Mundus Americanus
or
The Ultimate Empire
- A Short History of the United States -
- In this essay I try to give a short account of the events that led to the United States transforming from a small strip of land at the East coast into the first empire to cover the whole planet. Accordingly, the focus will be on issues directly or indirectly concerning the expansion and the accumulation of power of the US, as well as with their dealings with non-white Americans.
- I judge people individually and hate generalisations. Still, for reasons of readability, I have used terms like the Americans when referring to the majority of Americans, the American government, the United States as a whole etc. The same goes for other terms like British, Indians and so on. For the same reasons I have used the term Americans for white US-Americans unless referring to the general public after 1868 or otherwise specified.
- American History is written by Americans, and I have consulted a lot of different sources to find out what really happened. If you have any additional information, or find anything to be incorrect, feel free to email me at 
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WARNING: THIS ESSAY MAY CONTAIN TRACES OF SARCASM
The first settlers who arrived in North America came from Asia, although I suppose they’re not the kind of people you have in mind when you hear of the first American settlers.
They lived on this continent for some 40,000 years, but as they didn’t have the opportunity to write history in the past 400 years, they play - as long as they appear at all - a more passive role.
When Columbus re-discovered America in 1492, he thought he’d reached India and consequently called them Indians. This is the most incorrect term imaginable, but as it is the most common and the least derogatory one (apart from ‘Americans’, which would be the correct yet the most confusing term), I will use it, anyway.
The men and women who were shipped in from Europe since then have been nostalgised and heroised as refugees who were looking for a country that offered them political, religious and economic freedom (at that time, freedom of speech was not considered more important than food, and no one had to be ashamed of being an economic refugee). And while this is true about a good deal of the immigrants, the other half isn’t mentioned at all - lawless adventurers, criminals on the run, convicted felons (many mass murderers and serial killers were given the choice between the old gallows and the New World, and not all of them picked the rope) and religious fanatics (foremost the Puritans and the Pilgrims who did happen to be persecuted, but who insisted on burning witches and finishing off all those of other beliefs and races themselves).
You can imagine that not many of these people knew how to farm, and most of the early settlers didn’t survive the first winter.
Some of them were luckier, though; they were found by Indians who fed them and showed them the skills they needed. Once the settlers got the hang of it, they shot the Indians and extended their farms.
There was land for every European at the Frontier - the most Western line beyond which no land had been claimed yet. All one had to do was go there, stake the claim and get rid of the Indians.
Of course, as in any other colony, it was also tried to enslave them. But Indians don’t last long in captivity, so African slaves were imported and the Indians exterminated.
The growing population of the East coast kept pushing northwards, and the British colonies clashed with the French territories in the North which resulted in the French and Indian War, 1756-1763 (the American side of the Seven Years’ War). For their battles, both parties repeatedly allied themselves with Indian tribes that they killed after the conflicts.
Just like your history books, I’ll leave out the massacres on Indians, but for a different reason. I feel that singling out any of these massacres (Americans call them ‘battles’ or ‘Indian Wars’) would render the impression that the random killing of unarmed civilians and the dismembering and mutilating of dead and living children, men and women was the exception. It wasn’t.
The genocide of the Indians lasted for 300 years. Over this period, they have been pushed westwards until no West was left, into ‘reservations’ that were guaranteed to remain theirs (yep, we know what to think of American guarantees).
The Frontier, initially a term applied to the most Western settlements, was signed into law in 1834 by president Andrew Jackson as the Permanent Indian Frontier that would forever separate the Europeans in the East from the Indians in the West. Of course the only permanent thing about it was that the Frontier was permanently moved westwards until it disappeared in the Pacific with the Wounded Knee Massacre in 1890.
There are many supposedly amusing stories about Indians selling land for glass beads and the like. According to British (and later American) law these people were considered aliens (!!!) - they had no citizenship and therefore couldn’t own property in the first place. Apart from that, if someone put a gun to your head and asked you to sell your Rolex for a dime, what would you do?
The governments paid a reward for every killed Indian - child, man or woman. Of course they demanded proof, and one sheriff got so fed up with the Indian corpses in his office that he declared their scalps to be sufficient proof. (A handful of Indians copied this habit and created the myth of the savage scalp-hunting Indian.)
Apart from the old shotgun, the Americans used other methods as well. One of the most gruesome was to appear charitable and provide them with blankets they had infected with smallpox.
In the mid 18th century (when Europeans started using the term ‘Americans’ for the white population, which before applied - more appropriately - to the Indians) there were 13 British colonies at the East coast of America. But the presence of the British authority was hardly felt. People got on with their lives with little or no public order: arguments were settled with the gun, and the taxes due to the Crown were rarely paid.
Eventually Britain raised the taxes and duties and made clear that these would be enforced. The Americans were raging, their most convincing point being that they wouldn’t pay for a government they couldn’t vote for. Anything British was attacked and destroyed - the American Revolution had begun.
Anyone who called for negotiations with Britain was converted the American way: by terror. Those who weren’t murdered were feathered and tarred, their houses burnt down, their families massacred and so on (basically, they were treated like Indians).
There might still have been room for a compromise; but George III insisted that ‘the colonies must either submit or triumph’, and so they did.
In 1770 British soldiers were attacked by an angry mob in Boston; they shot back, and 5 people got killed. This stirred up tensions even further, and with the right propaganda by a few demagogues, the ‘Boston Massacre’ became the focus of the colonies.
After years of civil resistance, the boycotting of their products, the burning of their warehouses etc. the British realised their weak position and withdrew all taxes except that for tea. But this peace offering came too late, and in 1773 the Americans - who had evolved into coffee drinkers by that time - dumped a shipload of tea into the Boston Harbor. (They had disguised themselves as Indians, just to be on the safe side.)
In 1775 the War of Independence began, and in 1776 a handful of men worked out a ‘Declaration of Independence’ and collected signatures (the last one, Thomas McKean, signed in 1781 when it was safe); July 4, 1776, the day the declaration went into print, became the national holiday.
The Americans were joined by the French and the Spanish (for motives more anti-British than pro-American). The war ended with the surrender of the British troops in 1781, and in 1783 the Treaty of Versailles was signed in which the leading European powers, including Great Britain, recognised the independence of the United States.
In 1789 the constitution was ratified and immediately breached as the first president was nominated by the Congress instead of being elected.
Their first military engagement after the war occurred at the African coast. The Barbary States (Morocco, Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli) charged tributes from all ships crossing their waters, and as they weren’t governed by white rulers, they are generally referred to as pirates. Those who didn’t pay had their ships seized or their crew held to ransom.
As colonies, America had been covered by the British payments, but not after the revolution.
We all remember how Americans feel about paying taxes and charges, and their war ended with the surrender of Tripoli in 1815.
From 1791 until 1960, 37 more states joined the Union. Some of them were created by Americans in areas that didn’t have a white population before, some were purchased from other nations (with or without their citizens’ consent), some applied to be annexed to the US, and some were taken by force.
In Europe, the French Revolution had turned the continent upside down. Napoleon Bonaparte waged war on all other countries, including Britain. Both Britain and France had territories in America - the British were still present in Canada, and the French had taken additional territories from Spain.
Being surrounded by the French made the Americans feel a little uneasy (and hindered their expansion plans), and in 1803 President Jefferson sent James Monroe to Paris to negotiate the purchase of some of their territories.
Bonaparte needed money for his wars, and he needed his soldiers in Europe and Africa. He couldn’t protect his American properties and was ready to give them up, but he didn’t want the British to expand. This led him to make an offer that left Monroe, who had expected tough negotiations, breathless.
For sixty million francs ($15,000,000), he could get Louisiana which covered the area from the Mississippi to the Rocky Mountains and from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. This was as good a deal back then as it would be today, and with one signature the United States doubled their territory. (In 1818, following negotiations with Great Britain, the border to Canada was drawn at 49°.)
The Americans were caught between the lines of the French-British war. Their trade routes to Europe were blocked, and British deserters were taken on American ships. The British captured those vessels and took their men back - but not all of those taken were actually British.
Yet this was not the main reason for the United States to declare war on Great Britain in 1812. As the British were busy in the war against France, the Americans saw their chance to take over their territories in Canada.
But shortly afterwards Bonaparte was defeated in Russia, and the British could throw all their forces into the war against the United States. This could have taken a nasty turn for the Americans, but fortunately the Tsar (of all people) negotiated a peace. The Treaty of Ghent was signed on Christmas Day, 1814, but fighting in New Orleans continued for two more weeks (they didn’t know the war was over).
Indians that lived near the borders often tried to flee and were pursued by the army; those fleeing to Canada were usually captured and returned to US territory before they were slaughtered while those who made it to Florida (which was Spanish) were massacred on Spanish territory. This led to problems with Spain who finally sold Florida to the United States in 1819.
In the 1830’s, the expression ‘Manifest Destiny’ emerged, expressing the belief that God had delegated to the United States his power to take control of the whole continent. To my knowledge, there are no documents supporting this claim.
(Today the term ‘Manifest Destiny’ is replaced by ‘Globalization’ and applies to the whole planet. Another, unintentionally ambiguous, term is ‘New World Order’, meaning a new order for the world as well as an order dictated by the New World.)
In 1821, Mexico had gained independence from Spain. For the following years Americans were encouraged to settle in the less populated areas North of the Rio Grande. In 1830, when Americans by far outnumbered the Mexicans, further immigration was restricted.
In 1829, slavery was abolished in Mexico. Americans were allowed to keep their slaves, but not to import new ones.
As if this wasn’t enough, Mexico was taken over by a centralist government in 1834 which limited the powers of its member states and started disarming them, including the state of Texas. Now we all know that you can’t take a weapon away from a Texan, and when in 1835 they were told to return a cannon they’d got from the previous government, they refused and started a revolution. One year later the Mexicans were defeated, and Texas declared its independence and applied for annexation to the United States.
But their request was denied: in the US, many people were afraid of a war with Mexico (which didn’t recognise Texas’ independence), and the colonizationists (racists opposed to slavery, often confused with abolitionists; we’ll get to that later) feared that slavery would be spreading southwards.
Others, though, favoured the expansion of the United States, and the prospect of a war with Mexico would give them - on top of the annexation of Texas - the opportunity to seize even more territories.
Over the next nine years, Texas remained an independent republic, until in 1845 James Knox Polk, a supporter of its annexation, was elected president of the US. The election had certainly been influenced by the increasing power Great Britain was gaining in Texas.
On British advice, the Mexican government offered to recognise Texas under the condition not to join the Union. Polk entered negotiations with Herrera, the President of Mexico, concerning the annexation of Texas and the purchase of other territories, but during these Herrera’s government was overthrown, and his successor Parades refused to compromise.
Now war was the only way to get the desired territories, and Polk suggested to Anson Jones, the Texan president, to provoke hostilities with Mexico during the annexation negotiations, but Jones refused to go along with his plan.
Texas joined the United States, including the strip of land between the Nueces and the Rio Grande which Tamaulipas, the adjacent Mexican state, claimed as well.
Nothing happened.
Polk stationed troops in the disputed area.
Nothing happened.
Polk stationed troops at the mouth of the Rio Grande.
Nothing happened for another four weeks. - Finally Parades declared war on the United States and attacked two days later.
The war lasted from 1846 until 1848 and ended with the defeat of Mexico. Texas was recognised with its claimed border, and California, Arizona and New Mexico were ceded to the United States for the payment of $15,000,000.
For another $10,000,000 an additional area was sold to the States in the Gadson Purchase in 1853.
Around the same time, the United States claimed Oregon, the area Northwest of the Louisiana purchase, up to 54°40 from Great Britain who claimed it for Canada. After the war against Great Britain, the United States themselves had suggested the 49th parallel as the border (which was accepted in the Treaty of 1818), but now that was not good enough any more.
And since Polk had expanded the US territory so far into the South, the Northerners expected him to put the same effort into Northern expansion. Their slogan was ‘54°40 or fight!’ (short, aggressive, catchy and unimaginative - you can almost see the cheerleaders).
However, years of negotiations and joint government in Oregon didn’t bear any fruit, and in 1846 the Oregon Treaty was signed, setting the border at 49°, with only a few adjustments to the Treaty of 1818.
In 1848, another great wave of immigrants arrived in the United States. The discovery of gold in California had led to the Gold Rush (followed by the Colorado Gold Rush in 1859), and a lot of people escaped the various revolutions on the European continent and the Great Famine in Ireland.
By then slavery had become a major issue. Freed slaves started moving into the few free states that would allow them in, but had no rights and couldn’t find work. The Northern Americans were annoyed that they had to put up with them and feared that over time their cities would be flooded with Afro-Americans. The Southerners, on the other hand, were worried that some day slavery might be abolished due to these fears - after all, their wealth depended entirely on slave labour on their cotton, tobacco and sugar plantations.
Most Northern States didn’t allow slavery, and the government itself put restrictions on it - since 1808 the import of new slaves from Africa was illegal, and no new state West or North of the Missouri was allowed to become a slave state (with exceptions, naturally). At the same time the slave states were reassured that slavery would not be abolished in the South, and since 1850 a stricter Fugitive Slave Act forced free states to return escaped slaves to their owners.
For reasons of propaganda or ignorance, all opponents of slavery are referred to as abolitionists today, but there were two distinct groups which opposed slavery for entirely different reasons: one were the abolitionists, a handful of idealists who considered Afro-Americans human beings and demanded equal rights for them. Nobody took those few weirdoes seriously until John Brown tried to organise a slave rebellion in 1859 (and was hanged for it) - this, of course, raised fears that some day a slave rebellion might actually take place.
The second group were the colonizationists. The American Colonization Society was founded in 1816: they considered all other races inferior (seriously, who the hell could be inferior to a racist?) and were opposed to slavery as it prevented white labourers from getting work; their aim was to rid the United States of all those who weren’t white Protestants. For this purpose they occupied an area in Africa in 1822 and started deporting Afro-Americans to what they called Liberia (which, of course, was populated by Africans already, creating tensions that last until the present day), as well as to some remote Caribbean islands they had occupied.
Some slave owners joined the society as well – of course they didn’t want to abolish slavery, but they wanted to make sure that no free Afro-American would live in the US.
The organisation became very influential; in 1854 they formed the Republican Party, and Abraham Lincoln was their first member to become president.
His opponents tried to discredit him and his party, claiming that he intended to grant Afro-Americans citizenship and equal rights, but Lincoln vehemently denied those allegations, stressing that he was ‘not in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office.’
Despite his repeated promise not to abolish slavery, he also stated that ‘a house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently one half slave and one half free.’ He was sitting on the fence, trying to reassure both sides (and make them vote for him, of course).
Another aspect of the conflict shouldn’t be forgotten: the South was rich and the North comparatively poor, and it was only a matter of time before the government would try to adjust the situation by means of increased taxes on cotton, tobacco, rice and sugar.
Lincoln was elected in November 1860, and throughout his presidency he organised the deportation of freed slaves to Liberia and Haiti.
South Carolina declared its secession from the Union a month after his election; Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas followed, and in 1861 they founded the Confederate States of America and elected Jefferson Davis as their president.
Many Northerners saw an upside to this as the United States would not have to deal with the freed slaves of these states any more, but Lincoln didn’t intend to become famous for the separation of the United States. He left no doubt that he wouldn’t tolerate the Secession; a few years ago he had strongly defended the right of every state to decide its own form of government as determined in the Constitution - but of course this right didn’t apply to a member of the US! According to the Declaration of Independence, the United States were a Perpetual Union, he argued, and after being admitted to it nothing could alter a state’s membership.
In his First Inaugural Address in March 1861, he repeated his guarantee of having ‘no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery’.
Virginia offered to abolish slavery if Lincoln would recognise their sovereignty; of course the answer was no.
Virginia, North Carolina, Arkansas and Tennessee joined the Confederation.
All Union forces were sent away from the Confederate States, but the soldiers in Fort Sumter refused to leave.
What followed is usually called the ‘American Civil War’, a term as incorrect as the word ‘Indians’ for the real Americans. A civil war is a war between two (or more) rivalling parties striving for power in one nation or province; this was a war between two nations, the United States of America and the Confederate States of America which they intended to annex. For this purpose Lincoln introduced male slavery (‘conscription’) for the working classes in the US (the better-off could buy themselves out with $200), an institution that would last for more than 100 years.
The Confederation called for assistance from Europe, but to no avail. The Americans hadn’t made many friends there (Americans, until this day, make slaves and not friends), and the idea of them tearing each other apart seemed very appealing (especially to Great Britain).
In 1862, the U.S. Congress (at this stage only consisting of Northerners) refused to pass a constitutional amendment abolishing slavery. And later that year, Lincoln still wrote: ‘If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it.’ And his General U.S. Grant stated: ‘If I thought this war was to abolish slavery, I would resign my commission, and offer my sword to the other side.’
But things looked bad for the Union, and Lincoln decided to stir up the South by making the slaves turn against their masters: in 1863 he proclaimed the end of slavery in the Confederation (and no, he did not free a single slave within his jurisdiction). Besides trying to incite a slave revolt in the Confederation (which could easily have backfired if the slaves of the Union had joined them), he also hoped to get support from Europe by giving the impression this war was about slavery. Neither happened.
But his luck changed with the appointment of General William Tecumseh(!) Sherman (who was infamous for abusing his slaves). Lincoln gave him the order to ‘Kill and Destroy’, and that’s exactly what he did! He left the Confederate troops where they were and marched through the countryside with an army of plundering and marauding soldiers, burning absolutely everything and everyone in his path, leaving behind a trail of blood and complete destruction. His ‘scorched earth’ policy and his deliberate targetting of civilians earned him a place in history books as the first modern general. - That’s how the South was won.
Soon the freed slaves flooded into the North from the destroyed plantations in the South. Needless to say they weren’t welcome. (At the same time, a flood of carpetbaggers was moving in the opposite direction.)
Five days after the Confederation’s surrender, on Good Friday 1865, Lincoln was shot. He died the following morning.
Union General Benjamin Butler had asked the President what was going to become of the millions of slaves that were freed in the Confederation, to which Lincoln replied: ‘I think we should deport them all.’
This sounded good in theory. But in the 50 years of its existence, the American Colonization Society had removed 15,000 freed slaves from US territory - now they faced the deportation of more than four and half million Afro-Americans, a task that was completely unfeasible, technically as well as financially. It was considered to give them an isolated area within the United States or in South America, but no state was willing to give up part of its territory.
The freed slaves still had no rights. They were heavily fined for not finding work, those who couldn’t pay the fine (guess how many of them could) were imprisoned, and those imprisoned could be hired out for work - which, in my humble opinion, is nothing short of slavery.
Eight months after Lincoln’s death, on the 18th of December, 1865, the 13th Amendment abolished slavery in the whole of the United States. From this day, the slaves of Kentucky, Maryland, Delaware and Missouri (the slave states that hadn’t joined the Confederation) were free as well.
In 1866 the Ku-Klux-Klan was founded in the South, aiming - just like the colonizationists in the North - at a purely white Protestant American society.
Riots and street battles caused by racists attacking freed slaves remained a common sight for decades.
Seeing they had no possibility of getting rid of the Afro-Americans, the Republicans - who feared a defeat in the upcoming elections - decided to use them as ballot fodder, convinced they’d vote for their unwitting liberators. In 1868, the 14th Amendment was passed (overruling the Republican President’s veto) which granted citizenship to all persons born or neutralised in the United States, except Indians.
In order to get a majority for the amendment, the former member states of the Confederation were expelled from the Union (expelled? what had happened to the supposedly Perpetual Union this war was about?) and readmitted (what a generous gesture) in 1870.
This only helped the Afro-American cause slightly; in 1883 the Supreme Court ruled that the 14th Amendment only forbids discrimination by the state, not by individuals; official segregation went on for another century (until a Supreme Court ruling in 1957), and their voting rights were restricted until the passing of the Voting Rights Act exactly 100 years after the war (when federal police finally stopped local police from hindering them to vote).
In 1867, the US territory was extended once more by the purchase of Alaska from Russia for $7,200,200 and the occupation of the Midway Islands.
Since the early 1800’s, Americans had moved to Hawaii, most of them missionaries or sugar planters. In the 1890’s, Queen Liliuokalani (the composer of ‘Aloha Oe’) took measures to strengthen the position of the Hawaiians.
In January 1893 sugar planters and US forces seized power in a coup and applied to be annexed to the United States.
US President Grover Cleveland investigated the events and came to the conclusion that the provisional government was illegitimate. He refused the application and demanded the restoration of power to the Queen (which, of course, didn’t happen).
In 1894 the sugar planters proclaimed the republic and nominated Sanford B. Dole as their president.
A year later, the Hawaiians started a counter-revolution to reinstate their Queen. Martial law was proclaimed by the regime, and Queen Liliuokalani and her followers were captured and sentenced to death. The Queen herself was later pardoned but forced to abdicate and go into exile.
In 1896, William McKinley was elected president of the United States. He had less qualms about the legitimacy of the government and approved the annexation of Hawaii.
However, nobody wanted Hawaii to become a state – the majority of the population were of Asian descent, due to 19th century immigration waves, and together with other minorities (including the Hawaiians themselves), they outnumbered the white population by far. Giving Hawaii the status of a state would have given these people citizenship and citizen’s rights, making them Americans and voters, and, worst of all, allowing them to move to other states. Therefore Hawaii only got annexed as a colony – or, as the Americans prefer to call it, a ‘territory’.
Only in 1959, more than 60 years after its annexation, Hawaii was finally accepted as the 50th state.
McKinley and his vice president and successor Theodore Roosevelt would be the ones to expand the American empire way past the borders of the American continent at the turn of the century. Starting with the Midway Islands in 1897, a number of Pacific islands were occupied and annexed, and in 1900 the Samoan Islands were divided amongst Germany, Great Britain and the United States.
America always had an eye on Cuba, and it watched with interest how it got more and more difficult for the Spanish to suppress the Cubans. By 1898, the civil war was in full swing, and as the Spanish empire was falling apart all over the world, they felt their time had come.
The United States offered to negotiate between them, but their ‘help’ was declined.
They decided to send a battleship anyway, and on February 15th, 1898, the Maine anchored in Havana.
The same evening, the Maine was blown up, and 266 soldiers were killed; the cause has never been established.
Several theories are still spread - the accidental explosion of the fuel tank for example, or an attack by Cuban rebels trying to blame it on the Spanish and get the US involved on their side (which doesn’t really make sense as they had declined US intervention before).
But the main theories claim it was an attack by the Spanish (though they wouldn’t have had a reason to conceal their identity), or that the ship was blown up by US forces themselves in order to justify a war, which is the only one that sounds plausible to me.
However, the United States blamed the Spanish and declared war. In their view, Spain had started the hostilities by the supposed attack; the Americans have always made a big deal about the ‘first shot’, and they have worked out a lot of ways to let others fire it. In my opinion, a war starts either with a declaration of war or with armed forces entering foreign territory (or refusing to leave it, as was the case in Fort Sumter). This war, as I see it, started with an American battleship entering Cuban waters, regardless of the cause of the explosion.
The war against Spain spread over several colonies and ended only eight months later with the American annexation of Cuba, the Philippines (for which they paid $200,000,000 to Spain), Puerto Rico, the Wake Islands and some of the Samoan Islands.
Resistance of the populations against American occupation remained as fierce as it was against the Spanish, and the atrocities committed by the US forces were nothing short of what their predecessors had done to them. (The Philippines had declared their independence on June 12th, but nobody took notice.)
With the new century approaching, the US decided to become a world power rather than just meddling in the businesses of Northern and Southern American countries, and in 1900 they assisted European powers in the bloody suppression of the Boxer Rebellion in China in which the Chinese tried to regain control of their country.
On this occasion the United States created the term ‘Open Door Policy’, meaning that the US and the European countries may exploit all other countries equally. (Around this time Mark Twain suggested to replace the American flag with a skull-spangled banner.)
After McKinley’s successful assassination in 1901, Theodore Roosevelt became president. His first project was the completion of the Panama Canal which would connect the Atlantic with the Pacific, so no one had to sail around the tip of South America any more. It had been started by the French, but after the company went bankrupt in 1888, nobody had worked on it.
Roosevelt purchased the rights to complete it from France, only to find out that France was not entitled to sell them.
In 1903, he negotiated with Colombia in whose territory the Canal was planned, but the government bluntly refused permission.
No problem for Roosevelt: he organised a rebellion in the Colombian province of Panama where the canal was planned and sent the US Navy to assist them. Two weeks later Colombia was defeated, Panama declared its independence, and the works (which were completed in 1912) commenced.
In 1906, he has been awarded the Nobel Peace Price; not for this, of course, but for his negotiations in the Russo-Japanese War.
He still lives in every children’s room: the Teddy Bear was named after him, following an anecdote in which he refused to shoot a bear that had been tied to a tree for him - in his opinion big game, other than Indians, deserved a ‘sporting chance’.
By the turn of the century, society in the United States had changed considerably. Due to the industrialisation, more people populated the cities. Production was not based on demand any more, but demand was created for the products. This applied to the weapon industry as much as to any other.
A few business men were that successful that they almost had a monopoly on public opinion, and politics were made by the three major institutions: banks, newspapers and - last but certainly not least - the weapons industry.
In 1913, Woodrow Wilson was elected president and continued the conquests for the American Empire.
All over South America people struggled for independence, and Wilson took advantage of the civil wars in Nicaragua, Haiti and the Dominican Republic by invading and occupying them himself.
In Europe, territorial claims, boundary disputes and fights over colonies had led to a tense atmosphere amongst the big empires that was calling for a cathartic war. Already in 1912, the Tsar had cheerfully hinted at an invasion of Germany.
On June 28th, 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian throne, and his wife were killed by Serbian nationalists, and Austria sent an ultimatum to Serbia, demanding to cease all anti-Austrian activities and to allow Austrian officials to participate in the investigations.
Serbia’s reaction was to mobilise as did Russia, their ally.
The European countries now anxiously waited for the moron who would start the Great War.
The moron was forty-three years of age and as determined as he was immature: Germany. Urged by Austria to honour their alliance, Germany issued two ultimata: one to Russia, asking them to suspend mobilisation, and one to France, ordering them to remain neutral - the non-compliance with the ultimata before the deadline would (and did) lead to war on August 1st,1914.
On August 3rd, 1914, the Germans marched through neutral Belgium without permission in order to attack France. The war (which everyone expected to be over after a few weeks) had started. The following day, Great Britain declared war on Germany.
In the course of the war, Great Britain blocked all sea routes to Germany by means of ships and submarines to starve them out.
Despite their differences with Great Britain, the Americans happened to support the Entente (Great Britain, France and Russia) - the British were still closer to them than the Germans.
Although Wilson declared the US to be neutral, the British and French were provided with arms by US manufacturers who transported them on British passenger ships. These vessels were often - usually after sufficient warning for evacuation - attacked by German submarines. The German government also issued full page ads in the New York Times and other newspapers, warning passengers not to board British ships that might carry arms and head for the war zone.
The arms manufacturers’ lobby demanded that the United States enter the war on the side of the Entente and even spread the rumour that German soldiers cut off the hands of Belgian babies (don’t forget, we’re in America), but Wilson was hesitant; fighting industrialised European countries certainly involved more risks than invading some underdeveloped South American states.
The groups supporting America’s intervention had to think of something more convincing. Apart from the interest in supplying the US Army with arms, they were also concerned about the payments for the weapons they had sold to the Entente - in case of a victory of the Alliance (Austria, Germany and Italy), it was doubtful they would get their money.
In 1915, the Lusitania, a British passenger ship, was stocked up with arms before sailing from New York to Great Britain, and someone in the US tipped off the German authorities.
On May 7th, 1915, a German submarine torpedoed the Lusitania, which usually would only have sunk the vessel, not necessarily with the loss of lives - but the ammunition aboard exploded, and about 1,200 passengers, around 130 of them American citizens, were killed (estimates differ greatly).
(Winston Churchill, who tried to involve the US and was informed of the operation, commented that neutral traffic had to be brought to the war zone; the more neutral, the better, and ‘if some of it gets into trouble, better still!’)
To the disappointment of the arms’ industry, this still wasn’t enough for Wilson to declare war on Germany; not only was the Lusitania a British vessel sailing under British flag, he also expressed his disgust at passengers being used as a human shield for arm deliveries, comparing it to women being put in front of an army. - Nonetheless, he issued a firm warning in the direction of Germany.
He was re-elected in 1916 with the slogan ‘He kept us out of the war’; but not for much longer. In January 1917, the decoding of the ‘Zimmermann Telegram’ from the German Foreign Secretary to the German office in Mexico turned the scales. It expressed the firm belief that the US would remain neutral; however, in case they joined the Entente, it was suggested to form an alliance with Mexico, in return helping them to retrieve the territories they had lost to the United States.
Now Wilson decided to go to war.
1917 and 1918 brought other changes as well: the October Revolution, led by Lenin, put an end to the Tsar’s tyranny in Russia and discontinued its involvement in the war, the November Revolution in Germany led to the fall of the government, the exiling of the Kaiser and the proclamation of a Socialist Republic, and in the US women won their right to vote and, together with Puritans and other extremists, enforced the Prohibition (which lasted for fourteen years) - the ban on alcohol which resulted in Organized Crime turning from a few gangs dealing in weapons, drugs, extortion, prostitution and gambling into the power that factually came to rule the country until the present day.
Shortly after the US entered the war, it was over, and all parties agreed to put the entire responsibility for it on Germany. The Germans were excluded from the peace talks in Versailles in 1919, forced to disarm almost completely, give up its colonies as well as other territories in the East and West, and pay all war damages (and more) - a sum of $320,000,000,000 (you don’t have to count the zeros, it’s billions). This amount was reduced later, but still not to a realistic level.
I’m not sure if Wilson really believed to have won the ‘war to end all wars’. His policy of exploiting and starving other countries had worked in South American states that weren’t industrialised; but Germany was a country that knew how to produce weapons, and how to use them. Still, I doubt that he (or anyone else) had any idea of the price the world would have to pay for Versailles.
The new government in Russia was not taken too seriously. A country that confiscated all private property and put the focus on feeding, housing and educating its people rather than invading its neighbours couldn’t last very long, could it?
- Oh yes, Wilson also founded the League of Nations which was supposed to deal with international conflicts. Just like the UN today, it had no power, and all it did was settle a few minor boundary disputes. The United States didn’t join, anyway.
1923 saw the first proposal of the Equal Rights Amendment, supposed to outlaw any discrimination based on gender. Since then, until to date, it has been proposed to almost every Congress, but it has never been passed. Critics of the legislation claim they fear the loss of women’s privileges, such as gender-specific labour laws in heavy industry and the exclusion from governmental slavery (the ‘draft’). However, this is a very weak argument: most European countries have put equality laws into place decades ago and successfully prevented them from rendering equal obligations for females or equal rights for males.
Interlude: With the Shoshone Mike Massacre in which Nevada State Police, assisted by others, had butchered a family of eight in 1911, the extinction of the Indians was as good as completed. Of the fifty millions who had lived on the continent just three centuries previously, only a few hundred thousand survived the holocaust. (Genocide on this scale is unequalled in history, and only the Spanish in South America ever got close.) Those survivors were existing (‘living’ would be an exaggeration) in the few reservations that were left for them; and the only reason these were left was that no one else claimed those barren wastelands that didn’t even provide water.
In 1924, after a number of petitions, President Coolidge decided it was safe to give them human status by granting them citizenship: the civilised world would get a better impression of the States, and the handful of survivors wouldn’t make a difference (most of them didn’t even live to reach the age to vote, anyway). - Need I say their situation hasn’t changed a lot since?
(Citizenship, of course, didn’t mean equality – for example, they still weren’t permitted to trade outside their reservations.)
The Great War had put the US on the map, not only as one of the leading world powers, but as the leading one: the Spanish and Portuguese empires had diminished already, Britain and France (after not being able to defeat Germany on their own) had been put in their place, and Germany (which only had emerged recently) was eliminated - or so the others thought.
After a short boom, caused by the US claiming the war debts from its allies and incoming orders for European reconstruction, things started looking dim in the United States: the depression, which had already reared its head before the war, kicked in (leading up to the Wall Street Crash in 1929) - American workers couldn’t afford the products they manufactured, and the European market had suffered from the war.
As with any depression in any country, the blame was put on minorities, mainly Jews, Afro-Americans and Puerto Ricans, and pogroms against them became a common feature.
But, esp. with Stalin taking over the USSR as General Secretary in 1924, a new enemy was found: Communism. And the good thing about it was that anybody could be accused of it.
In the opinion of Americans, Communism had taken away the main foundations of human existence: freedom of accumulation of wealth and freedom of speech, and anyone who sympathised with them was shut up; in fact, anyone who in the slightest ventured to criticise US politics was shut up, branded a Communist and put on a blacklist of un-American activists. (Even those who spoke out against fascism made it on that list.)
Finally, in 1932, Franklin Roosevelt was elected, the doctor who knew just the cure for depression: war!
Germany, in the meantime a theoretically perfect democracy, had faded from the mind of the Americans. It was nothing more than an unreliable income source for the ‘reparations’ it owed (economically destroyed and with a starving population, it was hardly able to pay the interests of its debts), and no one really cared about what happened to it.
But democracy doesn’t go well with starvation: fourteen years after the United States had laid their egg in Versailles, the monster hatched. Hitler, an Austrian hobo whose shrill voice and low intellect had made him the undisputed leader of the NSDAP, appeared on the scene. In 1933, his party got 43.9%, and with the votes of the conservatives (including that of post-war chancellor Adenauer) the ‘Enabling Act’ was passed which gave his government unlimited powers to ‘save the country from its enemies’.
The Americans didn’t care. Okay, okay, he refused to pay the ‘reparations’, but a strong Nazi Germany would keep the Soviets out of Europe. Hitler hated Communists, and he hated Jews - so what was the problem?
But there were warning voices as well, foremost that of Roosevelt who was aware that Hitler would not only reclaim the lost territories but also aim at dominating the European continent. Another power to be taken into account was the USSR. Roosevelt was disappointed that the United States who had proven to be the leading power had retired from world politics rather than looking for new conquests.
When the chance came to get involved, like in the Civil War in Spain, the Congress reacted by passing Neutrality Acts that prevented the United States from even delivering weapons to belligerent countries (of course, Roosevelt and the armament industry found ways around that, which finally were legalised by the Lend-Lease Act in 1941).
When the Second World War broke out in 1939, the French, British and Dutch had to focus their military activities in Europe which weakened their position in the Asian colonies. Many of these started to fight for independence, but other powers saw their opportunity to take them over: Japan, China and the United States.
Japan reacted promptly by invading Indo-China. In return, Roosevelt placed an oil embargo on Japan which heavily relied on oil, and two months later, in September 1940, Japan signed a treaty (‘Tripartite Pact’) with Germany and Italy requiring them to fight against each others’ enemies.
Roosevelt’s best bet was to get Japan to attack the United States - in that case, Germany would have to get involved, and he could send American troops to both Indo-China and Europe.
The embargo had paved the way, but still Japan didn’t react the way it was supposed to. On November 26th, 1941, Roosevelt set them an ultimatum to withdraw all their troops from the occupied territories.
US intelligence, as well as others who notified the United States (Great Britain, the Netherlands, Australia, Peru, Korea and the Soviet Union), had decoded, in every detail, Japan’s plans of a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor and informed President Roosevelt. Between November 27th and December 5th, the essential war ships (all US carriers with their patrol and pursuit planes as well as the destroyers) were removed from Pearl Harbor, leaving it only with an obsolete fleet. (As FDR said himself, "Most of the fleet was at sea... none of their newer ships were in harbor.")
On December 6th, 1941, Japan declared war on the United States and a few hours later, on the morning of December 7th, attacked the completely unprepared US Naval Base in Pearl Harbor, killing an estimated 2,400 men. Roosevelt had reached his aim: the United States were at war, and the outraged American public was calling for revenge!
In the meantime, Hitler’s breach of the Non-Aggression Treaty with Stalin by invading the USSR led to its unlikely alliance with Great Britain before being joined by the United States. Now any megalomaniac in his right mind would be concerned about facing the United States on top of two dozen enemies that include the USSR and Great Britain, but not Hitler. It is reported that he literally jumped for joy when he got the news, and he declared war on the United States on December 11th.
The Germans and British had already commenced what would become the warfare of the future, and the Americans were only too happy to embrace the new strategy: instead of soldiers killing soldiers, air raids were carried out on large cities, killing thousands of civilians without putting one’s own people in danger; at the same time it destroyed the enemy’s already damaged economy.
The war spread over three continents - Europe, Africa and Asia - and left half of the world in ruins. An estimated 60 million people got killed, the vast majority being civilians.
Roosevelt was insistent to talk to Stalin in person, and the Soviet leader finally agreed to a meeting in Tehran in November 1943 and another one in Yalta in February 1945.
Descriptions of Roosevelt’s attitude towards Stalin range from conciliatory to servile, yet before the war he had portrayed him as a dangerous dictator. Most historians put this down to senility, but I am convinced that Roosevelt had worked out a detailed post-war plan for the world already, and he pussyfooted around Stalin in an effort not to endanger it.
After the defeat of Germany and Japan (Italy had surrendered already), the United States once more would emerge as the world’s leading power, followed closely by the USSR. I am certain that at this stage Roosevelt had the vision of an American empire covering all countries between the poles; but he knew that the time wasn’t ripe.
There were two possible scenarios for the post-war world: one was that a couple of empires would continue gaining and losing territories, creating alliances and fighting wars, and this was too much of a risk for American supremacy; the second was to divide the planet amongst the two strongest powers and then work on the other’s downfall, and that’s what he aimed at. A mastiff has a better chance against another mastiff than against a pack of hyenas.
For this purpose he intended to set up the United Nations; he was aware that they’d be as powerless as the League of Nations was, because the strongest countries would have to be given a veto, but they would succeed in preventing the emergence of other superpowers beside the US and the USSR.
(Oh yes, Churchill was at these meetings as well. But his presence was merely symbolic; in both World Wars he had schemed to get the United States involved at the earliest stage, demonstrating Great Britain’s dependence on them. Apart from that, Britain was actually the big loser of the war - within a few years, they lost most of their colonies, including India. To my knowledge, Great Britain was the first country ever to be colonised by one of its former colonies.)
However, Roosevelt couldn’t openly discuss his vision of American world rule, and many of his subjects who didn’t grasp his subtle master plan thought he sympathised with Communism. He died of a heart attack on April 12th, 1945, just after having been re-elected for a fourth term, and just before the defeat of Germany; maybe the excitement of finally reaching his aim was too much, but I wouldn’t be surprised if one of his oblivious fellowmen had been involved, thinking he was doing damage control before the post-war conferences.
Roosevelt’s vice-president Truman succeeded him and met with Stalin in Potsdam to ask for his support against Japan, discuss the world’s future and distribute the loot.
After their unconditional surrender on May 8th, 1945, Austria and Germany were divided into four zones (the American, British and French zones in the West and the Soviet one in the East), and so was the German capital Berlin itself, which lay in the centre of the Soviet sector.
After the disastrous result of the last German defeat, and fearing the spread of Communism, the Americans decided to introduce a new system of domination: rather than plundering the defeated European countries and leaving them on their own, they let them work for the United States while allowing them to elect governments that acted within their rules. This was called the European Recovery Program, known as Marshall Plan.
The West Germans were leniently punished - at the Nuremberg Trials the figureheads of the Third Reich (who hadn’t committed suicide like Hitler or Goebbels) were executed, and a few others were sentenced to long prison terms which were suspended after just a few years.
The others got away; the Americans, with their knowledge of the German mentality, rightly believed that they had just been carrying out Hitler’s orders, and that they would serve the US just as enthusiastically. Thus it was still possible for an official who was in charge of death camp transports to become President of West Germany (or of Austria, for that matter).
The Americans generously (yes, this is an ambiguism) invested in the destroyed countries, set up American businesses, helped them manage their debts and taught them of the dangers of Communism (and for those who didn’t listen they got out the cane). The American economy (which had been booming since entering the war) kept on booming, the West Germans had their Wirtschaftswunder, the British colonies got their independence: the war had done everyone a world of good!
Well, maybe not the other countries... After 1945, no nation was able to remain completely neutral (apart from Switzerland, where the Communists and the Capitalists had their offshore bank accounts). Any country claiming independence was either sacked by one of the superpowers, or accused of having been sacked by the other one - this would lead to sanctions and embargoes that automatically forced them to establish ties with the other one, making them more or less dependent on it.
Also, many satrapies declaring their independence were immediately invaded (‘liberated’ or ‘protected’) by their original owners to re-establish their rule, esp. those providing crucial materials and those located on their doorstep. South American countries, for example, had been exploited by US companies and citizens for ages, and every emerging democracy was at once removed by the United States, like Guatemala in 1954, the Dominican Republic in 1965, Bolivia in 1967, Chile in 1973, Honduras in 1975 or Nicaragua in 1980.
The one nation that hadn’t surrendered by May 1945 was Japan. But once the war was over in the West, the US were able to focus on Asia, and after some major victories negotiations for Japan’s surrender were under way.
This put Truman under a lot of pressure: the United States had just finished building the atomic bomb, and this could be the last opportunity in a long time to test its effects under authentic conditions.
On August 6th, 1945, the first atomic bomb (uranium) was dropped on Hiroshima, killing a quarter of a million people instantly or after weeks of agony, and crippling, disfiguring or causing cancer to millions of others. On August 8th, the USSR thought it safe to declare war on Japan, and on August 9th another A-bomb (plutonium) was dropped on Nagasaki - it slightly dropped off target, thus only killing an eighth of a million people instantly or after weeks of agony, and crippling, disfiguring or causing cancer to millions of others. The most macabre experiment in history was concluded, and on August 14th, Emperor Hirohito surrendered unconditionally.
What followed was called the Cold War because the US and the USSR, although hostile to each other, didn’t attack one another in their combat for world rule; but the wars over their satrapies were pretty hot, and not many of their victims wore uniforms.
The Cold War was a wishing well for the weapons industry. The threat of the Third World War, this time between the two superpowers, was always in the air, and the propaganda machines on both sides did their best to keep public hysteria at a maximum.
Yet the heydays of the weapon industry started in 1949 when the USSR developed the A-bomb as well and the threat of a worldwide nuclear holocaust became a serious concern (keep in mind that the position of a President or General Secretary, other than that of a shoe salesman, does not require any qualifications).
Also in 1949, the Americans launched the ‘North Atlantic Treaty Organization’ (NATO), a pact that obliged its members to react as a whole if any one of them was attacked (with or without being provoked), esp. by the USSR or one of its satrapies. In 1955, the USSR founded the Warsaw Pact with similar obligations in case of NATO aggression.
And although the US and the USSR were never at war with each other, their proxy wars spread terror over the whole world for half a century.
Nobody would think of partitioning Great Britain and declaring the larger part a homeland for the Romans (tempting thought, though...). Yet, in an attempt to get rid of their Jewish population, many countries considered relocating them to Palestine.
Anti-Semitism is as old as the Jews are and was practised all over the world, including the United States and Great Britain (who banned Jewish immigration in 1942, thus stopping the flood of refugees from Germany). After the world had seen the horrors of what the Germans did to them, deportation was not an option, but a lot of them would be delighted at the prospect of having their own country and escaping discrimination.
A number of Zionists had moved there already, Jews that considered Palestine their ‘homeland’ because a few thousand years ago their ancestors had occupied it for a while after they’d slaughtered the natives. Although the British ban on Jewish immigration also covered Palestine as a British mandate, many were smuggled in, mostly to reinforce anti-Palestinian terror organisations like the Hagganah.
The setting up of a Jewish state was much discussed, though not with the Palestinians or their Arab neighbours. The United States had reservations, though, as they thought that it would support the spread of Communism. (The main reason for the persecution of Jews was - and is - the myth that they’re all money-grubbers, which doesn’t go well with the accusation of them being Communists; but I suppose with the intellect of a racist one really can’t see that contradiction.)
A majority of UN members signalled they would support a solution in which 55% of Palestine was assigned to a Jewish state. On May 14th, 1948, the day the British mandate ran out, the state of Israel was proclaimed and immediately recognised by the United States, as well as immediately attacked by their Arab neighbours whom the Palestinians had asked for assistance.
Like in Liberia and Haiti, into which the US had forced a completely different people, war in Palestine hasn’t ceased since, and probably never will. Israel constantly expanded, taking over territory from Palestine and other neighbours, and all UN resolutions trying to establish any rights for Palestinians were vetoed by the US; in 1967, after the Six-Days War, Palestine disappeared from the map altogether.
Most Arab countries had been part of the Ottoman Empire until they were occupied by the British after WWI, receiving more or less national independence after WWII. These countries became increasingly rich (well, at least their elite) because of their oil production, so there was no danger of them turning towards Communism. This would have made them the perfect prey for the United States; yet, as the US were crucial supporters of the elimination of Palestine (one of the Arab nations) and the genocide of Palestinians as well as Israel’s annexation of territories from their neighbours, relations between the Arab and the United States have always been very tense.
In 1949, another totalitarian Communist country emerged after a long civil war: the People’s Republic of China. But it stayed very much to itself; it only sacked a few minor neighbouring countries, had a few border engagements (including one against the USSR) and provided military support to some Communist Asian countries, so nobody paid too much attention.
One of the countries that were partitioned after WWII was Korea. In 1950, when the popularity of Syngman Rhee (the US-appointed dictator of the South) was at an all-time low, Kim Il-Sung (the Soviet-appointed dictator of the North) saw his opportunity to reunite the country - under his rule, of course. The USSR, which reluctantly supported Il-Sung, had made the mistake of boycotting the UN meeting and thus couldn’t exercise their veto when it was decided to send troops into Korea.
The Korean War ended in 1953 with the re-establishment of the status quo. The only difference were the dead: 50,000 casualties on the side of the UN, most of them Americans, and 600,000 North and South Korean soldiers. - Oh yes, a few million civilians were killed as well.
In the 1950’s, Cuba’s head of state was the dictator Batista, but the country was run (‘governed’ would be an exaggeration) by his mates from the New York Mafia, loosely supervised by the US administration.
There were several attempts of Cubans to regain control of their island. In 1959, a revolution led by Che Guevera and the brothers Castro succeeded, and all property occupied by non-Cubans was re-distributed amongst their own people.
The United States ordered their satrapies to join them in embargoes and boycotts against Cuba, forcing Fidel Castro to establish close connections with the USSR. Later all US businesses in Cuba were nationalised.
After consistent terrorist attacks on Cuba had been carried out, a conspiracy of the New York Mafia, Cuban exiles and the CIA under President Kennedy planned to invade the island from the Bay of Pigs and re-colonise Cuba in 1961. Although the necessity of aircraft supporting the attack was pointed out to Kennedy, he refused; he wanted the world to think it was a Cuban counter-revolution and intended on covering up any involvement of the US. Furthermore, he seriously believed that the Cuban peasants would join them in their march on Havana.
What happened was that the peasants grabbed their pitchforks and helped their army to kick the Americans out as soon as they landed.
After this fiasco, sanctions against Cuba were tightened even more. The Kennedy administration banned all trade with and all travel to Cuba, all bank assets of Cubans in the US were frozen, and terrorist attacks on Cuba continued.
This was where the Cold War got really hot. For the Cubans another US invasion was only a matter of time, and they agreed to the USSR positioning nuclear missiles in Cuba.
The missiles were detected by US intelligence in October 1962, followed by President Kennedy ordering a naval blockade on Cuba to prevent them from being delivered, as well as giving Cuba an ultimatum to dismantle the existing ones.
The Americans were petrified at the discovery of nuclear weapons on their doorstep; they had always believed their geographical isolation would guarantee their safety. For a few days, the world stopped its breath.
Kennedy negotiated with Soviet General Secretary Khrushchev who offered to remove the missiles if the US removed theirs from Turkey (which were just as close to the USSR as the Cubans’ to the US). Kennedy rejected, but he agreed to cease the blockade and his attempts to invade Cuba, and Khrushchev ordered the missiles’ removal.
After having been humiliated in the Bay of Pigs, Kennedy had to prove himself: ‘Now we have a problem in making our power credible,’ he said, and Vietnam looks like the place’.
Vietnam, which was part of French Indo-China, had been invaded by Japan after France surrendered to Germany in 1940, and the Vietminh, led by Ho Chi Minh, had started an independence war, strongly supported by the USSR and - after its WWII entry - the United States.
In 1945 the US’ most important supplier of rice and heroin had finally kicked out the French and Japanese and proclaimed the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. What they didn’t know was that in Potsdam they’d been partitioned and given away to China (North) and Great Britain (South).
A year later, both countries traded Vietnam back to France which was defeated by the Vietminh in 1954 and capitulated.
At a conference in the same year the United States, the USSR, Great Britain, France and China (Vietnam wasn’t represented, of course) decided to divide Vietnam again, give the North to the Vietminh and put the fascist dictator Ngo Dhin Diem (whom the French themselves described as ‘not only incapable but mad’) in charge of the South. It was also decided that free elections in both parts be held before July 1956.
The Vietminh reluctantly agreed to the cease-fire. But when Diem refused to hold elections, claiming the Vietminh would cheat anyway, and the advisors of US President Eisenhower informed him that free elections would give Ho Chi Minh anything from 80% upwards, the elections were cancelled.
At this point the Vietminh took up its guerrilla activities again, and in 1960 it joined forces with other groups to form the National Liberation Front (NLF), also known as the Vietcong.
As the United States, just like the USSR, didn’t tolerate independence, they claimed North Vietnam was a satellite state of the USSR, and between 1961 and 1963 President Kennedy (who called the Cold War ‘a holy war’) sent 20,000 military advisors and 7,000 troops to South Vietnam who should help them conquer the North.
Shortly after Kennedy’s assassination, his successor Lyndon B. Johnson (‘LBJ, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?’) launched a full-scale war on North Vietnam, involving Cambodia and Laos as well. As the NLF were armed and dangerous, most actions were directed against civilians in form of area bombardments, using napalm and the chemical Agent Orange (a defoliant which conveniently killed people as well). During the Vietnam War, the United States dropped more bombs than in the Second World War.
The amount of US casualties went far beyond their imagination, due to advanced guerrilla tactics and the population’s support of the NLF. Many of the aircraft that brought the troops in transported heroin to the States on their way back (that way the war did pay off, though not for everybody).
It was the first (and only) war ever to be televised in the US, so Americans could order a pizza, grab a beer, sit back and watch crying children running through their destroyed villages while burning to death. But it had an unwanted effect on a lot of people: they realised that war wasn’t something abstract, and that all these atrocities happened to actual people. Opposition to the war increased rapidly, especially with over 60,000 US soldiers having lost their lives (as opposed to 3 million Vietnamese, 7% of which were armed) in a war that was started merely to boost Kennedy’s damaged ego.
In 1973, the United States had lost their first war. As a consequence, war journalism was being restricted from showing victims and, due to public pressure, male slavery (‘conscription’ or the ‘draft’, as it is called in America) was abolished for a few years; draft registration was re-introduced by President Carter in 1980 ‘in case of a crisis’.
President Ford tried to revive US employment in 1975, but without success.
After a coup in 1978, Afghanistan had become a Communist, yet officially non-aligned, country under President Taraki.
In 1979, the General Secretary of the USSR, Leonid Brezhnev, advised him to dispose of his foreign minister Amin whose explicitly atheist attitude was considered dangerous in an Islamic country. However, Amin got wind of the plot and managed to take over the government; Taraki was killed in the process. As a consequence, Afghanistan was invaded by the USSR in December 1979.
There was an international outcry - the US and their satrapies reacted with sanctions and embargoes, and most Western countries boycotted the Olympic Games 1980 in Moscow.
The Soviets, who expected to defeat Afghanistan within a few weeks, had to face fiercer resistance than anticipated - their war lasted for over 8 years and ended with the withdrawal of their troops. It was often referred to as the USSR’s Vietnam.
In Iran, which had been terrorised by its leader Shah Reza Pahlavi for almost four decades, opposition to the monarchy increased rapidly, despite police shooting into the crowds of protesters. He had allowed the country to be shamelessly exploited by the United States while torturing and killing all critics and opponents of his regime.
He had to flee the country in January 1979 and was welcomed in the United States which provided him with free medical treatment.
There were emerging democratic voices in Iran, but the overwhelming majority hailed the return of Ayatollah Khomeini from exile, a radical fundamentalist who created an isolationist Islamic state.
Riots all over Iran continued for over a year, and massacres on Khomeini’s opponents became a regular feature.
In November 1979, an angry mob stormed the US embassy in Tehran and took the remaining staff hostage, demanding Pahlavi’s extradition to try him for his crimes.
The negotiations led nowhere as President Carter refused the exchange; when the Iranian despot died of cancer in July 1980, the kidnappers demanded $60 billion instead.
In 1981 Ronald Reagan left Hollywood to become President, and his first action in office was freeing the remaining 52 Iranian hostages after 444 days in captivity. The official part of this deal was the return of all Iranian assets that had been frozen by Carter as a retribution; the unofficial part was the trade of weapons to Iran, the proceeds of which Reagan used to support terrorists in Nicaragua (the ‘Iran-Contra Affair’).
Also in 1979, US protégé Saddam Hussein took over the reigning Ba’ath Party in Iraq. The main aims of his terror regime were the ‘reunification’ of the Ottoman Empire under his rule and the genocide of the Kurds. (Kurdistan is a country entirely occupied by its neighbours Iran, Iraq, Syria, Turkey, Armenia and Azerbaijan, all of which are working on the extinction of the Kurdish people.)
In 1980, taking advantage of the unstable situation in Iran, Hussein used the continuous border disputes to wage war on his neighbour, and the United States supplied him with the weapons. (Just to point out the hypocrisy of it: the US provided both parties with weapons, and Iraq was provided with weapons by both superpowers.)
The war ended in 1988, with neither side having achieved anything.
During his presidency, Reagan launched an armament program unequalled in history, including his massive futuristic SDI (‘Star Wars’) Program, just in case.
The logic of those days was that if the US had the capacity of destroying the planet twenty times over while the USSR could only manage to destroy it a dozen times, they had some serious catching up to do. The arms race had reached its peak.
In 1982, General Secretary Brezhnev died. Two successors followed his example within three years, and in 1985 the Politburo elected one of its few members not suffering from old age. Enter the most tragic character of the century: Mikhail Gorbachev.
The USSR, just like their satrapies, were in dire straits. Economical mismanagement had forced them to buy more and more grain from other countries, mostly the US, and the arms race as well as the strenuous war against Afghanistan had exhausted their international financial credibility. Communism was bankrupt.
On top of this, the population had become restless. The Communists had eliminated starvation and homelessness, but at a price not everyone was willing to pay. Personal freedom was almost non-existent; everybody’s life was organised and controlled in every detail, and since the 60’s the right to travel to countries outside of the Warsaw Pact had been severely restricted, due to the amount of people heading for the ‘Golden West’. A lot of products were not available, for others there were long waiting lists, and sometimes even food was rationed. (Much of this was due to the fact that the colonies of the USSR, which covered about a third of the globe, were less resourceful than the US’ colonies.)
While trying to hold on to the achievements of Communism, Gorbachev aimed at a society that provided personal freedom, democracy and transparency. But things got out of hand: the people didn’t want to wait any longer and went on the streets, strikes and demonstrations paralysed the system, and every little province declared its independence.
In East Germany, the leading Stalinist party SED was banned; the other Stalinist parties were bought over by West German parties and in 1990 voted to be unconditionally annexed to West Germany.
To interfere the old-fashioned way by sending in troops and tanks would have defeated the purpose, and therefore Gorbachev didn’t even consider it. And as there was no other way of dealing with the situation, he just had to watch as things happened.
In August 1991, a coup of Communist Party hardliners attempting to re-establish the old order failed, but their defeat elevated the Russian President Boris Yeltsin to the position of a hero. (And I wouldn’t be surprised if he had incited the coup himself for exactly this purpose.)
In December 1992, the USSR formally disbanded, and Gorbachev delegated all his powers (including the use of nuclear weapons) to Yeltsin. I still believe that the world was never as close to a nuclear disaster as when this megalomaniac drunkard was in control, and this takes into account the Cuban Missile Crisis.
In 1993, he sent in the army to massacre the Russian parliament when they failed to vote as he had instructed them, and almost 200 MPs were killed; but he was not a Communist, and that’s what made him a democrat in the eyes of the US.
During the Cold War, the basic ideas of Socialism - providing free access to education, health care, housing etc. for everybody, regardless of their financial situation or social standing, as well as legislation concerning workers' rights, equality and so forth - led to a kind of moral competition during which the US satrapies, to a greater or lesser extent, did the same. Now, since there is no more competition around, the world returned to the strict industrial class system of the late 19th century and paved the way for the international expansion of outside-the-law employers like Walmart and Lidl.
This was the time for the Bush dynasty. George Bush the Elder (whose father Prescott Bush had established the family fortune from the spoils of the concentration camps by financing the Nazi government in Germany, defying the Trading With the Enemy Act of 1942) became President in 1989 and was faced with the biggest dilemma the US ever had to face: they’d run out of enemies and were in control of the world.
A world without conflict would prove disastrous, both for the United States whose economy is entirely dependent on the manufacturing of weapons, as for George Bush himself as a member of the board of directors of the Carlyle Group, one of the world’s largest armament contractors.
Over the previous decades, the idealistic conflict with the USSR had provided the pretext to produce weapons like there was no tomorrow and pile them up; now it wasn’t there any more. There was only one solution: a new archenemy!
To choose a single nation would have been silly, because after its defeat a new enemy would have to be found; this only left a race, an ideology or a religion to pick from.
As I mentioned earlier, the US support of the genocide of Palestinians had always put a great strain on their relations with the Arab world, so Bush decided to choose War on Islam.
The ideal point to start with was Iraq. Hussein (the Americans still call their old buddy by his first name) had fought the tiring war against Iran, he had used up the chemical and biological weapons the US had provided to get rid of the Kurds, and his country was worn out. He needed money - and his best bet was to get oil.
- Hussein wanted to reunite the Ottoman Empire, he needed to get his hands on oil resources, and there had always been border disputes with Kuwait; what better way of starting the war than encouraging him to invade his neighbour?
In a meeting in 1990, US ambassador Glaspie assured Hussein: ‘We have no opinion on your Arab-Arab conflicts, such as your dispute with Kuwait. Secretary [of State] Baker has directed me to emphasize the instructions first given in the 1960’s, that the Kuwait issue is not associated with America!’
The Iraqi leader took the bait and invaded Kuwait in August 1990. Bush and the world were appalled, the US and the UN moved in and put a stop to it, and the Carlyle Group was saved. Bush even pretended that the United States were suddenly concerned about the Kurds.
After the war Hussein remained in office, but he was not allowed to possess biological or chemical weapons any more.
In 2000, George Bush (the Younger), despite losing the popular vote, won the closest presidential race ever (marred by countless electoral irregularities) by a majority of one single vote; that of a judge of the Supreme Court which put an end to the recount of votes in Florida.
On September 11th, 2001, four passenger planes were hijacked and used as missiles against several targets in the United States; over 2,700 died.
Originally Bush intended to pin the attacks on Saddam Hussein, but his advisors convinced him that it would be impossible to create an even remotely credible link between Iraq and 9/11. So after Bush had organised the safe departure of the bin Laden family from the States (while all other aircraft were still grounded) he blamed Osama bin Laden, one of Daddy’s mates from the Carlyle Group, and declared war on Afghanistan (whom he accused of harbouring him), stressing that in international relations no proof was needed to convict a suspect.
(Speaking of the Carlyle Group: George Bush junior himself had been put in charge of its catering wing for a while which consequently was sold off for being unprofitable; obviously the running of a business, other than the running of the United States, requires organisational skills.)
There are four points that seem quite dodgy to me:
1. The first plane crashed into the Northern tower of the World Trade Center with such a precision that it hit the exact spot at which it would cause the entire tower to collapse. The second plane crashed into the Southern tower of the World Trade Center with such a precision that it hit the exact spot at which it would cause the entire tower to collapse. The third plane scratched the Pentagon, destroying some new offices that were not occupied and didn’t contain any equipment or information. (The forth plane didn’t reach its target; the passengers had heard of the others and brought it down in a field.)
2. Nobody claimed ‘responsibility’ (I never understood how anyone massacring civilians could use this term) for the attacks.
3. The only survivor associated with the plot had to be acquitted by the German courts because the United States denied access to their information.
4. At the time of the attacks, Bush was visiting a school. After having been informed of the situation, he didn’t show any reaction at all and absent-mindedly kept listening to the kids reading ‘The Pet Goat’ to him. He didn’t even increase his own security – he obviously was aware that he himself was not in any danger.
Now I would expect anyone who is able to plan attacks on civilian targets with such precision to plan his attacks on military targets with equal precision - unless he doesn’t intend to do any damage.
Terror is supposed to spread fear, and it is spread so the terrorists would be feared. (Apart from this, attacks are usually followed up with certain demands.) Terrorist attacks without anyone claiming what they call responsibility don’t make sense at all.
And finally, I think that countries that were shaken by attacks like these would do anything to see those involved prosecuted, provided they were not involved themselves.
This leads me to believe that George Bush (who just after his election had reminded his subjects that it was not the duty of the United States to keep peace but to win wars) has masterminded these attacks himself in order to wage war on a Muslim country. Now you may doubt his intellectual capability, but Nero and Hitler were not blessed with three digit IQs, either, and got away with similar plots: Nero burnt down Rome and blamed it on the Christians, and Hitler burnt down the Reichstag and blamed it on the Jews.
Besides, as Bush was looking after Daddy’s and Uncle Osama's business, they probably gave him a hand.
The fundamentalist Taliban regime in Kabul offered to extradite bin Laden if Bush could provide proof of his guilt. Of course Bush declined.
The war against Afghanistan was over by the end of the year. Villages and cities were erased in air raids as well as the starving and war-torn population, wedding parties were wiped out, and after only a month it was considered safe to send in ground troops.
Despite all the efforts the US supposedly put into the manhunt, bin Laden was never captured. Seeing that the Bushes and the bin Ladens equally profited from the war as they provided the weapons, one seriously has to consider the possibility of both families working together.
With the end of the war in Afghanistan approaching, Bush decided that Iraq would come next and launched a massive propaganda campaign claiming that Hussein had weapons of mass destruction again, including ‘nucilar’ weapons (if I couldn’t pronounce the word nuclear, I’d simply say atomic).
Here the United Nations butted in and got on Bush’s nerves. Created in order to prevent the emergence of other monster empires, the UN had become obsolete with the fall of the USSR, but unfortunately Bush couldn’t just dissolve them. So he offered them co-operation, provided they did as he told them.
Weapons inspectors were allowed back into Iraq and couldn’t find anything, but before they had finished their job, Bush and Tony Blair, his British Prime Minister, got impatient and decided to invade Iraq anyway.
The United States also boycotted the weapons inspectors report in the UN. Instead, they gave Hussein and his sons a 48 hour ultimatum to leave Iraq.
In March 2003 they started their air raids, dropped a Cruise Missile on Baghdad and sent in their troops.
The invasion was completed and war declared over by Bush on May 1st, and Hussein was captured in December, but fierce resistance against US and British occupation continues until this day.
Rather than celebrating the US victory, a lot of critics kept asking about those weapons of mass destruction which, even after one year of occupation, couldn’t be found, though they had served as the pretext for this war. - Didn’t these people have a job to go to?
The arrogance of the United States and its satrapies went that far that even at this point they didn’t bother planting chemical and biological weapons in Iraq, something that would have been the first thing to do in the old days.
Yet those insiders who knew that no proof had ever existed and documents had been forged were libelled and, as in the case of the British weapons inspector David Kelly, conveniently ‘committed suicide’ before going into detail.
The next part of the War on Islam series is only a matter of time; in December 2003, Colonel Qaddafi announced he’d destroy his nuclear, chemical and biological arsenal and invited UN inspectors into Libya in an effort to avoid a fate similar to that of Hussein.
Only days before the next historically close presidential elections in 2004, Bush’s campaign was given a final boost by thousands of absentee ballots that were ‘lost’, as well as by a guest appearance of bin Laden on American TV. He threatened the United States and thus supported Bush’s policy of fear – once again this proves to me that the Bush and the bin Laden families work together to promote their joint weapons business.
Bush won the election, which saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of unborn Americans, but which also cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of Muslim families. In his inauguration speech he left little doubt that his next victims will be the people of Iran; he has waited for a while now, but we can be sure that just in time for the 2008 elections he will bomb the streets of Tehran in an attempt to secure a Republican victory - as if that was needed, since the Democrats have left themselves outside the race track by nominating either a female or an Afro-American candidate. Nonetheless, Bush will stick to the motto of his administation which he outlined when he signed the Defense Bill in August 2004: ‘Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we!’
Every religion promises a paradise and peace on earth in the (until the 1990’s hypothetical) case of all people and nations submitting to it; Americanism did the same, but although 226 of the 231 nations on this planet are subjected to American rule (the only remaining Socialist and Communist counties being China, Cuba, Vietnam, North Korea and Laos), peace and paradise couldn’t be any further from us. This proves that no religion launched with a cannon glides softly when coming down to earth.
(To be honest, I just can’t figure out why the United States haven’t invaded the remaining countries since 1991, but I’m sure this will only be a matter of time.)
There is a level of sadism that is so much beyond anything human that any comparison would be macabre - the Spanish Inquisition, the Nazi’s treatment of Jews and other minorities, the Jews’ treatment of Palestinians, and the United States’ dealings with Indians and Asians are only a few examples. Since Vietnam, we don’t see the victims of US aggression on TV any more (we only get a glimpse of US soldiers firing into unarmed crowds or torturing prisoners of war every now and then), but this certainly doesn’t indicate that their atrocities have ceased and their respect for human life has increased.
We have to be aware of their terminology, though: when a white US-American talks about human lives, he is referring to that of white US-Americans. For some unknown reason he considers himself superior and his ‘race’ (to our embarrassment, it’s still the same race as the white Europeans) to be evolved above all others.
We know the type of people who feel superior and regard themselves the chosen ones: Henry VIII, Louis XVI, Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Idi Amin... their superiority lay in their power, not in their ethics, intellect or anything else. And this goes for peoples as well.
Life, as Darwin and Hitler said, is survival of the fittest, and we have to deal with the fact that the United States have eliminated all competitors for world rule. But lecturing the rest of the world about freedom, morals or humanity is pure hypocrisy, and the civilised countries should measure their cultural standards against a more challenging benchmark than that of the United States.
© 6245 RT
(2004 CE) by Frank L. Ludwig
[updated until 6249 RT
(2008 CE)]
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