The richest and most war-mongering nation on Earth is still addicted to bombing poor, defenseless nations

A nation-state version of a psychopath, the US refuses to give up its addiction to bombing innocent people. In just over a month, it’s bombed Syria, Iraq, Somalia and Afghanistan – and shows no signs of developing a conscience. 

Kill anything that moves

March 15, 1968 was a normal day in America. The sun was shining. The birds were chirping. Race riots in Mississippi were entering their fifth day or so. And at the other end of the globe, in Vietnam, soldiers of the Americal Division's Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, were being briefed by their commanding officer, Captain Ernest Medina, about the exploits of the next day, which would later be dubbed the “My Lai massacre” – where 500 unarmed Vietnamese civilians were systematically butchered in over four hours, not counting a lunch break the soldiers took in the middle of the carnage. The orders were clear and explicit: the soldiers were to kill every single human being, burn all houses, kill all animals, destroy all food supplies and poison all wells. 

As the briefing progressed, one incident stuck in the mind of artillery forward observer James Flynn, which he would recall years later. A soldier, whose name has been lost to history, expressed some apprehension about the wide-ranging nature of the orders. “Are we supposed to kill women and children?” he asked naively. 

“Kill everything that moves,” came the reply.

Kill everything that moves. This same phrase would be repeated almost verbatim two years later by none other than Henry Kissinger himself while relaying US leader Richard Nixon’s orders: “A massive bombing campaign in Cambodia. Anything that flies on anything that moves.”

My Lais and my truths

That the popular US media is allowed to discuss this event is not exactly praiseworthy, nor some sign of speaking truth to power, as they claim. The reason why the My Lai massacre was allowed to enter the popular US imagination was to hide America’s much larger war crimes. As Nick Turse points out in his award-winning book Kill Anything that Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam: “Today, histories of the Vietnam War regularly discuss war crimes or civilian suffering only in the context of a single incident: the My Lai massacre… Even as that one event has become the subject of numerous books and articles, all the other atrocities perpetrated by US soldiers have essentially vanished from popular memory.”

The strategy worked. And it continues to work to this day. After all, what better way to distract attention from your larger crimes than focus attention on your smaller ones? As a bonus, this also allows you to portray yourself as an enabler and respecter of “free speech” and “open debate”. 

Bomber barbarians

Yes – America loves killing anything that moves. Like the nation-state version of the psychopathic serial murderer, it loves bombing weak, poor, defenseless nations that cannot fight back – nations that have done no harm to it and pose no threat to it.

The US regime wouldn't dare touch North Korea, of course, because it possesses nuclear weapons and can fight back. America killed Muammar Gaddafi's nuclear weapons program, and then killed the man himself as soon as they got the opportunity less than a decade later (he was sodomized and then murdered in the open by pro-US forces). Iraq was attacked not because it had WMDs – but because it didn't. The US regime knew it couldn't defend itself, and went in for the kill. Syria would have probably become another Iraq if not for Russia, who Syria explicitly invited in to counter the twin terrorist threats of Islamic State (IS/formerly ISIS) and the US (via its proxies). 

Between 1965 and 1975, the “democratic” US and its allies carried out the largest aerial bombardment in human history, dropping more than 7.5 million tons of bombs in Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia, twice as many as those dropped on Europe and Asia during the Second World War. They turned Laos, one of the poorest, most defenseless nations on Earth, into the planet’s most bombed country. From 1965 to 1969, the US military dropped 70 tons of bombs for every square mile of North and South Vietnam – or 500 pounds for each man, woman and child. As America’s head of the Strategic Air Command General Curtis LeMay put it, America’s aim must be to “bomb the Vietnamese back to the Stone Age.”

During the “Korean War” (i.e. the US-led invasion of Korea), North Korea was bombed almost to oblivion without the batting of an eyelid. Around 85% of its buildings were destroyed. Literally only two modern buildings were left standing in Pyongyang after the US was done. They bombed and they bombed – they bombed so much that they had to halt for a while because there was nothing left to bomb. By the end of the campaign, US bombers couldn’t find targets and were often reduced to bombing footbridges or simply ditching their bombs into the sea. And when they got bored with that, they started bombing dams, causing widespread flooding. According to historian Charles K. Armstrong, the bombing of the dams and the resultant floods threatened several million North Koreans with absolute starvation; only emergency assistance from socialist countries prevented widespread famine.

The US has largely continued its destructive bombing campaigns even after the Cold War – socialism and the ‘Domino Theory’ had just been the excuse. It found other excuses. 

It was attacked on 9/11 (ironically, by the remnants of the same groups it had once funded to fight the Soviets) as blowback for its war crimes and genocide-by-sanctions policy. In response, it killed 1 million people and displaced 37 million, creating the largest refugee crisis in decades. No nation since World War II has had the power, or indeed, the desire, to cause such death and destruction. The “War on Terror” increased terrorism globally, and also created IS, the most dangerous non-state terrorist actor in the world.

In the last 20 years alone, the US and its allies have bombed West Asia (or to use the Eurocentric term, “Middle East”) and North Africa at the rate of 46 bombs per day. That’s not a typo – that’s almost two bombs every hour, every single day, for 20 years. 

But US leaders aren’t perturbed – it isn’t white people they’re killing after all, they’re only killing the proverbial “other” who were coming to destroy “us” innocent people, and we are simply fighting the good fight. On the highly nationalistic US internet, images of US Marines saying goodbye to their kids at airports often go viral, as they fly away to slaughter children much like their own. 

The more things change...

When Barack Obama became US leader, people were led to imagine that things would be different. They even gave him the Nobel Prize to cement his promised legacy even before it was created. He was painted as a peaceful president and a reluctant, cautious warrior, if at all. In truth, he was America’s drone-warrior in chief, pioneering the art of such warfare at scale – which allowed him to reduce boots on the ground. He calculated that by bringing US troops back, he could achieve popularity at home – no matter how many people he killed abroad. He was right.

Obama dropped more bombs than Bush did during his presidency. This included 26,171 bombs in 2016, his last full year in office. That’s about 72 bombs every single day – for one whole year. And these are just the publicly known bombings. Civilian deaths are rarely acknowledged by the US regime.  

President Joe Biden, Obama’s former vice president, has sought to continue the bombings now that he is in charge. In late June, the US regime bombed Iraq and Syria. Again. This was one week after Congress had voted to repeal the 2002 Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF) in Iraq. 

Ostensibly, the attacks were against “weapons storage facilities” used by “Iranian-backed militias” – shorthand for any group that opposes US occupation. Just like Nazi Germany justified killing resistance fighters opposing its occupation by calling them “partisans,” the US regime dismisses resistance fighters opposing its occupation as “militants” or “combatants,” often referring to them as “Iran-backed” as a bonus. None of these statements can be trusted or verified, of course; the US regime has a long history of publicly lying and misleading the world.

Continuing its addiction, the US regime also recently bombed Somalia, one of the world’s poorest countries. The Pentagon’s “initial assessment” found that no civilians were killed, which is a standard US claim for all its bombing raids in that impoverished country. Human rights groups – the same ones that the US cites and trusts wholeheartedly when criticizing its enemies like China and Russia –disagree. In 2017, the US regime relaxed bombing rules for Somalia, increasing the risk of civilian deaths. 

According to the regime’s bombing guidelines, the Pentagon is allowed to bomb only Afghanistan, Syria, and Iraq without White House approval. Thus, it is likely that Biden personally approved the Somalia airstrike. Ostensibly, it targeted the Al-Shabaab militant group, and was carried out in “coordination” with the Somalian government. 

A few days later, the US regime launched multiple airstrikes in Afghanistan too, a nation it is apparently withdrawing from, after being thoroughly trounced and defeated in a 20-year-old war. This time, it was ostensibly to come to the “aid” of the Afghan government against the Taliban. Lest anybody think that a US “exit” from Afghanistan means an end to its bombings, a top US general clarified that the regime had no such intention. 

More bombings can be expected in the future. The US regime will not develop morals because it has no incentive to do so – it faces little criticism from the international community for its bombings and killings, and faces even less criticism at home, even from the “anti-war” lobby. 

However, one thing is beyond doubt: it will continue claiming that it is the moral leader and guardian of the world; that the most war-mongering nation on Earth is the paragon of peace and virtue; and that it deserves the divine right to lecture others and hold them “accountable” for their “human rights violations”. Old habits die hard – and lie harder. 

Maitreya Bhakal 

6 Aug, 2021 11:04

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/531316-us-bombs-defenceless-nations/

A question for the U.S. people: do you know where your country is bombing?

A famous US public service announcement ominously asked parents: ‘It’s 10pm. Do you know where your children are?’ An equally pressing question for Americans would be: ‘It’s 10pm. Do you know where your country is bombing?’

You might be surprised to know that the US has been relentlessly bombing Somalia, a country almost unheard of in the mainstream press for years. And this bombing is only increasing.

Somalia is a country located in the Horn of Africa. It borders both Ethiopia & Kenya and is situated just across the Gulf of Aden from Yemen – a country which itself has been bombarded and devastated by its northern neighbor Saudi Arabia, with US backing, from 2015 until the present time (though President Biden just announced that US assistance for this assault may be ending).

Somalia’s border on the Gulf of Aden makes that country of critical importance to the US, for any interruption of travel in those waters there would require ships and tankers in the Persian Gulf to make the long journey around the length of Africa to bring oil and other goods to the United States and Europe. This also makes this area “a valuable staging ground for navies to project power on to the Arabian Peninsula.”

The US has been intervening in Somalia in various ways for decades – first in the name of fighting communism and Soviet influence after Somalia dedicated itself to ‘scientific socialism’ in 1969, then in the name of humanitarianism in the early 1990’s, and then later in the name of the US’ so-called War on Terror from the time of George W. Bush to the present. Whatever the reason du jour, the US’ interventions have only further destabilized and devastated Somalia, despite successive US administrations’ claims to want to bring stability.

The first direct American intervention in Somalia began in 1992 with President George H.W. Bush’s Operation Restore Hope mission – an ostensibly humanitarian effort – pursuant to which the US sent 28,000 troops to that country. President Clinton continued this effort upon taking office in January of 1993, and ended it shortly after 18 US soldiers were killed in October of that year when Somali militants downed a US helicopter in the famous ‘Black Hawk Down’ incident. The US left Somalia in 1994, having failed to achieve stability in that country.

In 2001, US interest in Somalia was resurrected with Bush’s declaration of the War on Terror after the 9/11 attacks. Through the CIA, Bush began covert operations in Somalia which included the funding of brutal warlord groups which the US hoped would counter Islamic militants. However, there is wide agreement that this support of the warlords only destabilized Somalia further and helped to galvanize public support around the Islamists that the US was fighting. For example, “Matt Bryden, coordinator for the UN Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea, told the Chicago Tribune that, in his opinion, the CIA’s cooperation with the warlords was ‘a stupid idea… it actually strengthened the hand of the Islamists and helped trigger the crisis we’re in today.’”

Then, in 2006, there was a ray of hope for Somalia with the emergence of the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) as the government of Somalia, with the ICU having widespread popular support and the ability and will to bring peace and stability – something the US had never achieved during its many years of intervention. Sadly, the ICU’s reign would be short-lived, with the most pivotal US intervention, one I can remember quite vividly, taking place only six months after the ICU’s rise. This was an intervention which quite certainly ended any chance of stability for Somalia for many years to come.

Writing in 2008, Chris Albin-Lackey, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch, explained, “two years ago Somalia stood at a crossroads. After 16 anarchic years without a government, a coalition of Islamic courts had taken control of the capital, Mogadishu, bringing both ominously harsh rule and unprecedented stability. But Somalia’s powerful neighbor Ethiopia saw the rise of the bellicose courts as a threat to its national security, and the Bush administration accused the Islamic courts leadership of harboring terrorism suspects.” 

In his article titled ‘The US Role in Somalia’s Calamity’, Albin-Lackey wrote, “when Ethiopia intervened militarily to crush the Islamic courts in December 2006, Washington supported its operation.” The result of this intervention, as all of the US’ interventions in its so-called War on Terror, was chaos and untold human suffering for the civilian population.

“The last two years have been an unmitigated disaster for the people of Somalia. The conflict pits the Ethiopian forces and Somalia’s ineffectual, internationally backed transitional government against a powerful but fragmented insurgency. All sides have routinely committed war crimes and serious human rights abuses.”

Albin-Lackey summed up the carnage wrought by the US-backed intervention: “Thousands of civilians have been killed, more than a million people are displaced from their homes, and millions of people teeter at the edge of famine. Aid workers, who had managed to assist Somali communities even during the most lawless periods before 2006, have been the targets of dozens of killings and kidnappings in 2008 and now watch helplessly from neighboring Kenya as the situation spirals out of control. America’s most visible response to the crisis has been a series of air strikes against terrorism suspects that have mostly killed civilians.” In short, this was another huge disaster for the people of Somalia brought about by the US in the name of fighting terrorism.

And, as per usual, the US’ intervention actually gave rise to the current terrorist group – Al-Shabaab – which the US cites as the pretext to continue its involvement in Somalia to the present day. As the New York Times explained in 2016, “in 2006, the United States gave clandestine support to Ethiopian troops invading the country to overthrow an Islamist movement that had taken control of Mogadishu. But the brutal urban warfare tactics of the Ethiopian troops created support for an insurgent movement that called itself Al Shabab, which means ‘The Youth.’”

As the Times explained, President Obama picked up where George W. Bush left off in Somalia, carrying out what the paper referred to as a “shadow war” by means of US Special Forces, private military contractors and plenty of aerial bombings. As the Times related, the US air “strikes have had a mixed record,” sometimes killing innocent civilians and even allied Somali soldiers. The Times noted, “outraged Somali officials said the Americans had been duped by clan rivals and fed bad intelligence, laying bare the complexities of waging a shadow war in Somalia.”

Under President Trump, the US campaign in Somalia only intensified, mainly in the form of airstrikes against Al-Shabaab. And although in January of this year, Trump withdrew American troops from Somalia, it’s likely that Biden will step up the campaign in 2021. As the Military Times explained, the US African Command (AFRICOM) “conducted 52 airstrikes in 2020, 63 in 2019, 47 in 2018, and 35 in 2017,” and has already conducted six airstrikes in Somalia this year. “At current rates, 2021 is on course to surpass the number of airstrikes conducted in Somalia in previous years,” the article predicts. 

And, while the target of these bombings is the Al-Shabaab militant group which arose out of the US’ 2006 intervention, the campaign is taking a huge toll on the civilian population. As Time magazine recently wrote, ignoring the UN’s call to end all hostilities during the pandemic, the US has instead intensified its bombing campaign, killing scores of Somali civilians in the process. And, to add insult to injury, the US has been unwilling to count the dead, to interview even one witness of its errant bombings, or to compensate the families of those killed.

Time cites an Amnesty International spokesman who lamented: “the fact that civilians are still dying, sometimes unlawfully, and not a single family of the victims has yet been compensated, means that, after 13 years, the U.S. government still hasn’t figured out how to fight a war that prioritizes the needs of the people they say they are defending… If the U.S. government can’t fulfill its obligations to civilians while fighting a remote war of airstrikes, then it needs to reconsider its methods.” Such blatant disregard for civilian casualties only strengthens the resolve of the Somali militants as well as the population’s sympathy for them.

What we have seen time and time again, not only in Somalia, but in Libya, Syria, Iraq, and other theaters as well, is that the US cannot bring stability, democracy, or human rights to a country by bombing it. In truth, this should be an obvious fact a priori. And, instead of defeating terrorism, the US has only managed to create ever more terrorists through its high-handed military tactics. The American people must call upon the Biden administration to end this war for good and to focus its efforts on economic development and humanitarian aid to help create a more stable Somalia. But the first step in all of this is for the American people to know what the US has been doing and continues to do in that far-flung country.

From rt.com