Did You Know?
Did You Know?
Junious Ricardo Stanton
“The United States of America, unlike any other nation, maintains a massive network of foreign military bases around the world. How was this created and how is it continued? Some of these physical installations are on land occupied as spoils of war. Most are maintained through collaborations with governments, many of them brutal and oppressive governments benefiting from the bases’ presence. In many cases, human beings were displaced to make room for these military installations, often depriving people of farmland, adding huge amounts of pollution to local water systems and the air, and existing as an unwelcome presence.” https://worldbeyondwar.org/no-bases/
Merriam Webster Dictionary defines the word empire as: a major political unit having a territory of great extent or a number of territories or peoples under a single sovereign authority especially : one having an emperor as chief of state. Contrary to what we’ve been brainwashed to believe by our plutocratic overlords, the United States is a modern empire by every metric and definition of the word except there is no single person (emperor) as its head.
Unlike empires of old, the United States Empire does not have a single ruler. Here the real rulers are a plutocratic cabal, a combination of ultra-rich individuals who are major stockholders, asset managers, corporate CEOs, and related old money families who weld extraordinary power and influence not only in this country but globally. This cabal for the most part works in collusion to fashion policies and programs that enrich themselves, ensure they maintain their power and control over the socio-economic-political system but at the expense of the rest of the world!
The United States government was created by a clique of wealthy men who intentionally fashioned a government with themselves in charge. They were rich property owning white men, who created a government to the total exclusion of all others who were not like themselves. They purposely omitted poor white males, all women, all indigenous people and all enslaved and bonded persons regardless of race and gender! This group always envisioned taking over the whole continent of North America. They even waged a brief war with Canada https://theweek.com/articles/473482/americas-invasion-canada-brief-history#:~:text=Frontier%20inhabitants%20were%20eager%20to,way%20of%20America%27s%20westward%20expansion. and a war with Mexico. In the Mexican-American War which they easily won, they were able to acquire vast swaths of territory which include modern day Texas, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, California and Colorado.
The United States leaders always had expansionist ideas and motives. They knew they who have to eliminate, move or exterminate the indigenous inhabitants of this land and elsewhere to accomplish their aims. They always couched their predatory intentions in noble sounding words like spreading freedom and democracy. They popularized their imperialist agenda in the public calling it “Manifest Destiny” to generate support and to psychologically prepare the masses for their imperialist campaigns.
It wasn’t just North American land and resources the US elites coveted; they wanted much more and they set out to get it. Their strategy was to pick a fight with a declining European empire and take their possessions, in 1898 they chose Spain. Cuba was part of Spain’s holdings in the Western hemisphere. The Cubans were in revolt against Spanish colonialism and the US used that as their excuse to go to war against Spain. An explosion on the USS Main was used by the media who were in cahoots with the plutocratic imperialist warmongers. “Remember the Maine” was their war cry and they were off and running. In that war which the US easily won, the spoils were additional territory for the burgeoning US Empire. “The Spanish-American War of 1898 ended Spain’s colonial empire in the Western Hemisphere and secured the position of the United States as a Pacific power. U.S. victory in the war produced a peace treaty that compelled the Spanish to relinquish claims on Cuba, and to cede sovereignty over Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines to the United States. The United States also annexed the independent state of Hawaii during the conflict. Thus, the war enabled the United States to establish its predominance in the Caribbean region and to pursue its strategic and economic interests in Asia.” https://history.state.gov/milestones/1866-1898/spanish-american-war
The US also attended the infamous Berlin Conference in 1884 where Western Europe schemed to cannibalize the African continent, the US was there to protect its quasi colony Liberia and scout out ways to expand on the continent vis a vis the other European colonial powers.
The real deal is that the US oligarchy is just as imperialist as their European blood relatives and in many ways they are more ruthless and savage. The notion a US military that has eight hundred and sixty-seven active bases spread around the world is “a force for good”, that they are protecting “freedom and democracy” is pure propaganda and pig poop! The US military exists to seize, secure and protect raw materials and resources, command vital Geo-strategic locations and project hard power as a global empire! The only war the US fought that was truly defensive to protect itself and its sovereignty was the War of 1812 all the others were wars of conquest, imperialist expansion or the result of blowback against US imperial policies like the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
Empires are expensive to maintain and the US is feeling the strain of its’ empire. It takes money to operate eight hundred and sixty-seven military bases around the world. The US spends more on its so called “defense” budget than the top ten spending countries combined. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/u-s-military-spending-vs-other-top-countries/. The consciousness of imperialists also impact the citizens, the plutocrats spend billion to promote their military in advertising and propaganda. “ There are several military advertising campaigns running at the same time, on various platforms, thanks to the military’s over $600 million advertising budget. Some months of the year, YouTube appears overrun by military ad campaigns with videogame-like graphics, appealing to young Americans with the prospect of nationalistic heroism. They present the military as a benevolent actor, a powerful force for justice and salvation. But these ads reveal the failure of the U.S. to address the problems facing young people (low wages, expensive health care, underfunded schools); issues remain unaddressed while the military’s budget increases.” Military spending reveals America’s failure to support our generation https://emorywheel.com/military-marketing-reveals-americas-failure-to-support-our-generation/ . The spending for empire and war takes resources that could be used for peaceful domestic purposes like infrastructure improvement, health care, research and development and a host of beneficial projects! Empire has its consequences, which is why America is hated around the world! Please remember this the next time someone speaks to you about “American Exceptionalism”, freedom and democracy.
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posted by Junious Ricardo Stanton @ 2:11 PM
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