Introduction

The USA government blames hatred of democracy and envy at the American way of life for this resentment. Many people in the USA and a majority around the world look towards USA foreign policy for the answers. Much of this policy, its history and consequences is under-reported by the American media.

The American people are generally a friendly, kindly and compassionate people. If they knew one tenth of what their governments get up to around the world and in their dealings with foreign governments and people, there would be an enormous outcry. For this reason much is hidden or obscurred. Since the terrible events on 11 September 2001, many Americans have taken to the internet to find out more about the world beyond their borders.

However, when you read these items, do not simply believe everything - always check for yourself. Treat the stories and quotes in these pages as pointers and use the information to find out more. Learn to think and check all information. The facts are there if you look for them.

These pages are dedicated to all victims of private or state terrorism regardless of nationality, race,

gender, religious belief (or otherwise), or political views.

Tables and Lists of USA Actions Since 1945

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Current Questions

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Quotes

"We don't really give a damn for what anybody thinks. We rub everyone's face in it. We're Americans and you're not. We're really talking the Roman Empire here. We'll do anything we want to do and anywhere we want to do it. You're either with us or against us. Multi-lateral institutions like the UN are incidental and irrelevant to the powers that be. This is the image we're sending to the world. That is what much of the world feels about this country this minute."

Dr. Robert M. Bowman, a retired Lieutenant Colonel from the USA Air Force, in an open letter to the USA President, George W Bush (2001):

"We are not hated because we practice democracy, freedom, and human rights. We are hated because our government denies these things to people in third world countries whose resources are coveted by our multinational corporations. And that hatred we have sown has come back to haunt us in the form of terrorism..."

"We are the target of terrorists because we stand for dictatorship, bondage, and human exploitation in the world. We are the target of terrorists because we are hated. And we are hated because our government has done hateful things. In how many countries have we deposed popularly elected leaders and replaced them with puppet military dictators who were willing to sell out their own people to American multinational corporations?"

"We did it in Iran when we deposed Mossadegh because he wanted to nationalize the oil industry. We replaced him with the Shah, and trained, armed, and paid his hated Savak national guard, which enslaved and brutalized the people of Iran. All to protect the financial interests of our oil companies. Is it any wonder there are people in Iran who hate us?"

"We did it in Chile when we deposed Allende, democratically elected by the people to introduce socialism. We replaced him with the brutal right-wing military dictator, General Pinochet. Chile has still not recovered."

"We did it in Vietnam when we thwarted democratic elections in the South which would have united the country under Ho Chi Minh. We replaced him with a series of ineffectual puppet crooks who invited us to come in and slaughter their people, and we did. (I flew 101 combat missions in that war....)"

"We did it in Iraq, where we killed a quarter of a million civilians in a failed attempt to topple Saddam Hussein, and where we have killed a million since then with our sanctions. About half of these innocent victims have been children under the age of five."

"And, of course, how many times have we done it in Nicaragua and all the other banana republics of Latin America? Time after time we have ousted popular leaders who wanted the riches of the land to be shared by the people who worked it. We replaced them with murderous tyrants who would sell out and control their own people so that the wealth of the land could be taken out by Domino Sugar, the United Fruit Company, Folgers, and Chiquita Banana."

"In country after country, our government has thwarted democracy, stifled freedom, and trampled human rights. That's why we are hated around the world. And that's why we are the target of terrorists."

"People in Canada enjoy better democracy, more freedom, and greater human rights than we do. So do the people of Norway and Sweden. Have you heard of Canadian embassies being bombed? Or Norwegian embassies? Or Swedish embassies. No. We are not hated because we practice democracy, freedom, and human rights."

"Instead of sending our sons and daughters around the world to kill Arabs so the oil companies can sell the oil under their sand, we must send them to rebuild their infrastructure, supply clean water, and feed starving children. Instead of continuing to kill thousands of Iraqi children every day with our sanctions, we must help them rebuild their electric power plants, their water treatment facilities, their hospitals; all the things we destroyed in our war against them and prevented them from rebuilding with our sanctions."

"Instead of seeking to be king of the hill, we must become a responsible member of the family of nations. Instead of stationing hundreds of thousands of troops around the world to protect the financial interests of our multinational corporations, we must bring them home and expand the Peace Corps. Instead of training terrorists and death squads in the techniques of torture and assassination, we must close the School of the Americas (no matter what name they use). Instead of supporting military dictatorships, we must support true democracy; the right of the people to choose their own leaders. Instead of supporting insurrection, destabilization, assassination, and terror around the world, we must abolish the CIA and give the money to relief agencies."

"In short, we do good instead of evil. We become the good guys, once again."

"The threat of terrorism would vanish. That is what the American people need to hear. We are good people. We only need to be told the truth and given the vision. You can do it, Mr. President. Stop the killing. Stop the justifying. Stop the retaliating. Put people first. Tell them the truth."

John Gerassi, USA citizen:

"I can't help crying. As soon as I see a person on TV telling the heart-rendering story of the tragic fate of their loved one in the World Trade Center disaster, I can't control my tears. But then I wonder why didn't I cry when our troops wiped out some 5,000 poor people in Panama's El Chorillo neighborhood on the excuse of looking for Noriega. Our leaders knew he was hiding elsewhere but we destroyed El Chorillo because the folks living there were nationalists who wanted the USA out of Panama completely." "Worse still, why didn't I cry when we killed two million Vietnamese, mostly innocent peasants, in a war which its main architect, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, knew we could not win? When I went to give blood the other day, I spotted a Cambodian doing the same, three up in the line, and that reminded me: Why didn't I cry when we helped Pol Pot butcher another million by giving him arms and money, because he was opposed to "our enemy" (who eventually stopped the killing fields)?" "To stay up but not cry that evening, I decided to go to a movie. I chose Lumumba, at the Film Forum, and again I realized that I hadn't cried when our government arranged for the murder of the Congo's only decent leader, to be replaced by General Mobutu, a greedy, vicious, murdering dictator. Nor did I cry when the CIA arranged for the overthrow of Indonesia's Sukarno, who had fought the Japanese World War II invaders and established a free independent country, and then replaced him by another General, Suharto, who had collaborated with the Japanese and who proceeded to execute at least half a million 'Marxists' (in a country where, if folks had ever heard of Marx, it was at best Groucho)?" "I watched TV again last night and cried again at the picture of that wonderful now missing father playing with his two-month old child. Yet when I remembered the slaughter of thousands of Salvadorans, so graphically described in the Times by Ray Bonner, or the rape and murder of those American nuns and lay sisters there, all perpetrated by CIA trained and paid agents, I never shed a tear. I even cried when I heard how brave had been Barbara Olson, wife of the Solicitor General, whose political views I detested. But I didn't cry when the USA invaded that wonderful tiny Caribbean nation of Grenada and killed innocent citizens who hoped to get a better life by building a tourist airfield, which my government called proof of a Russian base, but then finished building once the island was secure in the US camp again." "Why didn't I cry when Ariel Sharon, today Israel's prime minister, planned, then ordered, the massacre of two thousand poor Palestinians in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila, the same Sharon who, with such other Irgun and Stern Gang terrorists become prime ministers as Begin and Shamir, killed the wives and children of British officers by blowing up the King David hotel where they were billeted?" "I guess one only cries only for one's own. But is that a reason to demand vengeance on anyone who might disagree with us? That's what Americans seem to want. Certainly our government does, and so too most of our media. Do we really believe that we have a right to exploit the poor folk of the world for our benefit, because we claim we are free and they are not?" "So now we're going to go to war. We are certainly entitled to go after those who killed so many of our innocent brothers and sisters. And we'll win, of course. Against Bin Laden. Against Taliban. Against Iraq. Against whoever and whatever. In the process we'll kill a few innocent children again. Children who have no clothes for the coming winter. No houses to shelter them. And no schools to learn why they are guilty, at two or four or six years old. Maybe Evangelists Falwell and Robertson will claim their death is good because they weren't Christians, and maybe some State Department spokesperson will tell the world that they were so poor that they're now better off." "And then what? Will we now be able to run the world the way we want to? With all the new legislation establishing massive surveillance of you and me, our CEOs will certainly be pleased that the folks demonstrating against globalization will now be cowed for ever. No more riots in Seattle, Quebec or Genoa. Peace at last." "Until next time. Who will it be then? A child grown-up who survived our massacre of his innocent parents in El Chorillo? A Nicaraguan girl who learned that her doctor mother and father were murdered by a bunch of gangsters we called democratic contras who read in the CIA handbook that the best way to destroy the only government which was trying to give the country's poor a better lot was to kill its teachers, health personnel, and government farm workers? Or maybe it will be a bitter Chilean who is convinced that his whole family was wiped out on order of Nixon's Secretary of State Henry Kissinger who could never tell the difference between a communist and a democratic socialist or even a nationalist." "When will we Americans learn that as long as we keep trying to run the world for the sake of the bottom line, we will suffer someone's revenge? No war will ever stop terrorism as long as we use terror to have our way. So I stopped crying because I stopped watching TV. I went for a walk. Just four houses from mine. There, a crowd had congregated to lay flowers and lit candles in front of our local firehouse. It was closed. It had been closed since Tuesday because the firemen, a wonderful bunch of friendly guys who always greeted neighborhood folks with smiles and good cheer, had rushed so fast to save the victims of the first tower that they perished with them when it collapsed. And I cried again." "So I said to myself when I wrote this, don't send it; some of your students, colleagues, neighbors will hate you, maybe even harm you. But then I put on the TV again, and there was Secretary of State Powell telling me that it will be okay to go to war against these children, these poor folks, these USA haters, because we are civilized and they are not. So I decided to risk it. Maybe, reading this, one more person will ask: Why are so many people in the world ready to die to give us a taste of what we give them?"

George W Bush, USA president during the State of the Union address on 28 January 2003:

"Throughout the 20th century small groups of men seized control of great nations, built armies and arsenals, and set out to dominate the weak and intimidate the world."

Ann Coulter, USA commentator for the Republican Party discussing the Middle East:

"We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity."

Robert Hunter Wade, professor of political economy at the London School of Economics (UK) and author of "Governing the Market" (Princeton University Press):

"Suppose you are a modern-day Roman emperor, leader of the most powerful country in a world of sovereign states and international markets. What international political economy do you create so that, without having to throw your weight around too much, normal market forces bolster the economic pre-eminence of your country, allow your citizens to consume far more than they produce, and keep challengers down?" "You want autonomy to decide on your own exchange rate and monetary policy, while having other countries depend on your support in managing their own economies. You want to be able to engineer volatility and economic crises in the rest of the world in order to hinder the growth of centres that might challenge your pre-eminence. You want intense competition between exporters in the rest of the world to give you an inflow of imports at constantly decreasing prices relative to the price of your exports. You want to invite the best brains in the rest of the world to your universities, companies and research institutes. You befriend middle classes elsewhere and make sure they have good reasons for supporting your framework. What features do you hard-wire into the international political economy?" "First, free capital mobility." "Second, free trade (except imports that threaten domestic industries important for your reselection)." "Third, international investment free from any discriminatory favouring of national companies through protection, public procurement, public ownership or other devices, with special emphasis on the freedom of your companies to get the custom of national elites for the management of their financial assets, their private education, healthcare, pensions, and the like." "Fourth, your currency as the main reserve currency." "Fifth, no constraint on your ability to create your currency at will (such as a dollar-gold link), so that you can finance unlimited trade deficits with the rest of the world." "Sixth, international lending at variable interest rates denominated in your currency, which means that borrowing countries in crisis have to repay you more when their capacity to repay is less. This combination allows your people to consume far more than they produce (and it periodically produces financial instability and crises in the rest of the world). To supervise the international framework you want international organisations that look like cooperatives of member states and carry the legitimacy of multilateralism, but are financed in a way that allows you control." "Is the above a Machiavellian interpretation of the US role in the world economy since the end of the Bretton Woods regime around 1970? Certainly. America's engineering of its dominance has at times been for the general good, when it used its clout to "think for the world". But often its clout has been used solely in the interests of its richest citizens and most powerful corporations. This latter tendency has been dominant lately. We see it in its new single-minded unilateralism in international relations, much exacerbated by the mixture of rage at September 11 and gung-ho jubilation at "success" in Afghanistan. And we see it in what the United States is now ramming through the international supervisory organisations." "The USA has engineered the WTO to commit itself to negotiate a general agreement on trade in services, which will facilitate a global market in private healthcare, welfare, pensions, education and water, supplied - naturally - by USA companies, and which will undermine political support for universal access to social services in developing countries. It has engineered a "private sector development" agenda devoted to accelerating the private (and nongovernmental) provision of basic services on a commercial basis. The World Bank has made no evaluation of its earlier efforts to support private participation in social sectors. Its new private development thrust, especially in the social sectors, owes everything to USA pressure." "These power relations and exercises of statecraft are obscured in the current talk about globalisation. The increasing mobility of information, finance, goods and services frees the American government of constraints while more tightly constraining everyone else. Globalisation enables the US to harness the rest of the world to its own rhythms and structure." "Of course these arrangements do not produce terrorism. But they are deeply implicated in the very slow economic growth in most of the developing world since 1980, and in the widening world income inequality. Slow economic growth and vast income disparities breed cohorts of partly educated young people who grow up in anger and despair. Some try by legal or illegal means to migrate to the west; some join militant ethnic or religious movements directed at each other and their own rulers. But now the idea has spread among a few vengeful fundamentalists that the USA should be attacked directly." "The USA and its allies can stamp out specific groups by force and bribery. But in the longer run, the structural arrangements that replicate a grossly unequal world have to be redesigned, so that markets working within the new framework produce more equitable results. Historians looking back a century hence will say that the time to have begun was now."

Tariq Ali, UK writer:

"There are 189 member states of the UN. There is, according to USA Defense Department figures, a USA military presence in 120 countries today."

Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategies, Forces And Resources For A New Century, a document produced in 2000 by advisers to the USA government (page 28):

"This is especially important in light of the nascent European moves toward an independent defense 'identity' and policy; it is important that NATO not be replaced by the European Union, leaving the United States without a voice in European security affairs."

Page 40:

"American landpower is the essential link in the chain that translates U.S. military supremacy into American geopolitical preeminence."

Gregg Easterbrook, journalist in the USA newspaper, The New York Times, writing about American military force:

"For years to come, no other nation is likely even to try to rival American might. Other nations are not even trying to match American armed force, because they are so far behind they have no chance of catching up. The great-powers arms race, in progress for centuries, has ended with the rest of the world conceding triumph to the United States."

Major General Smedley D. Butler, USA strategist, 1935.

"Lest this seem to be the bellicose pipedream of some dyspeptic desk soldier, let us remember that the military deal of our country has never been defensive warfare. Since the Revolution, only the United Kingdom has beaten our record for square miles of territory acquired by military conquest. Our exploits against the American Indian, against the Filipinos, the Mexicans, and against Spain are on a par with the campaigns of Genghis Khan, the Japanese in Manchuria and the African attack of Mussolini. No country has ever declared war on us before we first obliged them with that gesture. Our whole history shows we have never fought a defensive war. And at the rate our armed forces are being implemented at present, the odds are against our fighting one in the near future."

External Links

F.A.I.R.

Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. This site examines bias in the mainstream media of the USA and the reasons behind it.

ZNet Magazine

A huge collection of articles with excellent coverage of world events by investigative journalists from all over the world. The type of information the mainstream media should be giving out but often fail to.

Human Rights Watch

Check how human rights are violated around the world from this New York based site.

Amnesty International

Amnesty International watch and react to human rights abuses around the world. There are hundreds of reports arranged by continent, region and country. Individuals can help in specific cases.

Foreign Policy in Focus

USA based site looking at American foreign policy.

One World

Detailed news from around the world with full and clear analysis. Articles look at commercial activities that affect people and the environment.

CounterPunch

An American political newsletter covering international news.

Truth Out

A look at world affairs from many points of view, including "Why The US Inspired Scorn".

US Imperialism

An extensive list of statistics about USA foreign policy, including client states, debt leverage, foreign base hosts, and propaganda campaigns.

USA Chemical Weapons

A map of locations of USA chemical weapons published by E-Journal of Modern Strategy.

Why Do People Hate America

This is an excellent alternative view which shows that the USA is not unique in many of the criticisms aimed at it and also counteracts some of the arguments on this page.

The USA: Why Do They Hate Us?

A US site that lists a number of reasons why the USA is disliked around the world.

List of USA Military Events

USA intervention is not a new phenomenon.

USA Military in Perspective

USA military spending and activity.

The White House

The USA government web site.

How You Can Change The World

Direct action site.

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