Like Nazis in France…

The U.S. doesn’t spread democracy, it occupies countries as Empires do.

Most Americans, at least those who know anything, get sheepish around the words, empire, or colonies. “We don’t do that! We believe in freedom and democracy! Those are only territories!” To paraphrase the late, great Bill Hicks, you’d have to be a fool and a communist to believe otherwise, such as our culture would have you think.

However, we do live in an age where definitions of words like recession and retreating have been getting makeovers. Empire and colonies go back further, and we redefined those words around the turn of the last century. The Spanish American War was the beginning of U.S. colonial empire building overseas. The U.S., conquering the monarch worshipping, evil Spanish Empire took Puerto Rico, Guam, the Philippines and “control” of Cuba. The latter lasted 60 years until Castro and his Bolivarian revolutionaries took control of the country from the U.S. installed president, Fulgencio Batista, who ruled the last ten years. A quick side note: I marvel at how many Cuban nationals in Florida either forgot this part or simply don’t know it when the subject of blaming Castro comes up.

If they’d have just listened to me, this could have all been resolved by Tuesday!

The point is the U.S. occupies, colonizes, and robs nations of their resources, labor and future security and we’ll lie, cheat and murder to do it. In 1976, the Department of the Navy released a report that the USS Maine was blown up on accident due to an electrical fire. If we recall, the U.S. and Wm. Randolph Hearst blamed Cuban nationals and “remember the Maine!” became the blood thirsty rallying cry to justify war. Wait! You mean we spent blood and treasure for a war based on a lie? How eerily familiar…

Now, the U.S. is the proud owner of the above mentioned plus Hawaii. The Philippines finally gained independence in 1946, after nearly 50 years of colonial rule…by the U.S.

We decry the Nazi occupation of France and most of Europe, but we’re the same devil. We go into the mid east, and militarily squat in countries, stealing artifacts for western museums, oil, minerals, lithium, barium, metals, and anything else that isn’t nailed down. We saddle these countries with payday loan level debt. When we finally admit we lost, as in the case of Afghanistan or Syria, we impose brutal, crippling sanctions making it impossible to rebuild, all while starving their people. Of course, then we clutch our pearls and wonder why the Chinese are making so many friends…

The Nazis were in France for five years. How long has the U.S. been in the Mid-East? Yeah…

In 2020 the Iraqi Parliament unanimously voted to have the U.S. expelled from their country. We kindly told them to go fuck themselves and we’re still there. Syria, with the help of Iran and Russia, beat back ISIS, al Qaeda and al Nusra (all U.S. backed). We still occupy a full third of that nation. Care to guess which third? If this were a game show, I bet you’d say the oil and wheat producing part and you’d be correct. As Trump famously blundered, “We’re keeping the oil. We have the oil. The oil is secure. We left troops behind only for the oil.” See, in polite American, war monger circles, one’s not supposed to say that…

“We’re keeping the oil. We have the oil. The oil is secure. We left troops behind only for the oil.” Trump in U.S. element.

All told, the U.S. has over 1,000 bases, occupying 70% of the world and none by invitation. In Japan, the U.S. has over 40 bases, with 31 in Okinawa alone. We just destroyed a 3,000 year old, two mile coral reef for a 32nd base. Japanese citizens have routinely protested U.S. presence to no avail; it’s ours, we’re staying.

So, with an overall $1.3 trillion annual bomb budget dedicated to occupation and thievery and a wholly owned corporate media whose owners benefit from these wars and contracts, is it any wonder that we have no money for infrastructure and a social contract with American taxpayers? And yes, I know that’s a run-on sentence, but we have bigger issues at hand, don’t you think?

The world will buy our movies, our fast food, our gadgets, and our misery, right down to legal heroin or they’ll die trying to outrun us. Yep. We’re just like the Nazis, except they lost so they had to leave. We “won” so we got it all, democracy, human rights, and progress be damned. There’s no money in that.

Abe Abdelhadi hosts the Bitter Truth with Abe Abdelhadi on iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, etc.