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America’s Genocidal History
In his many books, scholar/activist Ward Churchill documented genocide in America. In “A Little Matter of Genocide: Holocaust and Denial in the Americas 1492 to the Present,” he wrote:
“After four centuries of systematic slaughter from 1492 – 1892, the US Census Bureau concluded that there were fewer than a quarter-million indigenous people surviving in America, reduced to at most 3% of their original numbers.”
Slavery is part of the 500 years of African holocaust. The United States of America created one of the largest markets for slaves in history, perhaps 50 million dying during the horrific Middle Passage to America out of 100 million or more human beings sold like cattle.
Deaths were higher in Africa itself due to the process of capturing and transporting people to the ships. Survivors faced life as American slaves.
Howard Zinn called American slavery
“the most cruel form in history: the frenzy for limitless profit that comes from capitalistic agriculture; the reduction of the slave to less than human status by the use of racial hatred, with that relentless clarity based on color, where white was master, black was slave.”
Zinn described “a complex web of historical threads to ensnare blacks for slavery in America:”
- poor settlers needing labor
- the profit motive
- racism
- status and
- human exploitation to get them
elements still affecting wage slaves and others, today, in
- agriculture
- domestic service
- restaurant and hotel work
- sweatshop factories
- prostitution and sex services
- and on US offshore military bases employing forced labor under horrific conditions.
President Cleveland called for an investigation into the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawai’i in 1893 which was supported by the landing of U.S. Marines. This investigation was conducted by former Congressman James Henderson Blount.
Blount concluded in his report on July 17, 1893,
“United States diplomatic and military representatives had abused their authority and were responsible for the change in government.”
President Cleveland stated,
“Substantial wrong has thus been done which a due regard for our national character as well as the rights of the injured people requires we should endeavor to repair the monarchy.”
Cleveland further stated in his 1893 State of the Union Address that,
“Upon the facts developed it seemed to me the only honorable course for our Government to pursue was to undo the wrong that had been done by those representing us and to restore as far as practicable the status existing at the time of our forcible intervention.”
One hundred years later, the U.S. Congress passed Public Law 103-150, otherwise known as the Apology Resolution, signed by President Bill Clinton on November 23, 1993. The resolution apologized for the U.S. Government’s role in supporting the 1893 overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii.
Native Hawaiian population last stood at 80,137 during the latest census, which is about 6.6% of the population. Only 5 years after the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii, in 1898, President William McKinley
- created a pretext for war with Spain
- forced the Spanish government to cede the Philippines
- occupied the Philippines
- fought a dirty war
- slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Filipinos.
Theodore Roosevelt succeeded him, continued the carnage, and won a Nobel Peace Prize.
WW II Terror Bombings
Geneva and other international laws prohibit terror bombings that target civilians. The Laws of War: Laws and Customs of War on Land (1907 Hague IV Convention’s Article 25 states:
“The attack or bombardment, by whatever means, of towns, villages, dwellings, or building which are undefended is prohibited.”
The Fourth Geneva Convention protects civilians in time of war, prohibiting violence of any type against them and requiring treatment for the sick and wounded. The 1945 Nuremberg Principles forbid “crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity.” These include
- “inhumane acts committed against any civilian population,
- before or during the war,”
- including indiscriminate killing and
- “wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages
- devastation not justified by military necessity.”
For example, consider America and Britain’s carpet-fire-bombing of Dresden. In less than 14 hours Allied Forces dropped 700,000 phosphorous bombs on 1.2 million people, killing as many as 100,000.
City center temperatures reached 1,600 degrees centigrade.
Dresden had no military importance. Destroying it was morally indefensible, as was fire-bombing Tokyo.
WWII was effectively over, Japan was trying to surrender but the United States refused to listen. On February 24, 1945, one square mile of Tokyo was destroyed before the major March 6 attack demolishing 16 square miles, killing around 100,000 in the firestorm, injuring many more, and leaving over a million homeless.
Five dozen other Japanese cities were also firebombed at a time most of the country’s structures were wooden and easily consumed.
The United States dropped the nuclear weapon “Little Boy” on the city of Hiroshima on Monday, August 6, 1945, followed by the detonation of “Fat Man” over Nagasaki on August 9.
By December, their combined death tolls topped 200,000, but they rose in succeeding months, years and decades.
Millions of North Korean and Southeast Asian civilians were slaughtered in unprovoked US acts of war to install client regimes.
Korean expert Bruce Cumings explained
“the extraordinary destructiveness of the United States air campaigns against North Korea, from the widespread and continuous use of firebombing, to threats to use nuclear and chemical weapons, and the destruction of huge North Korean dams in the final states of war. (The) air war leveled North Korea and killed millions of civilians. (There was no escape, and by) 1952 just about everything in northern and central Korea has been completely leveled. What was left of the population survived in caves.”
Of the North Korea’s 22 major cities, 18 were half or more obliterated with the large industrial ones 75 – 100% destroyed and villages reduced to
“low, wide mounds of violent ashes.”
Like Korea, bombings of Vietnam were excessive and indiscriminate, dropping eight million tons from 1965 – 1973, threefold WW II’s tonnage, amounting to 300 tons for every Vietnamese man, woman and child.
As in Korea, napalm and other incendiary devices were used, plus terror weapons like anti-personnel cluster bombs that spew thousands of metal pellets, indiscriminately hitting everyone in their path.
From 1961 – 1971, dioxin-containing defoliant Agent Orange was used, mainly in South Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. Millions of gallons were sprayed.
Dioxin is:
- one of the most toxic known substances
- a potent carcinogenic
- human immune system suppressant
- accumulates in adipose tissue and the liver
- alters living cell genetic structures
- causes congenital disorders
- birth defects and contributes to the diseases
- cancer and
- type two diabetes.
In 1970, Operation Tailwind used sarin nerve gas in Laos, causing many unnecessary deaths. In 1998, former Joint Chiefs Chairman, Admiral Thomas Moorer, confirmed its use on CNN.
The war also included Cambodia and Laos, killing around 600,000 civilians and destroying dozens of towns, villages and hamlets with secret bombings and terror weapons.
It was genocide by any definition.
Operation Desert Storm began on January 17, 1991, a criminal, gratuitous mass slaughter and destruction of essential to life facilities, including:
- power plants and dams;
- water purification facilities;
- sewage treatment and disposal systems;
- telephone and other communications;
- hospitals;
- schools and mosques;
- around 20,000 homes, apartments and other dwellings;
- irrigation sites;
- food processing, storage and distribution facilities;
- hotels and retail establishments;
- transportation infrastructure;
- oil wells, pipelines, refineries and storage tanks;
- chemical plants, factories and other commercial operations;
- government buildings and historical sites; and
- civilian shelters targeting of innocent men, women and children.
As many as 200,000 were killed according to independent estimates. Twelve years of genocidal sanctions followed, killing as many as 1.7 million, two-thirds of them children under age five.
(From 2003 – 2009, another 2.5 million or more died.)
For two and a half months, about 3,000 sorties dropped thousands of tons of ordnance plus hundreds of ground-launched cruise missiles on the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia – Serbia-Kosovo. As in the Gulf War
- virtually all vital infrastructure was targeted as well as
- factories,
- other businesses, commercial and government buildings
- schools
- hospitals
- churches and
- historical landmarks.
All were destroyed or heavily damaged.
As in Korea, Southeast Asia, and Iraq, it was genocide as defined under the terms of the Geneva Convention. After revisiting Iraq, Afghanistan was next.
Marjah is the latest Afghan offensive, a PR stunt to save face for absolute failure, except for the human death toll. From 2001 – 2007, UN Population Division data estimated 3.2 million deaths, including 700,000 children under age five.
Through 2009, around 4.5 million have died in Afghanistan from causes including
- deprivation
- disease
- starvation
- neglect
with no end of war in sight.
The United States of America Afghan genocide adds to the genocide in Korea, Southeast Asia, Yugoslavia and Iraq.
Join us in a call for an end to American Genocidal Wars.
President Obama, your election represented our hope in a new direction for the United States of America. Please fulfill the promises of the first United States President of color, the most powerful public person on the planet and end all United States involvement in foreign wars.
