From the first attacks on Native Americans to the aggression on Iran, Americans have been at war, with perhaps the biggest one yet to come. Ray McGovern and Patrick Lawrence. Tonight 8 p.m. EDT.
Guests: Ray McGovern and Patrick Lawrence. Host: Joe Lauria. Producer: Cathy Vogan
Segments:
- A Warlike People From Massachusetts Bay to the Persian Gulf
- Iran: The Memo of Misunderstanding
- A NATO Summit Lusts for War With Russia
By Joe Lauria
Special to Consortium News
It began as part of the British Empire and morphed into an empire of its own.
The vaunted Founders looked at a vast continent stretching into the interior, saw an empire of the future and turned its back on the empires of Europe. It could only be brought about with war. First against the native population.
The initial war to annihilate a tribe began in 1636 in the Massachusetts Bay Colony and Connecticut. The genocidal Indian Wars, as the white man called them, ended nearly 300 year later with the massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890. The Americans had taken over this imperial war from Britain.
There were other Europeans to fight too. First the British imperial yoke had to be thrown off to set America free to conquer the continent. Allied France, strapped for cash after its own wars with Britain, turned over its vast American domains without a fight and for a bargain price.
The Mexicans were next and bloodshed yielded California, Nevada, Colorado, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. The Northwest was won eventually in a treaty with Britain after President Polk campaigned with the waer jingoist slogan of “54°40′ or Fight!”
Once the continent was seized the imperial drive crossed the Pacific to take Hawaii, Guam and the Philippines, and over the Caribbean to get Puerto Rico and occupy Cuba. George Washington’s edict not to get entangled in European imperial wars was discarded by Woodrow Wilson who put an American foothold into Europe in the great war.
The atomic bombings at the conclusion of the second great war sparked a megalomaniacal American quest to dominate a devastated world. A relatively unharmed U.S. was left with military bases around a globe rich in natural resources and cheap labor ripe for the taking.
Seeking to control both led to cold war with America’s erstwhile Soviet allies. Central Intelligence Agency plots on five continents overthrow governments to keep them in the American camp.
When the 45-year struggle with Moscow ended, America triumphantly seized dominance of Russia’s government and economy until the rise of a Russian leader who took back control of his country.
The Western project since has been to replace him with another controllable leader, inlcluding by instigating war through its proxy in Ukraine. NATO now madly talks of direct conflict with Moscow.
In West Asia, U.S. dominance began by displacing the British and French and using its local ally to extend its influence including through genocide and unprovoked aggression.
The current U.S. administration does not cloak its imperial ambitions, reviving the language of 19th century colonialism.
All from that first major Native America war in Massachusetts to bombing a school full of girls in Iran.
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