The Sins of America

Nancy O'Brien Simpson

Oh, the outrage!  The hyperbole!  Putin is a madman out to conquer the world.  All of Europe is in danger of his machinations!  Never since WW2 has there been this kind of blatant naked aggression!

Dear reader, I assure you this is said with a straight face.  From the noblest and most righteous country on the face of the earth.  Everything we do is done with integrity and honor.  And, so Americans pat themselves on the back flush with pride in their wondrous nation.  

And yet.  Reality is navigated from the vantage point of the individual and the propaganda he lives by.  What appears noble to Americans is pure terror and destruction to those on the receiving end of our noblesse oblige.  

If we were honest and could look at our own actions as a country we would see that our atrocities around the world are perhaps the most heinous of any modern country.  We have committed war crimes, terrorism, assassination, and genocide.  For some reason, our acts of terror have a sweet smell of misguided blunders done with the best of intentions.  While the acts of other countries are malicious and executed with vile intentions.

Napalming villages

The list of our atrocities is a long one.  Let's think of napalming villages in Vietnam and Cambodia.  

"Out in the open, napalm caused severe burns all over the body, burns which were far worse than the ones caused by fire in general. Human skin becomes covered with viscous magma that resembles tar. Napalm causes wounds that are too deep to heal. In contact with humans, it would immediately stick to the skin and melt the flesh. There is no way to put the fire out, except by smothering it, which causes unbearable pain. In panic, many victims would try to wipe it off, but this only causes the fire to spread, expanding the burn area."

From 1963 to 1973 we dropped 388,000 tons of napalm on villages.  On women, men and children we burned them to death in the most monstrous way imaginable.  But, dear reader, we had the best of intentions.

The CIA and other defense agencies in America were so out of control with assassination attempts, dirty tricks, and coups in countries they deemed undesirable that a congressional committee was formed in 1975 to look into the horrors being perpetrated.  

"The most shocking revelations of the committee include Operation MKULTRA involving the drugging and torture of unwitting US citizens as part of human experimentation on mind control; COINTELPRO involving the surveillance and infiltration of American political and civil-rights organizations; Family Jewels, a CIA program to covertly assassinate foreign leaders; Operation Mockingbird as a systematic propaganda campaign with domestic and foreign journalists operating as CIA assets and dozens of US news organizations providing cover for CIA activity."

"The Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, Foreign and Military Intelligence". Church Committee report, no. 94-755, 94th Cong., 2d Sess. 

They continued with bloodshed

Did this stop them?  Hell no.  They continued with their bloodshed all over the world unimpeded or constrained by conscience.  Consider Iraq.  In order to nurse a revenge itch that George W. Bush had the CIA manufactured the lie that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.  Which they did not. 

This gave Bush and his military the right to enter a sovereign country and bomb them so savagely that they will probably never fully recover.  There is no way to accurately ascertain the body count however The Iraq Body Count project documents 185,000–208,000 violent civilian deaths as a result of that war.  This does not include the Iraqi military deaths which could be double that number.  And, while these people were dying do you know what Americans did?  We beat our chests and waved our flags and shouted, "Shock and Awe!  We gave 'em shock and awe!"

And, when we found out there were no weapons of mass destruction and it was all a lie to invade Iraq we murmured, "Ooops our little blunder, sorry about your luck." 

Are you aware that the Freedom of Information Act yielded the information that the CIA made numerous attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro?  They did not like him so ...he had to die.  Do you remember Hillary Clinton cackling when we assassinated Momar Guadafi?  She proudly declared for all to hear, "We came, we saw, he died."  

And, then we boldly before the entire world broke international law and assassinated General Soleimani.  Agnes Callamard presented findings to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.  Her report said there was no justification for the assassination and that the USA had violated international law. 

And, then there is our outrage if Russia or any country tries to intervene in our elections.  Heck if Russia places an anti-Hillary meme on FB the entire country melts down.  However, if we meddle in the elections of other countries it is because we care so much about democracy and human rights and we're such good guys.  

I need to stop here for the list is simply too laborious to continue.  For the USA to cast stones at Putin is the epitome of throwing stones from a glasshouse.  For the mayhem, the napalm, the bombs, the drones the death the displacement we have caused all over the world we need to tread lightly on the name-calling and demonizing of others.   

This is not to mention that in this Ukraine morass it was the USA ginning up war and beating the war drums day in and day out.  Refusing to negotiate or listen to the legitimate grievances of Russia.  

Why?  Biden needs a scapegoat for his disastrous presidency. Something to take attention from his continuous failures.  Even our MSM gets it as evidenced by this opinion piece by Raheem Kassam in Newsweek:

"So, of course, to war. Whether in lock-step or goose-step, the rest of the ruling class amplifies Biden's thirst for something, anything that provides respite from domestic catastrophe. We are just days away from front-page headlines dubbing the tent cities across America "Bidenvilles." Something must be done. And that thing, to paraphrase Vice President Kamala Harris, is the thing they have been doing, every day: point at Russia.

"Putin is the devil and Russia subverted American democracy" has become a moralistic mantra for every Biden booster and Foggy Bottom staffer. But flaccid, obfuscatory jaw-jawing over the moral turpitude of Russia's dealings with Ukraine has also whet the appetites of the long-benched war lobby."

That is but one of the many benefits of a Russian war with Ukraine.  Also, we could isolate Russia when she made a move to defend her borders.  We could derail the Nord Stream 2 from supplying oil to the EU and we could foist our oil on them without the competition.  We could turn Russia into a permanent pariah state and bolster our ability to sell armaments to NATO.  

And, in closing as my friend Caitlin Johnstone states:

"Unpopular opinion but I think those who are crowing that this marks the dawn of a multipolar world may be jumping the gun a bit. If the U.S. empire can succeed in crippling Russia’s economy and fomenting unrest, Balkanization and collapse there, it knocks out a key pillar of China’s support system, and China is the ultimate target in all these unipolarist maneuverings. If the U.S. can do this (and that’s a big if, I know), at that point the empire can set to work on China without its guard bear there to protect it. Which of course would have been the plan all along. Which of course would be why the empire and its propaganda engine have been acting so weird these last few years."