What are the crimes that the U.S. has committed against the world?

Great Debates
61

Answering the title of the thread, I got a list today of some US Foreign Interventions from http://www.indymedia.org . I’ll just throw some of them out there. Some of them I was not aware of and I’ll probably look into the veracity of them. I am also aware that the circumstances behind these actions are not so simple.

Cuba 1963 -> today - US blockades island for 39 years. Numerous assasination attempts against leader. Continued actions condemned by Human Rights Groups and the United Nations General Assembly.

Australia 1973-1975 - CIA interferes and manipulates free election process.

Chile 1973 - CIA backed coup ousts elected president, installs military Gen. Pinochet

Portugal 1974 -CIA funnels millions to destabilize and sabotage NATO ally.

Angola 1976-92 - CIA assists South Africa (apartheid)-backed rebels.

El Salvador 1980-92- US aids gonvernment condemned for gross human rights violations.

Nicaragua 1981-92 - US directs and illegally supports contra war, mines harbour. US actions condemned by the United Nations World Court

Chad 1982 - US supports overthrow of government. CIA supported secret police kill and torture tens of thousands.

Libya 1982 - USA shoots down 2 Libyan jets.

Honduras 1982-90 - US builds bases near borders, supports government that uses Death Squads against it’s citizens.

Lebanon 1982-84 US bombs and shells Muslim positions, expels PLO from territory.

Grenada 1983-84 - US military invades tiny island. 400 Grenadians killed. “Gross violation” of international law condemned by United Nations.

Iran 1988 - US shoots down Iranian passenger airliner, killing 290 civilians.

Lybia 1989 - US bombs capitol Tripoli killing 55 civilians. Calls it “collateral damage”.

This is about half the list of interventions in this time period. There is also a very interesting list of assasinations and attempted assasinations that the US has been involved with.

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oops, the compiler of this list is Eric J Ross

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Extremely easy : these doctors practised abortion. Or do you think the murderers killed someone at random and this person turned up to be an abortion doctor? There is a direct causality.

Second : does the fact that an abortion doctor has been killed should prevent people from arguing about abortion?

Anyway, there is a major flaw in your example : we are talking about the responsabilities of a country, here. Not about the personnal responsability of the victims killed in the WTC.
By the way, erislover : I read you arguing against the use of force in a society, and you’re now supporting massively the use of force. I read you stating that government were fundamentally flawed and evil, and now you try to defend your government from any criticism. How can you believe at the same time that your government does so much wrong inside your boundaries, and that it wouldn’t do something wrong in other countries? Isn’t there some confusion in your thoughts?

64

So it is the US’s fault that terrorists exist? OK, just want to get that clear.

Hmm. Must have missed that… where did I imply this?

Retaliatory force. Defensive force. Enforcement. I argue against force as a primary means of settling disputes.

Do I? Where was that? Representative governments are riddled with corruption; flawed ideals are not necessarily evil. I am not defending my government from criticism, but from a link through direct causality, especially with regards to foriegn policy.

Who said I didn’t? I agree the US does a lot of things that I personally disagree with to the extent that I am not overwhelmed with trust in its decisions involving all things. That doesn’t turn me into a terrorist, does it? I hate communism, but I don’t shoot communist protesters, do I?

I find difficulty in seeing direct causality. I entered this thread to hear other posters opinions and facts on bad decisions the US has made, not to hear rhetoric about how the US is somehow to blame for these terrorist attacks.

65

schplebordnick wrote:

The answers to your questions are, in order: no; no; no; no; no; and no. The problems in these countries do not automatically make the United States the official arbiter of democracy throughout the world. Much evidence that i have presented, both on this thread and others, shows that the US often intervenes in the name of “democracy” but ends up bringing about precisely the opposite. Chile is the first example that comes to mind, but there are quite a few others.

I would love to see democracy in the Arab countries you mention, but any attempt to bring this about should not involve some unilateral action on the part of the United States. As i have said before, get your own glass house fully in order before you start launching stones all over the place.

And just because Israel is nominally a democracy does not mean that we should ignore the undemocratic acts committed by some Israelis and their government. In the same way, the fact that the US is a democracy does not excuse its problems in the area of foreign policy.

Again you are making a reductionist argument in which any criticism of other countries is interpreted as unconditional support for the US, and any criticism of the US is interpreted as some sort of support for non-democratic regimes. It’s not as simple as this, as i’ve been trying to point out on numerous threads and posts, but to no avail in some quarters.

I agree with much of what beagle said on his last post. I’m afraid i take a slightly more jaundiced view of capitalism as a whole. It seems to me that “good” and “bad” capitalists have both (intentionally or otherwise) brought about negative consequences for large sections of the world’s population. But i believe that this is an issue on which reasonable people can disagree. I don’t need to assert some long argument about money and the political system, as you are obviously aware of much of what i would say on the subject anyway.

To Balduran:

It doesn’t matter who complied that list; it is accurate.

And to schplebordnick again:

What about US foreign policy that has had such a dramatic impact on the civilians of Iraq. I gave a reference in a previous post to documents recently released by the US government which showed that it deliberately targetted Iraq’s fresh water supply (during and after the Gulf War) in full knowledge that it would bring about thousands of civilian casualties in the country. (see The Progressive for this month, and the web links contained therein). If you think that the situations you describe are the sum total of US foreign policy in the region, you’re dreaming.

And your reference to Pinochet and Allende is inane. The US actively helped, in Chile, to overthrow a democratically elected government and install a brutal dictatorship. As i’ve said above, in this post, i prefer democracies over dictatorships, but the US should not be the sole arbiter of how such situations are brought about. Support for democracies is one thing, but intervention in the internal politics of a sovereign state is another, and is something that the US refuses to do when it suits it, and undertakes when it is convenient. And as i said above, the fact that Israel is a democracy does not require unquestioning support of everything that it does.

And erislover wrote:

As i’ve said in other posts, the US must bear some blame for the hatred engendered by its foreign policy, whether that hatred appears rational or otherwise to us. This doesn’t justify last week’s actions, nor does it mean that they were appropriate responses to American policies. But understanding, as i’ve said a dozen times, should be our goal, and painting America as a paragon of virtue (as some have done over the past ten days) does not help our understanding of the motivating factors behind terrorism.

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You really need to get your facts straight.

“Cuba 1963 -> today - US blockades island for 39 years. Numerous assasination attempts against leader. Continued actions condemned by Human Rights Groups and the United Nations General Assembly.”
39 year blockade, hum? So thats why I see all those U.S. Navy vessels circling Cuba when I go on Caribbean cruises!
U.S. blockaded Cuba for something like 2 weeks, when the Soviet Union was shipping nuclear weapons to Cuba. Since then, there has been no blockade, just a U.S. trade embargo. That doesn’t prevent any other country in the world from trading with Cuba. As virtually every Latin American and European country does. Go to Tijuana or Vancouver – easy to pick up a Cohiba there.
And, of course, Cuba has such a stellar human rights record. Why isn’t it the “moral” thing to do refuse to do business with an opressive dictatorship? Isn’t that what you say U.S. should have done in Central America?

“Australia 1973-1975 - CIA interferes and manipulates free election process.”
How so? CIA poll taxes? Literacy tests?

“Portugal 1974 -CIA funnels millions to destabilize and sabotage NATO ally.”
Destabilize an ally? Makes a lot of sense. And what acts of sabotage did the CIA purportedly perform?

“Angola 1976-92 - CIA assists South Africa (apartheid)-backed rebels.”
Oh, right. The Angolan rebels were attempting to install an apartheid government.
And speaking of apartheid, didn’t U.S. establish sanctions against South Africa during apartheid? Isn’t that a “blockade”? Shouldn’t that be condemned like the one against Cuba?

“Nicaragua 1981-92 - US directs and illegally supports contra war, mines harbour. US actions condemned by the United Nations World Court.”
Resulting in free elections which ousts Sandanistas. Daniel Ortega currently part of opposition, and trying to regain presidency. A fine moral example he was – just ask his daughter…

“Libya 1982 - USA shoots down 2 Libyan jets.”
Oh, those poor, oppressed Libyan fighter pilots. You forgot to mention that Libya sponsored blowing up Pan Am flight over Lockerbie, Scotland killing hundreds of innocent civilians. And the Pan Am passengers didn’t have the opportunity to shoot back, like those fighter pilots.

“Honduras 1982-90 - US builds bases near borders, supports government that uses Death Squads against it’s citizens.”
Builds bases near border? How immoral! Guess U.S. should tear down all its military installations in San Diego…

“Lebanon 1982-84 US bombs and shells Muslim positions, expels PLO from territory.”
Muslims who were engaged in bloody civil war. And who blew up a barracks killing over 200 U.S. Marines.
Expels PLO from territory? Explain the moral problem there. Haven’t the Jordanians, Syrians, and Egyptians expelled the Palestinians (the people, not the terrorist organization) from their countries? Why aren’t they “invaders” like the Israelis?

“Iran 1988 - US shoots down Iranian passenger airliner, killing 290 civilians.”
For which U.S. apologized, and paid restitution. Do you claim that shoot down was an intentional act?

“Lybia 1989 - US bombs capitol Tripoli killing 55 civilians. Calls it “collateral damage”.”
Unlike the innocent civilians killed by Libyan-sponsored terrorism, who Libya hasn’t called “collateral damage” because they are considered viable military targets.

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The point is: bad foriegn policy is one thing, and terrorism is another. They are not directly related through causality. Every country in the world is guilty of doing pretty stupid things, internationally, either by the sides the support, the actions they take, or the actions they don’t take. This does not make terrosits. Get it?

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I’m a bit tired of responding to schplebordnick’s ignorance and apparent willingness to do nothing but make bald assertions with no supporting evidence. But here goes anyway.

You say that America’s policy

This may be true now, but for much of the last 40 years the US has threatened trade sanctions against countries that trade with Cuba. Maybe Balduran used the wrong word when s/he said “blockade”, but the effect was similar for much of the past four decades.

Actually, i think i’ll stop there. Not because the other assertions don’t deserve rebuttal, but because this individual’s constant need to paint the US as the guiding light in a dark world seems immune to any reasoned argument or analysis.

And erislover wrote:

No, i’m sorry, i don’t. If terrorists explain their own actions (as they often do) as responses to US foreign policy, shouldn’t we accept that even if they are mistaken about that foreign policy, it still provides them with motivation? Not all terrorists are a product of US actions, but the actions of some terrorists can be partly attributed to American actions and their perceptions of these actions.

Granted, there are probably people who would commit terrorism no matter what. But terrorism is often in the eye of the beholder, and there are plenty of people thoughout the world who consider US actions to be, effectively, terrorism against civilian populations. Again i offer the example of Iraq and its civilians, much of which has occurred since the end of the Gulf War, and which no-one has seen fit to address - possibly because it provides an unfortunate example of American state-sponsored terrorism, by any reasonable definition of the word.

Of course, some will argue that civilian casualties are an unfortunate but inevitable side-effect of war. Well, i can’t agree with that. And such an argument would also provide scope for justifying last week’s attacks - something else i’m not willing to do. Because, as many media outlets have asserted, Osama bin Laden has considered himself at war with America for quite a while. He declared on numerous occasions his desire to fight a holy war with the US. This amounts to a declaration of war, and if this is the case, then maybe those killed last week were just civilian casualties of war, not victims of terrorism.

Well, i am not willing to justify the terrorist attacks in that way. The killing of civilians, especially those not even peripherally involved in any “war effort”, is wrong. The fundamental problem here seems to be one of definition. I make less of a distinction between what you call “foreign policy”, “terrorism”, and “war”, because each of the three often (not always, but often) has the same results for innocent people who have no say in the actions that affect them.

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"This may be true now, but for much of the last 40 years the US has threatened trade sanctions against countries that trade with Cuba. "

Helms-Burton didn’t last for 40 years. And it went over by a lead balloon with other countries, who told us to go fuck ourselves. Which they certainly should have.
I certainly wouldn’t justify our trade embargo against Cuba. It really makes no sense. We should “cultural imperialize” Cuba into the 21st Century by trading like crazy with them.

Of course, then we’d be accused of imposing our cultural and economic values on them…

70

Those were not my words, excerpts from a list I recieved. I did put a disclaimer that I realize the circumstances are not so simple.

I only have time to answer one right now.

Quite a complicated story, just search google with keywords CIA Whitlam for a zillion links to the subject. Briefly, from what I gather, it seems that Prime Minister Gough Whitlam was not happy with the various CIA activities in Australia to the point of trying to put an end to them. The governor general at the time was Sir John Kerr. It is belived that he was a CIA supporter and exercised his constitutional right to dissolve the Whitlam government at the request of the CIA.

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I don’t know, if a murderer says he was collecting souls, should we believe him?

Attributed how? By giving them a target?

I think that is more than probably.

Hmm.
Terrorism: the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion.

That one is probably sufficiently broad for your purposes.

Terrorism: The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons.

That one is a little more comprehensible.

But then, I suppose that any definition which excludes government action isn’t “reasonable,” right? For as you say:

You are welcome to pick whatever frame of reference you like to judge the actions of people around the world. You’ll just find me disagreeing.

72

Jesus H. Christ. Why is it so hard for people to accept that our understanding of events might possibly be enhanced if we ask why people think they are doing what they are doing? Even if the reasons they give for feeling the way they do are wholly irrational and based on no evidence, the fact that people think they are doing something is important. Even if the only conclusion we end up drawing in a particular case (like, say, the one in the quote) is that the person is deranged, or is a rational and self-serving liar.

But i suppose it’s easier to just keep trotting out the “good versus evil” line, because that makes us feel so much better about ourselves and justifies launching indiscriminate attacks on other peoples, many of whom will be no more guilty or deserving of death than the people in the WTC etc.

You also write:

How many times do i have to say that i am seeking to explain actions and work out how to prevent them happening again? I mean, i know i’ve only said this about five times so far, so it’s understandable if you don’t quite get it. And i have also judged the actions of these terrorists, and found them to be abhorrent, inexcusable, barbaric, inhuman, disgusting etc. etc. (It that enough, or is further penance required by the “bomb without thinking” brigade?) I have reiterated time and again that i have judged the terrorists harshly, and that no previous actions by the US or anyone else justify what happened. Look up “explanation” and “judgement” in the dictionary (or “judgment” in an American dictionary), and you’ll find that they are not synonymous.

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I’m just skimming, so forgive me if I’m being repetitive, but this had less than nothing to do with anything. They had been killing the kurds by the thousands before the gulf war, and we didn’t lift a finger.

Not to mention the fact that lots of countries are murdering their own people and we do nothing.

We went after Iraq because it was starting to infringe on our oil-related interests in Kuwait and might have moved on from there if left alone. Period. Any human rights crimes that we stopped or slowed were simply a bonus, never a motive.

stoid

74

The point has been made above that, as citizens in a democracy, the US public’s primary means by which they are able to support or reject the actions of their Government is via the ballot box.

If this is indeed the case, and relating this to the OP, it would (perhaps) seem to follow that if citizens do not make use of their voting power to censure their govenment when it engages in criminal or immoral acts they share some complicity in those acts (and must thus take a share of any moral blame). This, it might be claimed, is the essence of democracy.

My suggestion would be that the current democratic system as found in nations such as the US or Britain etc. perhaps does not allow us to hold the citizens of a particular democracy fully responsible for the actions of the state of which they are a part.

The best account I have seen for this comes from Brennan and Lomasky in their Democracy & Decision (Cambridge 1997).

For any individual to be morally responsible for a given action it would seem that there are at least two fundamental requirements:

  1. that the agent involved is aware of his or her action
  2. that the agent is also able to choose an alternative course of action.

I guess this is basically what we mean when we speak of an agent making a ‘rational choice’: ie. that the agent chooses a maximally preferred set of achievable outcomes from a selection of available outcomes.

Clearly, the shape and makeup of our govenments do not ‘just happen’ - they are brought about by the various voting acts of the public (a ‘democratic’ expression of political will). So are we as a voting public thus responsible first for the type of government which is in power, and second (by implication) for the particular acts in which this government engages?

Or, to put in more concretely: is the US public (or any given individual member of that public) responsible for the (possibly) illegal and immoral acts of the US government?

Imagine the elections in the US were decided by each member of the voting public tossing a coin. If it comes down as ‘heads’ their vote goes to the democrats. If it comes down as ‘tails’ their vote goes to the republicans. Let’s also imagine that the citizens have no option but to toss the coin, and that they also have no option but to cast their vote in the way the coin has dictated.

The resulting government would be the casual responsibility of the voting public: by their actions they caused it to come about. But we would not say that they are morally responsible for the shape of the government. It cannot be said to be a true expression of their ‘rational’ will.

There would seem to be a requirement for intent for the US citizenship to be held morally responsible for their government’s actions.

But (and this is the point made by Brennan and Lomasky) as it stands the current democratic voting system also fails to fulfill the requirements that would allow us to apportion moral blame to the US public.

In any large election the actions of any given individual voter are pretty much incidental to the overall outcome. If one person had refrained from voting in the last US elections the result would not have been any different.

Therefore, it hardly makes sense to say that any given voter is acting in a ‘rational’ manner when they cast their vote: by this we mean that the voter is not acting intentionally to secure a favoured outcome. Indeed, Brennan and Lomaksy suggest that it is ‘delusional’ to think that when I vote I am influencing the result in any way.

Even ‘undeluded’ voters (who are aware that they are not acting ‘rationally’) are doing something other than choosing political outcomes intentionally.

However (and this is the key point for this discussion) if a large enough amount of people - all of whom are not acting rationally - produce a given political result, can this really be said to be a true expression of their (strictly) rational will? If this is not the case, then it would appear that we cannot claim that they are thus ‘morally responsible’ for the subsequent actions of the resultant government…

The answer, therefore, to the question of whether 'civilians [are] duplicitous in their government’s policy would perhaps be ‘nope’.

75

Meaning they were dressed in chinos, loafers and a sweater…

What I meant was “causal responsibility” :smiley:

76

Yup, but as you indicated at the starting of the post, this is assuming the only democratic outlet you have is the vote. This is only a part of democracy. You have the right to peacefull assembly, and can therefore further participate in the democratic process.

as an aside,
Do you think the right to assembly entails the responsibility to assembly when state descisions become morally dubious?

77

“Even if the reasons they give…” Ah, but mhendo hasn’t quoted the terrorists who perpetrated this attack. We don’t even know who they are.

Mhendo has given hypothetical reasons that s/he imagines motivated the terrorists. And, what do you know? These imaginary reasons turn out precisely to agree with mhendo’s views.

As the Church Lady says, “How convenient.” :stuck_out_tongue:

78

december, as usual, fails to comprehend some of the most simple arguments.

Well, first of all, if we don’t know who they are, then why the ultimatum to the Taliban regarding bin Laden and his associates? If the perpetrators are indeed from this group then, as the US media has pointed out, they have made their opposition to the United States, and the reasons for it, clear on a number of occasions. Ditto if Saddam Hussein turns out to have had anything to do with it.

And nowhere have i concluded that the particular terrorists who actually committed last week’s atrocities based their hatred of America on US foreign policy. What i said was that those in the middle east who have a hatred of America, including terrorists, often say that they base that hatred on US policies in the region.

And as you say, i have given some hypothetical reasons, but they are no more hypothetical, given the circumstances, than the reasons that are being bandied around by others. For example, those who state, equally without evidence, that the terrorists were motivated by their “hatred of freedom and democracy” etc. etc.

And i’m not sure i should say this again, because it’s starting to sound like a broken record. But it doesn’t seem to have penetrated your skull yet, so here goes. I think we should try to understand people’s motivations so we can prevent this from happening again. I concede that the reasons i give will never fully explain their actions. But if you think that just bombing away or starting a war in the region is going to make people there love America, you’re dreaming. In fact, it is actually quite likely to play into the hands of fanatics who try to stir up ill-feeling towards the US among people who have no particular reason to dislike America. This is exactly what happened during the Gulf War, when the sight of US planes etc. bombing an Arab nation left many in the middle east, even those who had previously had no particular dislike of the US, angry and frustrated.

79

I agree. E.g. a moronic NY Times editorial yesterday claimed to know that the terrorists were hoping for an immediate military overreaction. The Times used this as an argument against an a quick strike. (I’m not arguing in favor of in immediate strike; I’m saying that this is a poor way to support a POV)

I’m all for understanding people’s motivations. Real understanding must come from a deep study of them, not of our own political and philosophical ideas.

80

I took Balduran’s suggestion on the above topic (which, frankly, I’d never heard of). First article I found was this one:

http://www.smh.com.au/news/0010/31/features/features1.html

Which includes this salient passages:

“To his credit, Whitlam has never claimed that his government was destroyed by United States’ intelligence agencies. In 1984 he was asked by journalist Peter Hastings whether be believed that “the CIA had got to the Governor-General of the time”. Whitlam replied: “No, I don’t; I never have.” (Herald, March 24, 1984.).”

If the aggreived party doesn’t even believe this stuff, you expect us to?

I, for one, am incensed by the cultural imperialism of Australia in foisting Olivia Newton-John and Paul Hogan (oh, and we can now add in Lleyton Hewitt) onto the cultural radar screen of the people of the U.S…