‘Nonsense’: Norway PM lashes out at NATO spending goals
RT | June 29, 2015
The prime minister of Norway, Erna Solberg has described NATO’s defense spending plans as “nonsense.” The alliance wants members to spend two percent of their GDP on defense, but Oslo, one of the world’s richest countries, says it won’t meet the target.
“If I am allowed to speak, I think the percentage goal is nonsense,” she said in an interview with the Norwegian Armed Forces’ Forum Magazine, as cited by the Local. “The aim of the NATO countries must be the greatest possible defense capability, not a percentage goal in itself,” she added.
Solberg added that while meeting the two percent target may be easier for countries enjoying strong economic growth, it would be harder for those within the alliance whose economies are shrinking.
Norway’s Defense Minister Ine Eriksen Soreide said in April that for Oslo to spend 2 percent of its GDP on defense would be “very challenging” in the short term. The Scandinavian country has already said it will increase its spending this year, but this will only bring it to around 1.6 percent and short of the target that was set at the NATO summit in Cardiff, the United Kingdom, last year.
NATO’s General Secretary Jens Stoltenberg, who was also Solberg’s predecessor as Norway’s PM, said that the country could easily meet the target.
“If there is a political will, there is economic space. But it must be given priority,” he said in a visit to Norway in June. “Compared with other major initiatives we have implemented in Norway, reaching two percent is quite possible.”
Aside from the United States, traditional NATO allies have found meeting the target a taxing affair. Germany allocates 1.2 percent of its GDP, the Netherlands 1.3 percent and Spain less than 1 percent. France is the only Western European country that is boosting defense spending. However, some Eastern European nations are increasing their military expenses citing what they call Russian aggression. Lithuania, for instance, wants to allocate twice as much on defense as it did last year.
READ MORE: NATO defense spending a ‘red line’ – US Air Force Secretary
Ukraine Masses Troops on Border With Transnistria
Sputnik – 28.06.2015
Ukraine continues to mass troops and heavy weapons on the border with Transnistria on the pretext that the self-proclaimed republic may launch a military campaign against Ukraine, Russian media reported on Saturday.
“It looks like the Kiev authorities want to picture themselves as encircled by enemies, ready to attack,” a representative of the Transnistrian KGB told Russia’s Zvezda TV channel.
“That we may have a war here tomorrow is hard to say, but we are not ruling out a Ukrainian provocation either… They could use for this purpose one of their many small private armies which refuse to take any orders from Kiev,” the official added.
On June 22, the deputy foreign minister of the Transnistrian Republic, Vitaly Ignatyev, said that Ukraine was moving its troops towards the borders of the self-proclaimed republic, sandwiched between Ukraine and Moldova.
“The situation here is very bad… Economic production is going down, foreign trade is shrinking, the security situation is equally alarming with our Moldovan partners holding military drills with NATO and the Ukrainian pressure mounting every day,” Ignatyev said.
He also mentioned the curbs Kiev has imposed on the transit of Transnistrian nationals and citizens of Russia, almost 200,000 of whom currently live in Transnistria.
“They haven’t been able to travel to Russia via Ukraine for more than a year now. They have to move across Moldova, but Chisinau is creating problems too, along with economic sanctions,” Ignatyev added.
The newly appointed governor of Ukraine’s Odessa region Mikheil Saakashvili earlier announced plans to reinforce Ukraine’s border with Transnistria.
“We have two major tasks — to reinforce the border and curb corruption. Drug and weapons trafficking across this border means nothing good,” Saakashvili told a news conference in Odessa.
He also blamed the Transnistrian authorities for destabilizing the situation in Ukraine.
“Sewer Socialist” Bernie Sanders’ Anti-Russian Propaganda
By Caleb Maupin – New Eastern Outlook – 28.06.2015
The presidential campaign of Bernie Sanders — an anti-Russia, Israel-supporting politician from Vermont — revives an archaic feud among leftists. The old debate about “sewer socialism” is back.
In the early part of the 20th century, there was a broad movement of people in the United States who advocated the overthrow of capitalism. Among them were many revolutionaries like Eugene Debs, William Z. Foster, Lucy Parsons, and Paul Robeson.
However, there was another current of people who called themselves “socialists” but had no interest in revolution. They were called “sewer socialists.” The term originated in reference to Victor L. Berger, a “socialist” who ran on a platform of improving the city’s sewer system and eventually became the mayor of Milwaukee. The sewer socialists did not want to overthrow capitalism, but simply to be elected to local public office and improve government policy. They wanted to make a global system built on exploitation of people all over the world a little more comfortable for those living within the western economic centers.
The battle between these two poles of the left movement – with the revolutionary and anti-imperialist wing of socialism on the one hand and the “sewer socialist” wing on the other — played out on a global level. Commenting on the debate, Russian socialist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin described the trend this way: “The bourgeoisie of an imperialist ‘Great’ Power can economically bribe the upper strata of ‘its’ workers by spending on this a hundred million or so francs a year, for its superprofits most likely amount to about a thousand million… this little sop is divided among the labour ministers, ‘labour representatives’… labour members of War Industries Committees… labour officials, workers belonging to the narrow craft unions…”
In the modern United States, it isn’t sewer socialism but “Vermont socialism” that plays the role of the ‘Labor Ministers.’ US Senator Bernie Sanders is running for president, and openly describes himself as a “socialist.” Despite using this word to describe himself, with many well intentioned anti-capitalist activists supporting him, Sanders’ platform in reality articulates a strategy for strengthening global monopoly capitalism and its expanding militarism.
Big Oil’s Campaign Against Russia
Currently, Wall Street is doing all it can to suppress Russia, a rising competitor on the global markets. US oil and natural gas corporations in particular want to attack and isolate the Russian Federation, as hydraulic fracking floods the market and drives down oil prices and profits. As Russia stabilizes and expands, continuing to export more and more natural gas, big business desperately needs to purge the country’s oil from the global market.
In service of the western oil and natural gas cartels, US agents overthrew the democratically elected government of Ukraine. The orgy of street violence in Kiev that deposed Yanukovich was conducted with the direction of the CIA and billions of dollars in US funding. In Ukraine, the intervention of the United States has pushed a formerly peaceful country into civil war and installed a fanatically anti-Russian government. Russia now faces a hostile, US-aligned regime directly on its doorstep. Civil war is unfolding as the peoples of eastern Ukraine have taken up arms against it.
US-funded terrorists are waging a campaign of death and destruction in Syria, another Russian-aligned country. Hundreds of thousands have already been killed. The US and its allies in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan continue to pour money into the so-called “Free Syrian Army” — a group that openly tortures, kidnaps, and beheads innocent people, and has a history of collaborating with ISIS.
Despite giving demagogic anti-corporate speeches, Sanders brags that he is even more in line with big oil’s anti-Russia campaign than President Obama. “The entire world has got to stand up to Putin. We’ve got to deal with sanctions, we’ve got to deal with freezing assets,” he declared in a TV interview with FOX news host Bill O’Reilly.
In the same interview, he declared: “You’ve got to totally isolate them politically. You’ve got to totally isolate them economically… You freeze assets that the Russian government has all over the world… International corporations have huge investments in Russia, you could pull them out…”
A “Socialist” who Loves War and Israel
Sanders is very much a friend of the military industrial complex. In his home state of Vermont, Sanders “rarely misses a photo opportunity with Vermont National Guard troops when they are being deployed to Afghanistan or Iraq.” While criticizing Bush’s invasion of Iraq, Sanders consistently votes for the massive US military budget. In fact, Sanders is vocally very supportive of Obama’s drone strikes program, and has worked to bring US military research corporations into his home state to set up facilities.
As a highly rated ally of the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee, Sanders has consistently voted and spoken out in support of Israel. When criticized for it, he often replies with standard Israel lobby talking points, saying things like, “Hamas is sending missiles into Israel… some of those missiles are coming to populated areas…” Other than vaguely saying that Israel may have “overreacted,” he blatantly supports and defends Israeli military policy.
Sanders openly believes that the Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation is “terrorism,” and that the existence of a “Jewish state” on Palestinian land is somehow ethical. In his 2013 interview with Playboy, he declared: “The Palestinians must fulfill their responsibilities to end terrorism against Israel and recognize Israel’s right to exist.”
A Friend of the Rising Police State
As a loyal ally of military corporations, he not only supports their war against people in Ukraine, Syria, and Palestine, but also their profitable activities at home. Big business is making huge profits from a prison industrial complex as well as the rapid expansion of the role of police in US society. As police patrol the halls of elementary schools, and “stop and frisk” people on the streets without probable cause, it is young African-Americans who are their primary targets.
Sanders has never been an opponent of the prison industrial complex or the rising incidents of police violence. In Michael Moore’s 2009 film “Capitalism: A Love Story,” Moore interviewed Sanders and asked him to explain what it meant to be a socialist. Sanders responded with a vague, populist rant in which he portrayed the police as victims: “We’ve become very religious in worshipping greed. We put on the front pages of magazines guys who have made millions of dollars, we ignore the cops… who every day are doing so much in improving the lives of people.”
More recently, in response to the massive uprising against police brutality and mass incarceration in the United States, Sanders has declared: “Look, the issue here is…. I was a mayor for eight years, and being a cop is a very, very difficult job. But the word has got to get out that when police act inappropriately, and of course in this case there has to be a thorough investigation.” Sanders gives standard, Obama-style talking points on the issue, saying he supports “body cameras” and wants more community cooperation and involvement with police departments.
Inevitably, whenever the issue of police brutality is raised, Sanders changes the subject to economics. In response to the Baltimore uprising after the killing of Freddie Grey, Sanders declared, without ever even mentioning Grey’s name: “In the neighborhood where this gentleman lives, as I understand it, the unemployment rate is over 50 percent, over 50 percent. What we have got to do as a nation is understand that we have got to create millions of jobs, to put people back to work, to make sure that kids are in schools, and not in jails…. so they’re not hanging out on street corners.”
No one can deny that unemployment is a huge problem, especially for Black and Brown communities in the United States. However, Eric Garner wasn’t choked to death by a bill collector. The direct issue at hand is the fact that police officers have essentially been given a “license to kill” by the courts, and routinely face no penalty after blatantly and intentionally killing people of color.
By diverting the conversation to economics and not calling out the police in harsh terms, and then using racially loaded phrases like “hanging out on street corners,” Sanders is essentially saying: “If only Black people had more economic opportunities, they wouldn’t be worthless, low-life criminals who the police have to kill.”
A Bigger Slice of Empire?
Often Bernie Sanders is asked what it means to be a socialist. He does not respond with a call for public management of the economy, “workers’ control of the means of production,” a workers and farmer’s government, or any of the definitions of “socialism” used by socialists historically. Instead, he talks about Norway, Sweden, and other US-aligned imperialist countries. He emphasizes that these countries have a national health service, and provide free university education. […]
Sanders’ political viewpoint, based on his experience of decades in governing his home state — where only 1.2% of the population is Black — has been: “If we give white middle class Americans a bigger slice of the pie, they will be far more willing to line up with Wall Street against Russia, China, Iran, and the Palestinians.”
Lenin accurately described leaders like Sanders as “opportunists and social-chauvinists,” saying, “They are defending the temporary privileges of a minority of the workers…” Back in 1916, Lenin urged his followers to “go down lower and deeper, to the real masses… teach the masses to appreciate their true political interests, to fight for socialism and for the revolution.”
The following year, Lenin and the Bolsheviks were victorious. Capitalism, along with its mischievous and demagogic defenders like Bernie Sanders, was overthrown in Russia. That was nearly 100 years ago. How this battle will play out among 21st-century leftists remains to be seen.
Caleb Maupin is a political analyst and activist based in New York. He studied political science at Baldwin-Wallace College and was inspired and involved in the Occupy Wall Street movement.
NATO plans 40,000-strong rapid response force in E. Europe
RT | June 22, 2015
NATO’s rapid response Spearhead Force in Europe might reach 40,000 troops, a tenfold growth from the initial 4,000-strong force deployed last year, the military alliance’s chief said. Most of these troops will be stationed near Russian borders.
“NATO defense ministers … [will] make a decision to further increase the strength and capacity of the 13,000-strong NATO Response Force (NRF) to 30,000 or 40,000 troops,” Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Monday.
The decision is to be officially announced during NATO’s defense ministers meeting on June 24-25 in Brussels.
The troops will be under the command of 6 HQs to be stationed in Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Romania. The Spearhead Force will include Special Forces and rapid response teams, enforced with marine and air components.
A new rapid reaction force ready to be deployed within 48 hours was initially intended to consist of 4,000 troops.
The Spearhead Force has already held its first military drills codenamed Noble Jump in Poland. The war games became “the biggest reinforcement” of defense since Cold War times, said Stoltenberg, adding that the alliance is facing challenges from “the behavior of a more assertive” Russia.
Last week, Stoltenberg criticized Russia for announced plans to add to its nuclear arsenal 40 newly made intercontinental ballistic missiles in 2015.
“This nuclear saber-rattling of Russia is unjustified. It’s destabilizing and it’s dangerous. This is something which we are addressing, and it’s also one of the reasons we are now increasing the readiness and preparedness of our forces,” Stoltenberg said during a news briefing in Brussels last Tuesday.
Russian President Vladimir Putin made the announcement about further development of the strategic nuclear armed forces in response to a report that the US is seriously considering deployment of heavy weapons to new NATO member states on permanent basis.
The chill in Russia-US relations already resemble the worst years of the Cold War, yet experts warn that further escalation of the Ukrainian crisis could lead to an open standoff between Moscow and Washington.
If Washington opts to send armaments to Kiev authorities, as some Republicans congressmen want, Moscow would react immediately, experts quoted in US media believe.
Washington should pursue a diplomatic solution for its conflict with Russia, former US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul told The New York Times.
“The US-Russia conflict is not going to be resolved in weeks or months,” McFaul said. “This challenge will take years, even decades.”
Read more
NATO conducting biggest beef up of defenses since Cold War – alliance chief
Moscow will respond to NATO approaching Russian borders ‘accordingly’ – Putin
Over 10,000 Soldiers Desert Ukrainian Army
Sputnik – 21.06.2015
More than 10,000 cases of desertion have been registered in the Ukrainian Army since the outbreak of the Donbass war in April 2014, Ukrainian Vesti reported.
In 2014 the army suffered heavy desertion and nearly 30 percent of the servicemen called up in the first wave of mobilization (March 17) abandoned their positions, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said.
Ukrainian parliament Verkhovna Rada has announced six waves of mobilization so far. By the end of 2014 the strength of Ukrainian Armed Forces grew from 130,000 to 232,000.Ukrainians have been protesting against the mobilization. They travel to work abroad or simply reside at their relatives’ in other countries. Almost 1,3 million Ukrainian draftees live in Russia.
Since April 7, 2014 the Kiev authorities have been waging war against Donbass self-defense forces who rejected the legitimacy of the coup-imposed Ukrainian government and declared the independent republics of Donetsk and Lugansk.
Official figures estimate the number of victims to near 6,500. But the German intelligence reported of 50,000 victims in February 2015.
The Arrogance and Hypocrisy of the United States
By Robert Fantina | Aletho News | June 19, 2015
From its earliest days, the United States has been an imperial power, taking what it wants from whoever has it, killing those who get in its way. Even prior to its establishment as a nation, it abused the welcoming friendship of the natives, seeing them as less than human and, therefore, expendable.
Once it threw off the yoke of Great Britain, who saw the colonies as sources of revenue, the new nation saw the Native Americans as impediments to its growth. The ugly concept of Manifest Destiny was introduced early by journalist John O’Sullivan, and embraced by an ambitious and blood-thirsty nation. Mr. O’Sullivan said that the mission of the United States was “to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions.” Further, he claimed that ‘Until every acre of the North American continent is occupied by citizens of the United States, the foundation of the future empire will not have been laid.” By the time this was written, that goal had been thwarted by Canada, but Mexico was not to be so fortunate. Shortly thereafter, the Mexican territory of Texas was annexed by the U.S.
The Monroe Doctrine, introduced in the same generation as Manifest Destiny, warned European countries not to interfere in North America, at the risk of U.S. intervention. The U.S., of course, saw all of North American as England previously saw its North American colonies, simply as a source of revenue, which included cheap labor. Such lucrative opportunities must not be taken by Europe.
With increasing wealth and power came increasing lust for more of the same. As the nineteenth century drew to a close, Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt, an unabashed imperialist, was desperate to make the U.S. a world power. Once the battleship Maine exploded in Havana Harbor, Mr. Roosevelt rushed to silence the legitimate theory that this had been due to spontaneous combustion resulting from the positioning of the magazine by the coal bunkers. No, for Mr. Roosevelt, this was an opportunity to show Spain that the U.S. will not be trifled with, proof positive of Spain’s brutal actions, and sufficient reason to declare war; thus, the Spanish-American War began. This resulted in the annexation of Guam, Puerto Rico and the Philippines by the U.S. This spawned the Philippine-American War; the Filipino people, for some reason that escaped anyone in U.S. governance, were not willing to surrender their country to the U.S. So, with the unspeakable violence and inhumane actions with which it came to be identified, the U.S. crushed the Filipino people.
When the U.S. entered World War I, it was its first foray into a European conflict. In 1917, at least six ships either owned by the U.S., or carrying U.S. citizens, were sunk. While this caused outrage in the U.S., it was the business community that was most concerned. By 1917, U.S. financiers had lent the Allies at least $2.3 billion. U.S. economic expansion depended on an Allied victory, so war was inevitable to ensure it. Towards the end of the war, even President Woodrow Wilson, who led the U.S. into the war, and thus presided over the deaths of 117,000 Americans, admitted that the war was waged for commercial purposes, and not for some lofty ideals of freedom. Said he: “Why, my fellow-citizens, is there any man here, or any woman – let me say, is there any child here – who does not know that the seed of war in the modern world is industrial and commercial rivalry? This war, in its inception, was a commercial and industrial war.”
Under President Lyndon B. Johnson, the U.S. found beneficial the model it had previously successfully used to enter or start wars, to escalate hostilities with Vietnam. The U.S. had long ago decreed Communism as the great threat to civilization, and with the Communist North of Vietnam attempting to reunite with the U.S.-puppet-run South, the U.S. needed to act. In order to increase the number of U.S. soldiers sent to that beleaguered nation, an excuse had to be found. The so-called Gulf of Tonkin incident, which was really a non-incident, was the excuse this time.
The staging area for the U.S. Seventh Fleet was the Gulf of Tonkin. On August 2, 1964, the U.S. destroyer Maddox was on an espionage mission when it was fired on by North Vietnamese torpedo patrol boats. The Maddox, with supporting air power, fired back, sinking one North Vietnamese boat.
Two evenings later, the Maddox and another destroyer, the C. Turner Joy, were again in the gulf. The Maddox’s instruments indicated that the ship was under attack, or had been attacked. The captain began an immediate retaliatory strike. Both ships began firing in to the night. However, officials on the ships later determined that they were shooting at ‘ghost images’ on their radar. The evidence indicated that they had not, in fact, been attacked.
Regardless of this, the incident was presented to the world, and more importantly, to the U.S. Congress, as an act of aggression against the United States. The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, empowering the president to take any and all means necessary to repel this ‘aggression,’ quickly passed Congress.
Eleven years later, with over 55,000 U.S. soldiers and at least 2,000,000 Vietnamese men, women and children dead, the last U.S. soldiers and administrators fled Saigon as the Vietcong swept through. U.S. hubris has been defeated.
The U.S. public relations organization works overtime to foster the myth of the country as a beacon of peace and freedom. Yet its demands that other nations adhere to some lofty standard of respect for human rights cannot withstand any close scrutiny. The U.S. has used its veto power at the United Nations at least 40 times to protect Israel, a nation that can only be described as apartheid, from any consequences of its barbaric practices. Its own cities are not safe for young, unarmed African-American men, who are shot and killed by white police officers in epidemic proportions. It is rare for any of the officers pulling the trigger to be indicted, let alone convicted of these racist crimes.
The U.S. condemned Syria for allegedly using chemical weapons, but finances all of Israel’s weaponry, including its chemical weapons, used routinely against the Palestinians. ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) has been condemned, legitimately, for beheading its prisoners, but the U.S. has full diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia, which uses public beheading as a means of execution, and has used that method over 80 times this year alone. Should ISIL ever establish a relatively stable government on oil-rich lands, its barbaric practices will also be overlooked.
Over half of U.S. senators are millionaires, and they increase taxes on the middle class and poor as they reduce taxes for the rich. The government condemns the deaths of innocent people in war-torn countries, as it sends drones around the world that kill thousands of innocent people. The government demands a military ‘defense’ budget larger than that of the eight next largest international military budgets combined, depriving schools of much-needed revenue as it strengthens its deadly war machine, yet those other countries are not plagued with constant attacks and invasions, despite their much-smaller military budgets.
In the U.S., there is a separate justice system for the wealthy, with bankers confessing to felonies paying small fines, while poverty-stricken people caught with small amounts of marijuana spend years in prison. Wealthy pedophiles are sentenced to small fines and a few months in prison.
Poor and middle-class students who want to attend U.S. colleges and universities can borrow money from the government at an interest rate of 4.66%. Banks borrow money from the government at an interest rate of 0.75%. And if the bank fails, the U.S. government will rescue it. If a former student declares bankruptcy, his/her student loan is not absolved.
When in desperation a young person enlists in the military, he/she may find themselves killing men, woman and children that pose no threat to them. Then, on returning home, not only is the tuition program offered to veterans minimal, good luck to them in trying to get assistance for post-traumatic stress disorder. Over 50% of veterans will experience homelessness at some point after their time in the military, and they have higher-than-average rates of suicide, substance abuse, divorce and domestic violence. The U.S. government is happy to send them off to war, but is not interested in them when they return, broken and bruised. They have served their corporate purpose, and can now be discarded.
This is life in the much-touted ‘land of opportunity’, the ‘home of the free and the brave’. Yes, opportunity abounds for the rich, but for the poor and those who are struggling to maintain a middle-class standard, things are not so rosy. But ask the common man or woman on any U.S. street what they believe to be the greatest country in the world, and their hearts will swell pride and their eyes become moist as they proclaim it to be the U.S.A. And the U.S. public relations effort scores another victory, while the blind lemmings fall off the cliff.
MoD confirms Britain is arming Saudi Arabia in Yemen conflict
RT | June 19, 2015
Britain’s Ministry of Defence has confirmed it is providing technical support and arming Saudi Arabia in its ongoing war against Yemen, RT has learned.
An MoD spokesperson said the UK’s assistance to Saudi Arabia includes providing “precision guided weapons,” but added the British government had been assured they will be used in compliance with international law.
Anti-arms trade campaigners condemned Britain’s support for the Gulf monarchy, claiming the UK cares more about arms sales than human rights and democracy.
RT contacted the MoD to ask if British weapons are being used in Saudi airstrikes on Yemen and if the UK is providing assistance to the Saudi-led coalition.
An MoD spokesperson replied: “The UK is not participating directly in Saudi military operations. We are providing support to the Saudi Arabian Armed Forces and as part of pre-existing arrangements are providing precision guided weapons to assist the Saudi Air Force.
“The use of these weapons is a matter for the Saudis but we are assured that they will be used in compliance with international law.”
The MoD’s response confirms suspicions held by anti-arms trade campaigners that Britain is providing support for a war that top Yemeni academics based in the West have branded “illegal.”
Andrew Smith of Campaign Against the Arms Trade (CAAT) said: “The Saudi bombing has created a humanitarian catastrophe and now we know the UK weapons have contributed to it.”
“These weapons have not just given military support to the bombardment, they have also provided a strong political support and underlined the closeness between the UK and Saudi governments.”
“With the destruction of Yemen and the intensifying crackdown on dissent in Saudi Arabia, the UK government is sending the message that human rights and democracy are less important than arms sales,” he added.
CAAT said the “precision guided weapons” used by the Saudi Air Force are likely to be Eurofighter Typhoons or Tornado jets.
Saudi Arabia has spent an estimated £2.5 billion upgrading its fleet of 73 Tornados as part of a deal negotiated with UK-based arms manufacturers BAE Systems.
Saudi Arabia and the UK have long had close dealings in the arms trade. Saudi Arabia is Britain’s largest customer for weapons and the UK is the Gulf nation’s single biggest supplier, according to CAAT. … Full article
What the United States Did to Vietnam
By BRETT MORRIS | CounterPunch | June 19, 2015
The insidious effort to whitewash the US war on Vietnam continues. The official “Vietnam War Commemoration” run by the Pentagon refuses to recognize the war for what it was: an act of aggression that decimated three countries, killed and wounded millions of people, blocked democracy and development, littered the countryside with millions of unexploded bombs (which kill and wound people to this day), and poisoned the food supply with chemical warfare (causing deformities and birth defects).
We should not let these crimes go unheard of, or allow propagandists to spin them into events that were mere “accidents.” The US destruction of Vietnam was a deliberate act.
A healthy antidote to the silence/propaganda of US aggression against Vietnam would be to pay a visit to Vietnam’s War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), as I have recently done. Ironically accused by propagandists in the United States of being a “one-sided” museum filled with “propaganda,” the museum offers a much more accurate depiction of the US war against Vietnam than anything you’ll find in US history textbooks or popular culture.
Crucial to understanding the US war against Vietnam is knowing that it was a war against democracy and self-determination. Ho Chi Minh begged the United States to support Vietnam’s efforts to gain independence from France. An admirer of the American Revolution, Ho Chi Minh quoted the US Declaration of Independence in Vietnam’s own Declaration:
“All men are created equal. They are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”
This immortal statement was made in the Declaration of Independence in the United States of America in 1776. In a broader sense, this means: All the peoples on the earth are equal from birth, all the peoples have a right to live, to be happy and free.
Of course, the United States wholly backed France’s efforts to reconquer Vietnam. When France failed, the United States took up the task, engaging in a war of aggression, or what is called the “supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole,” in the words of Nuremberg Tribunal.
The United States did everything possible to block the will of the Vietnamese people. The US-backed dictator of South Vietnam blocked elections in 1956 to prevent Ho Chi Minh from coming to power (Dwight D. Eisenhower estimated that up to 80 percent of Vietnamese would have supported Ho Chi Minh in an election during the First Indochina War).
“Tiger cages” used to hold prisoners.
Since the Vietnamese continued to resist the US-imposed dictatorship in South Vietnam, the United States invaded Vietnam in the early 1960s, beginning a devastating campaign of bombings, atrocities, chemical warfare, and torture, leading to the deaths of 3.8 million people, according to a study published in the BMJ (formerly the British Medical Journal).
According to Nick Turse in Kill Anything That Moves:
[T]he stunning scale of civilian suffering in Vietnam is far beyond anything that can be explained as merely the work of some “bad apples,” however numerous. Murder, torture, rape, abuse, forced displacement, home burnings, specious arrests, imprisonment without due process—such occurrences were virtually a daily fact of life throughout the years of the American presence in Vietnam. … [T]hey were no aberration. Rather, they were the inevitable outcome of deliberate policies, dictated at the highest levels of the military.
Turse’s investigations of US war crimes (spurred by his discovery of the Pentagon’s Vietnam War Crimes Working Group) lend credence to the various displays and photographs one will find in the museum.
One example is a sewer pipe present at the Thanh Phong massacre, used by three children to hide in before being killed by future Senator Bob Kerrey and his cohorts (ten other civilians also died).
Thanh Phong sewer pipe.
More deadly than the daily atrocities, however, were the bombings. According to historian Howard Zinn, the United States dropped 7 million tons of bombs on Vietnam by the end of the war. Many of these bombs did not explode, and continue to kill people today when farmers accidently plow over them, children pick them up thinking they are toys, or scrap metal hunters looking to earn a small amount of change collect them.
Perhaps the most horrifying exhibit one will encounter in the museum displays the effects of Agent Orange. The United States sprayed roughly 20 million gallons of herbicides on the Vietnamese countryside. According to the Vietnamese Red Cross in 2002, one million people have disabilities or other health problems as a result of Agent Orange, including 100,000 disabled children.
Unforgivable crimes.
You’ll rarely see such images or hear such facts in the United States—the myth of the United States being “exceptional” must continue being shoved down US citizens’ throats, so that new wars and imperialistic campaigns can be waged. Next time a politician calls for another war or “humanitarian intervention,” just remember what the United States did to Vietnam.
Brett S. Morris is a freelance writer, journalist, photographer, and author. He has traveled the world, documenting current events and the legacy of US foreign policy. His latest book is 21 Lies They Tell You About American Foreign Policy. He can be reached on Twitter and Facebook
Featured Video
Prof Seyed Marandi: Will the US Collapse the Global Economy?
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
From the Archives
The Balfour Declaration – A Century of Jewish Power
By Gilad Atzmon | May 17, 2017
This year, Palestinians and their supporters mark the 100th anniversary of The Balfour Declaration, a written statement from the United Kingdom’s Foreign Secretary, Arthur James Balfour, to Walter Rothschild, a leader of the British Jewish community, in favour of the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine.
For Palestinians, The Balfour Declaration was the beginning of their plight: a century of ethnic cleansing at the hands of European newcomers who claim Palestine as their historic home. Yet, for some reason, supporters of the Palestinians are desperate to suppress discussion of the motivation for the Balfour Declaration – how and why did it come about? … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- Prof Seyed Marandi: WILL the US COLLAPSE the GLOBAL ECONOMY?
- Larry Sanger Said Wikipedia Punishes Dissent. Then It Banned Him.
- How Darializa Avila Chevalier Is Different From Other Elected Progressives
- Israel Declares 464 Dunams in Sinjil as “State Land”
- Strait of Hormuz as strategic red line: Why Iran must confront Oman’s corridor plan and Trump’s threats
- House to vote on proposal ending $3.3bln in military aid to ‘Israel’
- Mission unaccomplished – Part I: America failed to achieve every war objective against Iran
- Iranian Victory – Gulf States Creating ‘Regional Security Framework’ With Iran
- IRGC Navy rejects new Strait of Hormuz shipping routes
- Seyed M. Marandi: Trump Lost the Iran War – Must Sell It as a Victory
- If Americans Knew
- The NDAA Proposed Merger of the U.S. and Israeli Military is Strategically Unwise and Inherently Unconstitutional
- Victories by Pro-Palestinian Democrats Show the Party’s Shift on Israel
- Massie moves to strike $3.3B in Israel military aid from the budget
- How Jeffrey Epstein’s Israeli Network Shaped Congo’s Deadly Mineral Trade
- Gaza officials warn of ‘silent famine’ as aid deliveries fall far below planned levels
- Wheat harvest becomes act of defiance as West Bank farmers race to outrun Israeli settler attacks
- The ICC must investigate Israel’s genocidal use of sexual violence
- The Myth of Israeli Self-Sufficiency
- Internal Documents Show Trump’s “Board of Peace“ Moving to Crush Palestinian Self-Determination
- Israel Blocks Hundreds of Gaza Students from Scholarships Abroad
- No Tricks Zone
- 3 New Studies Find Increasing Trends In Solar Radiation Since The 1980s – Easily Explaining Warming
- THE TRANSCEIVER PARADOX: Why Organoid Intelligence (OI) Could Become Our Ultimate Alien Predator
- German Wind Turbines Face Regulatory Shutdown Due To Excessive Noise
- New Study: Chile’s Relative Sea Level Was 3.2 Meters Higher Than Today During The Mid-Holocene
- Beyond The Pitch: Why FIFA’s World Cup Is One Of Humanity’s Best Investments
- Climate Alarmists Now Using Natural Phenomena To Support Their Claims
- New Study: Significant CO2 Fluxes From Non-Volcanic Sources Are Largely Neglected In Carbon Budgets
- Women Climate Scientists Being Harassed, Insulted By Skeptics, Claims Berkeley Earth Researcher
- Germany’s Longterm Spring Climate Data Show “No Climate Trend”
- New Study: Solar Photovoltaic, Wind Power Fail To Meet Annual Energy Demands 62% Of The Time
Aletho News 