything in the village….
A
report by a coalition of non-governmental groups called the Global Policy Forum shed a lot of light on some of the reasons for the tragedies that so many Iraqis have suffered under the U.S. occupation. The report explains that U.S. forces:
have held a large number of Iraqi citizens in 'security detention' without charge or trial, in direct violation of international law. No Iraqi is safe from arbitrary arrest and the number of prisoners has risen greatly since 2003 (when the US-led war began)…
U.S. military commanders have established permissive rules of engagement, allowing troops to use deadly force against virtually any perceived threat. As a consequence, the US and its allies regularly kill Iraqi civilians at checkpoints and during military operations, on the basis of the merest suspicion…abusing and torturing large numbers of Iraqi prisoners… torture increasingly takes place in Iraqi prisons, apparently with US awareness and complicity…In addition to combat deaths, coalition forces have killed many Iraqi civilians.
The United States has established broad legal immunity in Iraq for its forces, for private security personnel, for foreign military and civilian contractors, and even for the oil companies doing business in Iraq…
The consequences of our guerilla wars of occupationThe participation of the United States in guerilla wars has usually been in the role of the occupier. There was one exception, the one that began in 1775 and led to our birth as a nation – and that was the only one that we won.
Theodore Roosevelt inherited the
Philippine War in September 1901, when President McKinley was assassinated. By the time he declared the Philippines “pacified” on July 4, 1902, 4,373 American soldiers had died in the war, along with an estimated 16 thousand Filipino soldiers and 20 thousand Filipino civilians.
By the time we left Vietnam in 1973, 58,000 American troops had died in the war, along with about two million Vietnamese. The cost to the U.S. was about $600 billion.
Our invasion of Iraq, a country that posed no threat to us whatsoever, has accomplished nothing but the
deaths of thousands of American soldiers, more than a million Iraqis, and the destruction of their country and society.
In summary, throughout our history our attempts to occupy militarily weaker nations against their will have been utter failures and massive moral tragedies.
So what about Afghanistan?
Will Afghanistan turn out differently? – The difficulties of winning guerilla wars William R. Polk recently wrote an
open letter to President Obama, published in
The Nation, in which he urged him to withdraw our military from Afghanistan. Polk was a professor at the University of Chicago, where he established the Center for Middle Eastern Studies and was president of the Adlai Stevenson Institute of International Affairs, following his work in the Kennedy administration, where he was a member of the Policy Planning Council responsible the Middle East and Central Asia.
In his letter to the president, he gave many reasons for withdrawing for Afghanistan, including: the enormous costs; that it is not helpful towards our goals of capturing Osama bin Laden or neutralizing al Qaeda; that our lack of understanding of its culture and people greatly hinders our effectiveness there; that we are creating far more enemies by being there than we are eliminating, and; the historic failures of other countries that have tried to occupy Afghanistan, such as the
British from 1842 to 1919 and the Soviet Union in the 1980s. But by far the most prominent theme of Polk’s letter dealt with the difficulties of winning guerilla wars while trying to occupy a country whose people deeply resent being occupied. He begins that subject by drawing a parallel with Vietnam:
According to press accounts, you are being told that America can win the war against the Taliban by employing overwhelming military power. Just like President Johnson’s generals, yours keep asking for more troops. You are also being told that we can multiply our power with counterinsurgency tactics. Having made a detailed study (laid out in my book “
Violent Politics”) of a dozen insurgencies… I doubt that you are being well advised. When I was in government, we were told we could achieve victory in Vietnam by the same combination of force and counterinsurgency recommended by your advisers in Afghanistan…. But as the editors of the
Pentagon Papers concluded: … “All failed dismally.”
Most important, Polk draws a direct correlation between our poor prospects in Afghanistan and the unpopularity of our military presence and the puppet regime we support:
Our chances of defeating them are poor. Indeed, some independent observers believe they are becoming more popular while we are becoming less popular. They, and many non-Taliban Afghans, regard us, as they regarded the Russians, as foreign, anti-Muslim invaders. Moreover, they see that the government we are backing is corrupt and rapacious. Observers report that it is deeply involved in the drug trade, stealing aid money… Most of the country is in the hands of brutal, predatory warlords… Forced to choose between the warlords and the Taliban, Afghans are likely to choose the Taliban…
Most important, our mere presence in Afghanistan defeats our purpose. Polk concludes:
The harder we try, the more likely terrorism will be to increase and spread. As the history of every insurgency demonstrates, the more foreign boots there are on the ground and the harder the foreigners fight, the more hatred they engender. Substituting drone attacks for ground combat is no solution. Having been bombed from the air, I can attest that it is more infuriating than a ground attack…
The intersection of morality and self-interest I said at the beginning of this post that I believe that the most important argument against imperialist wars is that they are immoral. So I find it very interesting – and hopeful – that the very fact that they immoral establishes the conditions for the defeat of the occupier’s imperial ambitions as well. The immorality of an occupation – that it, the brutality and the indifference to human suffering with which they are generally conducted – sow the seeds of resentment that leads to the defeat of the occupier. Polk subtly makes that point in his letter to Obama without actually bringing morals into the discussion (It’s virtually taboo in American politics to mix discussions of morality with war):
It is rare that insurgencies end with the establishment of a regime favored by the occupier – that was the experience of the British and Russians in Afghanistan, the Americans in Vietnam, the French in Algeria. Governments acceptable to the foreign occupier may last a short while, but almost always, those who fought hardest against the foreigner take over when he leaves.
US military intervention in Afghanistan has not only solidified the Taliban as an organization but has also created increasing public support for it. There is much evidence in Afghanistan, as there has been in every insurgency I have studied, that foreign soldiers increase rather than calm hostility. The British found that to be true even in the American Revolution.
Polk makes the same point with regard to the Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan:
The brutal Soviet occupation shattered the Afghan social structure. Nearly one in ten Afghans was killed or died, and more than 5 million fled the country… During their occupation, the Russians crushed many ping-pong balls (a metaphor Polk uses for villages), but they could not defeat enough of them to win…The Russians won all the battles but lost the war. Afghanistan became the grave yard of the Soviet Union.
Our occupation of Afghanistan may be worth while to certain interests associated with the military-industrial complex. But even if “successful”, it will not solve the problem of terrorism. As Polk points out, “Since terrorist attacks can be mounted from many places, the only effective long-term defense against them is to deal with their causes.”
The cause of the terrorist threat that we face is Muslim hatred of our country. That hatred is fueled by our occupation of their lands and intrusions into their affairs (such as our
overthrow of the democratically elected government of Iran in 1953) – which not coincidentally preceded their hatred of us. In other words, imperialist ambition sows hatred, which then blows back upon the imperialists – and not just the imperialists themselves, but also the innocent civilians who have the misfortune of living in a country that is largely controlled by imperialists.
Some lessons we could learn from George McGovernGeorge McGovern during the Vietnam War was the Dennis Kucinich of our day. He was the first politician I campaigned for or voted for. His campaign for president in 1972 was derailed by a barrage of lies and dirty tricks, reminiscent of the campaigns of Al Gore and John Kerry in 2000 and 2004. Most of all, his courageous opposition to the Vietnam War allowed his opponents to peg him as a pacifist.
But George McGovern was no pacifist. He was a bomber pilot and
war hero in WW II, who
advocated the bombing of Nazi concentration camps in order to more directly combat the genocide taking place in those camps. As a U.S. Senator in 1978, McGovern was one of the very few U.S. politicians who advocated intervention in Cambodia in order to stop the genocide taking place there.
McGovern asked in response to that genocide, “Do we sit on the sidelines and watch a population slaughtered or do we marshal military force and put an end to it?”
But when it came to immoral imperialist wars his opposition was fierce. He was one of three or four U.S. Senators who opposed U.S. involvement in the early years of the Vietnam War, as manifested by the
McGovern-Hatfield Amendment (defeated by 55-39), which required the complete withdrawal of American forces over a period of several months. In pushing for his amendment to end the war, McGovern was not afraid to point fingers at his Senate colleagues (Democratic as well as Republican): Rick Perlstein, in his book “
Nixonland”, describes following the scene:
Opposing senators had spoken of the necessity of resolve in the face of adversity, of national honor, of staying the course, of glory, of courage. McGovern responded:
“Every senator in this chamber is partly responsible for sending fifty thousand young Americans to an early grave. This chamber reeks of blood.” (Senators averted their eyes or stared at there desks or drew their faces taut with fury; this was not senatorial decorum.) “Every senator here is partly responsible for that human wreckage… young men without legs, or arms, or genitals, or face, or hopes… Do not talk about national honor, or courage. It does not take any courage at all for a congressman, or senator, or a president to wrap himself in the flag and say we are staying in Vietnam, because it is not our blood that is being shed. But we are responsible…”
McGovern succinctly summed up the lesson that we
should have learned from Vietnam (and Iraq) when
he said “We seem bent on saving the Vietnamese from Ho Chi Minh even if we have to kill them and demolish their country to do it”. And more recently he
said about his opposition to the Vietnam War, while alluding to the Iraq War:
I frankly don't understand the interpretation that once you get into a war you can't ever pull out until you've won it. We need more politicians in this country who are willing to say, "I made a mistake. Let's correct it as soon as possible."
Getting outNear the end of his letter to Obama, Polk briefly discusses how to get out of Afghanistan:
How to get out is something former Senator George McGovern and I laid out in our book Out of Iraq, which with suitable changes can provide a template for Afghanistan. But as long as we are there, the war will continue, with disastrous consequences for all the things you want to do and we Americans need you to do.
In their book “
Out of Iraq”, McGovern and Polk discuss: a phased withdrawal of coalition and mercenary troops with replacement by an international police force to maintain security; the release of prisoners of war; and reconstruction of the country (about which they go into great detail), with reparations to reimburse the Iraqis for their loss of life and property.
Most important of all is the renouncing of U.S. imperial and corporate ambitions. Because a major reason for the Iraq insurgency is hostility towards the American occupation, which is based upon the (accurate) perception that imperial ambitions and corporate greed are largely responsible for the American presence in Iraq, it is essential that we renounce all imperial and corporate ambitions. Words alone will not suffice for that purpose. Rather, we must cease construction of the numerous huge American military bases in Iraq and allow the Iraqis to void all oil contracts made during the occupation, so that they can be renegotiated on fair terms or opened to fair bidding.
These things, as well as the reconstruction and reparations, were recommended not only because they would go far towards stabilizing Iraq and restoring the international reputation of the United States, but also because they are the right and fair things to do. And as part of these gestures of goodwill, McGovern and Polk also recommended that we sincerely express our condolences for the numerous Iraqis killed, maimed, unfairly imprisoned, and tortured as a result of the American war and occupation.
Why these things need to be discussed Many of the things I’ve discussed in this post are taboo in American politics. Right wingers get apoplectic when they hear talk of the need for our country to reduce its military spending or activity, or of the need to make amends and apologize for the wrongs that we’ve done. Even some DUers get very upset with me for talking about these things.
But to the extent that a nation – or an individual – is incapable or unwilling to admit a mistake or apologize, then there is no hope that it will change. It will continue to be controlled by its corporate and imperialistic interests, leading to an ever increasing cycle of violence begetting hate begetting more violence.
I’ve apologized many times in my life, and I see no reason why my country can’t do the same when it does wrong. As George McGovern said, “We need more politicians in this country who are willing to say, ‘I made a mistake. Let's correct it as soon as possible’.”
Kelly Dougherty, executive director of
Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW),
explained why we need to talk about these things at a Winter Soldier meeting in 2008:
It’s not going to be easy to hear what we have to say…. It’s not going to be easy for us to tell it. But we believe that the only way this war is going to end is if the American people truly understand what we have done in their name.
What the Winter Soldiers had to say was indeed not easy to hear or talk about. Marjorie Cohn and Kathleen Gilberd describe the testimony of numerous U.S. veterans in their book, “
Rules of Disengagement”:
Veterans spoke about shootings and beatings of children and other innocent civilians as well as the torture of prisoners…. Ian J. Lavalle reported, “We dehumanized people. The way we spoke about them, the way we destroyed their livelihoods, their families, doing raids, manhandling them, throwing the men on the ground while their family was crying…”
But if we don’t talk about these things they will never change. Americans pride themselves on being a moral people. And most of them are. But they need to wake up and smell the coffee. They need to hear a lot more about – and
think a lot more about – the things that their government does in their name. Once that happens they will no longer stand for it.
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