US & Israel scorch the Earth for profit
Corporations and war criminals benefit as working and native people suffer.
Looking back on the twentieth century, the United States, Britain, and Israeli governments conspired to overthrow other governments, install vicious dictators friendly to Western interests, invent countries, sponsor insurrections, manipulate foreign economies, political systems, stage invasions, assassinations, torture, steal land, genocide Palestinian and other indigenous peoples, break promises, and do anything and everything necessary to guarantee a steady supply of oil, maintain strategic control of landmasses, and extract mineral resources and other wealth. This, in conjunction with the United States’ policies unilateral, unwavering, and unconditional support for Israel, has understandably created a tad of resentment for the United States, which successive unprovoked U.S. military occupations and assaults against Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, etc. do little to alleviate. The United States justifies its presence under the humanitarian guise of spreading democracy and state-building. They claim to have destroyed the cradle of civilization on a goof! Whoops. The continued statistical evidence on deaths, displacements, deformities, rapes, suicides, and standards of living does little to support this assertion, despite how often it’s repeated by talking heads on TV. Unsurprisingly these “democratic efforts” have not been well received. But, as George H.W. Bush declared at the [scorched] Earth Summit in 1992, "the American way of life is not up for negotiations. Period " Pooh.
Nearly every facet of today’s geopolitical climate is traceable back to overt or covert actions from the United States, Israel, and the UK. In 1953 the C.I.A overthrew Iran's elected prime minister Mohammed Mossadeq, who had intentions to nationalize the Iranian oil industry ousting the British. The U.S. and U.K.-backed coup replaced Mossadeq with the autocratic and oppressive pro-Western Shah. For 20 years, the US military-industrial complex unloaded billions of dollars worth of armaments into the country. The CIA, through SAVAK - the Iranian secret police - tortured, terrorized, and intimidated the civilian population. Their secret political police network was worldwide, and SAVAK agents even operated on U.S. campuses with the full knowledge and assistance of US intelligence. In 1979 a revolution ousted the Shah and ushered in, the Islamic Republic of Iran. The public disdain for the Shah marred his American base of support. The U.S. Embassy in Tehran was seized and 53 hostages were held for over a year. Ayatollah Khomeini replaced the Shah as the leading public figure. Ayatollah's nationalism brought about the clergy-dominated Islamic Republic, where the USA and Israel are framed as the main adversary. Perhaps that has something to do with the constant threats, misinformation from US intelligence agencies, military drills, U.S. imposed sanctions, and Israelis murdering their scientists/generals? We can only guess!
In Iraq, in February of 1963, the CIA aided Saddam Hussein and the Ba'ath party in a violent military coup (5,000 estimated dead) to overthrow President Kassim. “Then, on Feb. 8, 1963, the conspirators staged a coup in Baghdad. For a time the government held out, but eventually, Kassem gave up, and after a swift trial was shot; his body was later shown on Baghdad television. Washington immediately befriended the successor regime. ''Almost certainly a gain for our side,'' Robert Komer, a National Security Council aide, wrote to President Kennedy the day of the takeover. In 1968, again with CIA cooperation, there was a successful coup by the Ba'ath party. After the coup, Saddam Hussein dominated the Ba’ath party. Which sounds very clean but actually involves a lot of blood.
Dr. Robert M. Bowman, former Lt. Col., of the United States Air Force tells the story of Sadaam’s buildup and betrayal. “In 1977, US National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski met with Saddam Hussein, the Emir of Kuwait, and a Saudi representative, and proposed that Iraq invade Iran, seizing the Khuzestan oil fields.” US Secretary of State Alexander Haig would later confirm in declassified documents that 'President Carter gave the Iraqis a green light to launch the war against Iran through Fahd'. Bowman continued, “in 1982, US FBI chief William Webster met with the Emir of Kuwait and plotted the seizure of Iraqi oil fields and the slant-drilling with which Kuwait and western oil companies stole $14 billion worth of Iraqi oil. Right up to the time of Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait, US Department of Defense training manuals sang the praises of Saddam Hussein, noting how he had vastly improved education, medical care, and the standard of living of his people. His regime was called one of the most enlightened, progressive governments in the region. But there was a problem. The Berlin wall had come down. The Soviet Union had collapsed. The American people were clamoring for a peace dividend. The war profiteers had to find another bad guy — quickly. In May 1990, a National Security Council white paper stated that Iraq and Saddam Hussein were "the optimum contenders to replace the Warsaw pact as the rationale for major military expenditures."
In the 1980s, the United States and Britain armed Saddam and instigated his confrontation with Iran – only to turn on him in 1990 because of Kuwait. Iraq fought a war with Iran. During the war, Saddam committed atrocities, and the H.W. Bush Administration condemned Saddam for using the chemical weapons the US sold him! Ain’t that a bitch? We just sold them. You’re not supposed to use them! With full knowledge of these atrocities, the US continued to provide Iraq with intelligence and continued to sell many chemical/biological agents to Iraq, including anthrax, and cluster bombs. Integral to U.S. policy in Baghdad during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, Donald H. Rumsfeld, on the December 1983 meeting with Hussein normalized U.S.-Iraqi interactions. Declassified documents show that Rumsfeld traveled to Baghdad at a time when Iraq was using chemical weapons on an "almost daily" basis in defiance of international conventions. The Guardian reported, “the US provided less conventional military equipment than British or German companies but it did allow the export of biological agents, including anthrax; vital ingredients for chemical weapons; and cluster bombs sold by a CIA front organization in Chile, the report says.” Despite backing Iraq in the war, the US secretly sold weapons to Iran to fund the Nicaraguan contras in what later would be known as the Iran-Contra scandal.
The U.S. began bombing Iraqi targets during the Gulf War and enforced a no-fly zone. The U.S. also engaged in an economic embargo of Iraq. The intention was, presumably, to force Hussein from power. However, the effect had a devastating impact on the health and standard of living of the Iraqi people. Sympathetic humans around the world hold this grievance against the United States government. These actions created a great amount of resentment for the US government the world over. On top of that, in 1991 the Iraqi people (encouraged by U.S. government rhetoric) rose up against Saddam. The United States did not assist them, and instead worried that revolution would put a majority Shi’ites in power (tipping the scale in favor of Iran), so US forces oversaw as the Republican Guard brutally obliterated the rebellion. The CIA then went to work sponsoring a coup in Baghdad. This plan failed in 1996 when Iraqi intelligence uncovered the conspiracy led by the ex-Ba’athist Iyad Alawi. After rounding up hundreds of officers, the mukhabarat messaged the CIA agents in Amman: “We have arrested all your people. You might as well pack up and go home.” And while some did, presumably, pack up and leave -- it was only a few years before they were back inside Iraq, operating stronger than ever before.
Israel occasionally acts as a U.S. proxy when it’s not begging for money like a genocidal pauper. Between 1948 and 1996 the United States forked over $65 billion dollars in aid. Kissinger and Nixon’s decision to give Israel $2.2 billion in emergency military aid during the October War resulted in an OPEC oil embargo that negatively impacted Western economies. What does the US get for its money, you ask? Well, the Israeli military attacked and murdered US naval personnel on the USS Liberty, but that’s not all! They also failed to protect U.S. corporate strategic interests in the region. The United States could not rely on Israel during the Iranian Revolution in 1979. Concerned about the security of Persian Gulf oil supplies, the U.S. was forced to dispatch its own “Rapid Deployment Force”.
United States’ financial and military support for Israel has been generous bordering on parasitic. Israel has been the largest recipient of direct U.S. aid, more so than any other country since World War II, and continues to be the largest recipient of military aid since 1976. From 1949 to 1973, the U.S. pledged Israel an average of $122 million per year, over $3 billion dollars (more than $1 billion of which were loans for military equipment in 1971-73). Before 1971, Israel subsisted on only $277 million in military aid, all in the form of loans as credit sales. Currently, Israel is demanding more money than the $3.8 billion per year over 10 years they already get. The $500,000,000 passed after the stimulus checks, the $750,000,000 weapons deal after committing their most recent genocide in Gaza, or the extra “emergency” $1 Billion Benny Gantz has come to demand in person. With this money, Israel has developed weapons systems like the Lavi aircraft that the Pentagon advised against, while also giving Israel access to top‐shelf U.S. weaponry like Blackhawk helicopters and F‐16, and F-35 jets. The United States gives Israel access to intelligence that it withholds from its NATO allies and has consistently ignored Israel’s acquisition of nuclear weapons.
Thinking about things from the perspective of the colonized, would you hold a grudge against the country (or group of countries) who for over 70 years has manipulated political systems, assassinated people, staged insurrections, implanted dictators, sponsored warfare, starved people, provided and used chemical weapons, abducted, tortured, raped, pillaged, destroyed historic landscapes, documents, monuments, and inflicted untold emotional trauma on generations to come?
Cause I would.