War and Empire , livre ebook

War and Empire
WAR AND EMPIRE
The American Way of Life
Paul L. Atwood
First published 2010 by Pluto Press 345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010
www.plutobooks.com
Distributed in the United States of America exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010
Copyright © Paul L. Atwood 2010
The right of Paul L. Atwood to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 7453 2765 5 Hardback ISBN 978 0 7453 2764 8 Paperback ISBN 978 1 7837 1581 7 ePub ISBN 978 1 7837 1582 4 Mobi
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For Adrian and Amelia
Contents
Acknowledgements
Preface
1
Introduction: American Ideology versus American Realities
2
By the Sword We Seek Peace

Microbes: The ally of rape, torture and conquest?

Spaniards discover civilizations far more advanced than their own – except for ‘guns, germs and steel’

Faced with economic and social disruption at home, the British join the game of empire

The Virgin Queen’s colony

A blood-soaked city on a hill

Property and profit as the sign of God’s favor

The ‘Spawn of Satan’

The first all-out war
3
French, Indians, Rebellion and Repression

The first global war prefigures more global war

Americans who wanted war now refuse to pay for it

Those who made the greatest sacrifices are betrayed

The new American elite taxes and forecloses on those without representation
4
An Empire for Liberty?

Creating an enemy to thwart the Bill of Rights

Many trails of tears

Land hunger provokes an unnecessary war

Laying claim to the hemisphere

‘Anglo-Saxonism’ and the march to the Pacific

To the halls of Montezuma
5
From Ashes to Empire

The compromise of 1877: Selling the freedmen out

Not fighting to free slaves

Massacres in the west

Industrialism renewed and the ascension of finance

Cycles of boom and bust produce political instability

Class war intensifies

To contain the revolt of the masses and restore profitability, the plutocrats opt for empire

The Monroe Doctrine enforced

The ideology of expansion
6
War with Spain, then Another and Another

As a pretext for war, Spain is declared a threat to American security

The press reveals its racism and lust for empire

Cubans on verge of winning independence on their own alarm Washington
7
World War I: Making the World Safe for American Capital Investment

Germany’s potential dominance in Europe a threat to the Open Door

The standard interpretation of American entry is superficial

Britain violates American neutrality but Wilson does nothing

Though its blockade damages the American economy the House of Morgan invests in Britain

Wilson’s neutrality a charade

Wilson positions himself to be global messiah

Bolsheviks take Russia out of the war and pose a new threat to the Open Door

American entry tips the balance though Germany is not militarily defeated

Wilson’s peace plan fails but the US becomes the global finance capital

A war against democracy at home

A world made safe only for more war
8
Pearl Harbor: The Spark but not the Cause

Day of infamy – or deception?

Japan’s empire threatens western colonialism

Admiral Richardson warns FDR that his measures threaten war

American military officials long understood that Pearl Harbor was vulnerable to surprise attack

Electronic intercepts and radio direction finders indicate Japan’s intent

Philippines left vulnerable by General MacArthur

Neither Germany nor Japan capable of attacking the continental US

If the Axis posed no military threat to the US what was the real worry?

America and the Holocaust: Not rescuing Jews

The atomic bombings: To save lives or to intimidate communists?

Downfall
9
Cold War: The Clash of Ideology or of Empires?

Soviets indispensable to defeat of Hitler

Yesterday’s essential ally becomes the new threat

The atomic arms race begins

Soviets withdraw voluntarily from conquered areas

Capitalism and communism vie for the loyalties of the defeated empires’ colonies

The threat of a closed world remains: Germany becomes a new axis

Control of oil becomes the linchpin of American policy

The ‘Martial Plan’

The future of Germany further polarizes the Cold War

Building the permanent war economy

Losing China to the Chinese
10
Cold War/Hot War: Savage Wars of Peace?

Creating the warfare state

Korea

Vietnam

The Middle East and the Cold War
11
War on Terror

A new American century?

Giving the Soviet Union its Vietnam War

Terrorists as ‘freedom fighters’

Terrorizing Iraqi civilians

Abandoning Afghanistan to warlords and the rise of the Taliban and Al Qaeda

Demonizing Iraq for the events of 9/11 to foster hysteria at home

The real reasons the US invaded Iraq

The prize

Co-opting the Russian and Chinese backyards
12
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgements
In addition to my editors at Pluto Press, especially Roger van Zwanenberg, Robert Webb and Rebecca Wise, I would like to recognize the following people who gave me direct assistance in the writing or conception of this book, or who gave me insight, inspiration or encouragement along the way:
Christine Atwood, Andrew Bacevich, the late Irving Bartlett, Kevin Bowen, Mary Anne Ferguson, Harold ‘Shep’ Gurwitz, Linda Rhine, Lois Rudnick, Winston Warfield, Marilyn Young and Howard Zinn.
Preface
For a quarter century I have been teaching courses at the University of Massachusetts-Boston on American wars of the twentieth century with emphasis upon social, political and economic consequences to the United States and the even more bitter costs to those nations on the receiving end of American firepower. Any assumptions I had initially about basic knowledge on the part of students were shattered early on. Even back in the 1980s, only a decade after the war in Vietnam ended, many students did not know whether the US had sided with the North or South. Many had no idea who Ho Chi Minh was. I encountered one student who had come to believe that the pernicious communists had employed ‘Asian Orange’ herbicides on American troops in an attempt to poison them. Many students, and presumably the larger public, remain unaware of what occurred at Pearl Harbor during World War II, or of what nations comprised the Axis. Nor could many name even one of the US presidents during that conflict! More than a few believed the US had fought the communists. World War I and the Korean War are terra incognita to say nothing of the Spanish–American, Mexican and all other wars. All this in a major university! Matters seem to be getting worse.
Gore Vidal mocks the country of his birth as ‘the United States of Amnesia’, knowing full well that none of this is an accident. Many years ago, shortly after undergraduate studies and just as the innovative educational experiments of the 1960s were undermined by the conservative reaction, I worked as a substitute high school teacher in a Boston suburb and attempted to bring in materials outside of the prescribed curriculum to make sense of matters in the assigned text that were incomprehensible otherwise. I was told in no uncertain terms that I would teach that curriculum or I would be gone. I was shortly gone. Commercial television, pop music and Hollywood have widely replaced reading as a source of ‘information’ and those who control such channels ensure that the menu of choice involves very little that can explicate for viewers the world they have inherited, much less provide any analysis or discussion about what alternatives might be possible. The culture of narcissism ensures a certain kind of moral blindness to the very real crises that emerge throughout the world and the suffering these impose on victims. The internet provides some hope but there is much quackery there and studies have shown that a majority of users visit pornography, sports or betting sites in any case.
So the conundrum remains: given the function of the mass media as purveyors of consumerist propaganda, how can we inject more relevant analysis of the past into the culture in order more clearly to illuminate our present and journey therefore into a better future?
Most young people remain aghast at the attacks that took 3,000 American lives on 9/11 but have no idea that the US has killed quite literally, directly or indirectly, millions of civilians across the planet since the 1940s, let alone the body count in the national territory since 1607. When informed that their nation has troops in 140 of the 191 nations globally most students shrug. If such is the case, they seem to imply, there must be a justifiable reason, and anyway what can be done about it? To the extent that students know anything of past wars these and the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are rationalized by the usual rhetoric. If queried to answer with any detail about why the US entered any of its wars the all-too-usual answer, often punctuated by a quizzical