In my opinion the most important argument against imperialist wars is their immorality. It’s a terrible shame that U.S. politicians don’t use this argument more often. I guess they feel that they will be accused of being “weak” or “soft on defense”, or some such nonsense if they do so.

How do we know when our wars are based on imperialist motives, when we’re always told that they are based on some noble motive or need for self-preservation? President McKinley, attempting to justify our occupation of the Philippines in 1899, said:


Our justification for our Vietnam War was Communism. Though the Geneva Conference Agreements of 1954 provided for general elections which were to bring about the unification of Vietnam, U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles intervened to prevent those elections from taking place. From the time that we prevented the Vietnamese from holding elections in 1956 until our withdrawal from Vietnam 17 years later, the justification for our imperial policies there was always to help the Vietnamese throw of the yolk of Communism, and also to prevent the spread of Communism to other countries.


So how do we know when we’re involved in an imperialist war?

One thing is for certain. Whenever we (or any other country) attempt to occupy another country, we’re told that we do so for their own good. How do we know if that’s true? Well, if we kill hundreds of thousands of civilians or if we create millions of refugees in the country that we’re trying to “civilize” or bring “democracy” to, or whatever, it doesn’t seem too likely that our leaders are telling us the truth about their noble motives.

For example, an April 2007 article in The Nation by Dahr Jamail noted about 4 million Iraqi refugees as of that date. Add one million dead to that figure, and we can calculate that about one fifth of the original Iraqi population since the 2003 U.S. invasion has either died as a result of the war or occupation or become refugees. Jamail’s article explains at least one reason for so many refugees:


That doesn’t sound like a very good way to “bring democracy” to a country, does it?

We also have opinion polls of Iraqis, in the event that any of our leaders care to look at them. An opinion poll of Iraqis in September 2006 should have told us all we needed to know about the success and legitimacy of our “liberation” effort:

 78% said that the U.S. military presence is provoking more conflict than it is preventing.
 61% said that U.S. military withdrawal would increase security for ordinary Iraqis.
 61% approved of violent attacks on U.S. led forces.
 91% said that U.S. forces should withdraw within two years or less.


Atrocities associated with imperialist guerilla wars

When a powerful country attempts to occupy a militarily weaker country against the will of its people, a tragic cycle of events tends to take place. Because of the disparity in traditional military strength, the occupied country tends to resort to guerilla warfare. If resentment against the occupier is widespread, which it often is, guerilla warfare tends to be widely dispersed, and large portions of the population participate in it. It therefore becomes difficult or impossible for the occupier to differentiate civilians from fighters. That increases the tendency of the occupier to respond with massacres and other atrocities, which increases the resentment of the occupied people and causes an increasing number of them to join the insurgency.

A report in the Philadelphia Ledger in 1901 gave the American people their first glimpse of the atrocities committed during the American-Philippine War:


The Mai Lai massacre during the Vietnam War is the most well known atrocity of that war, though it was only the tip of the iceberg. Here is a brief summary of it:


A report by a coalition of non-governmental groups called the Global Policy Forum shed a lot of light on some of the reasons for the tragedies that so many Iraqis have suffered under the U.S. occupation. The report explains that U.S. forces:



The consequences of our guerilla wars of occupation

The participation of the United States in guerilla wars has usually been in the role of the occupier. There was one exception, the one that began in 1775 and led to our birth as a nation – and that was the only one that we won.

Theodore Roosevelt inherited the Philippine War in September 1901, when President McKinley was assassinated. By the time he declared the Philippines “pacified” on July 4, 1902, 4,373 American soldiers had died in the war, along with an estimated 16 thousand Filipino soldiers and 20 thousand Filipino civilians.

By the time we left Vietnam in 1973, 58,000 American troops had died in the war, along with about two million Vietnamese. The cost to the U.S. was about $600 billion.

Our invasion of Iraq, a country that posed no threat to us whatsoever, has accomplished nothing but the deaths of thousands of American soldiers, more than a million Iraqis, and the destruction of their country and society.

In summary, throughout our history our attempts to occupy militarily weaker nations against their will have been utter failures and massive moral tragedies.

So what about Afghanistan?


Will Afghanistan turn out differently? – The difficulties of winning guerilla wars

William R. Polk recently wrote an open letter to President Obama, published in The Nation, in which he urged him to withdraw our military from Afghanistan. Polk was a professor at the University of Chicago, where he established the Center for Middle Eastern Studies and was president of the Adlai Stevenson Institute of International Affairs, following his work in the Kennedy administration, where he was a member of the Policy Planning Council responsible the Middle East and Central Asia.

In his letter to the president, he gave many reasons for withdrawing for Afghanistan, including: the enormous costs; that it is not helpful towards our goals of capturing Osama bin Laden or neutralizing al Qaeda; that our lack of understanding of its culture and people greatly hinders our effectiveness there; that we are creating far more enemies by being there than we are eliminating, and; the historic failures of other countries that have tried to occupy Afghanistan, such as the British from 1842 to 1919 and the Soviet Union in the 1980s. But by far the most prominent theme of Polk’s letter dealt with the difficulties of winning guerilla wars while trying to occupy a country whose people deeply resent being occupied. He begins that subject by drawing a parallel with Vietnam:


Most important, Polk draws a direct correlation between our poor prospects in Afghanistan and the unpopularity of our military presence and the puppet regime we support:


Most important, our mere presence in Afghanistan defeats our purpose. Polk concludes:



The intersection of morality and self-interest

I said at the beginning of this post that I believe that the most important argument against imperialist wars is that they are immoral. So I find it very interesting – and hopeful – that the very fact that they immoral establishes the conditions for the defeat of the occupier’s imperial ambitions as well. The immorality of an occupation – that it, the brutality and the indifference to human suffering with which they are generally conducted – sow the seeds of resentment that leads to the defeat of the occupier. Polk subtly makes that point in his letter to Obama without actually bringing morals into the discussion (It’s virtually taboo in American politics to mix discussions of morality with war):


Polk makes the same point with regard to the Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan:


Our occupation of Afghanistan may be worth while to certain interests associated with the military-industrial complex. But even if “successful”, it will not solve the problem of terrorism. As Polk points out, “Since terrorist attacks can be mounted from many places, the only effective long-term defense against them is to deal with their causes.”

The cause of the terrorist threat that we face is Muslim hatred of our country. That hatred is fueled by our occupation of their lands and intrusions into their affairs (such as our overthrow of the democratically elected government of Iran in 1953) – which not coincidentally preceded their hatred of us. In other words, imperialist ambition sows hatred, which then blows back upon the imperialists – and not just the imperialists themselves, but also the innocent civilians who have the misfortune of living in a country that is largely controlled by imperialists.


Some lessons we could learn from George McGovern

George McGovern during the Vietnam War was the Dennis Kucinich of our day. He was the first politician I campaigned for or voted for. His campaign for president in 1972 was derailed by a barrage of lies and dirty tricks, reminiscent of the campaigns of Al Gore and John Kerry in 2000 and 2004. Most of all, his courageous opposition to the Vietnam War allowed his opponents to peg him as a pacifist.

But George McGovern was no pacifist. He was a bomber pilot and war hero in WW II, who advocated the bombing of Nazi concentration camps in order to more directly combat the genocide taking place in those camps. As a U.S. Senator in 1978, McGovern was one of the very few U.S. politicians who advocated intervention in Cambodia in order to stop the genocide taking place there. McGovern asked in response to that genocide, “Do we sit on the sidelines and watch a population slaughtered or do we marshal military force and put an end to it?”

But when it came to immoral imperialist wars his opposition was fierce. He was one of three or four U.S. Senators who opposed U.S. involvement in the early years of the Vietnam War, as manifested by the McGovern-Hatfield Amendment (defeated by 55-39), which required the complete withdrawal of American forces over a period of several months. In pushing for his amendment to end the war, McGovern was not afraid to point fingers at his Senate colleagues (Democratic as well as Republican): Rick Perlstein, in his book “Nixonland”, describes following the scene:


McGovern succinctly summed up the lesson that we should have learned from Vietnam (and Iraq) when he said “We seem bent on saving the Vietnamese from Ho Chi Minh even if we have to kill them and demolish their country to do it”. And more recently he said about his opposition to the Vietnam War, while alluding to the Iraq War:



Getting out

Near the end of his letter to Obama, Polk briefly discusses how to get out of Afghanistan:


In their book “Out of Iraq”, McGovern and Polk discuss: a phased withdrawal of coalition and mercenary troops with replacement by an international police force to maintain security; the release of prisoners of war; and reconstruction of the country (about which they go into great detail), with reparations to reimburse the Iraqis for their loss of life and property.

Most important of all is the renouncing of U.S. imperial and corporate ambitions. Because a major reason for the Iraq insurgency is hostility towards the American occupation, which is based upon the (accurate) perception that imperial ambitions and corporate greed are largely responsible for the American presence in Iraq, it is essential that we renounce all imperial and corporate ambitions. Words alone will not suffice for that purpose. Rather, we must cease construction of the numerous huge American military bases in Iraq and allow the Iraqis to void all oil contracts made during the occupation, so that they can be renegotiated on fair terms or opened to fair bidding.

These things, as well as the reconstruction and reparations, were recommended not only because they would go far towards stabilizing Iraq and restoring the international reputation of the United States, but also because they are the right and fair things to do. And as part of these gestures of goodwill, McGovern and Polk also recommended that we sincerely express our condolences for the numerous Iraqis killed, maimed, unfairly imprisoned, and tortured as a result of the American war and occupation.


Why these things need to be discussed

Many of the things I’ve discussed in this post are taboo in American politics. Right wingers get apoplectic when they hear talk of the need for our country to reduce its military spending or activity, or of the need to make amends and apologize for the wrongs that we’ve done. Even some DUers get very upset with me for talking about these things.

But to the extent that a nation – or an individual – is incapable or unwilling to admit a mistake or apologize, then there is no hope that it will change. It will continue to be controlled by its corporate and imperialistic interests, leading to an ever increasing cycle of violence begetting hate begetting more violence.

I’ve apologized many times in my life, and I see no reason why my country can’t do the same when it does wrong. As George McGovern said, “We need more politicians in this country who are willing to say, ‘I made a mistake. Let's correct it as soon as possible’.”

Kelly Dougherty, executive director of Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW), explained why we need to talk about these things at a Winter Soldier meeting in 2008:


What the Winter Soldiers had to say was indeed not easy to hear or talk about. Marjorie Cohn and Kathleen Gilberd describe the testimony of numerous U.S. veterans in their book, “Rules of Disengagement”:


But if we don’t talk about these things they will never change. Americans pride themselves on being a moral people. And most of them are. But they need to wake up and smell the coffee. They need to hear a lot more about – and think a lot more about – the things that their government does in their name. Once that happens they will no longer stand for it.