By BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon
A cartoonish recruiting campaign underway by the US Navy brands it “a global force for good,” as though military forces existed to build hospitals or schools or public works rather than to break things, kill and terrorize people in the service of America's global empire. If you want to know what kind of force the US military is oveseas you might ask new mothers in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, mothers whose wombs are spitting out the bitter fruit of our “global force for good.”
The U.S. Military: A Global Force For Good? Maybe Not.
By BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon
Remember Fallujah? The Iraqi city will have reason to remember the United States for a long time to come. An unprecedented epidemic of deformed and stunted babies, both dead and alive, have been born to mothers in Fallujah since the second US invasion and occupation of the Iraqi city. Local Iraqi physicians have no doubt the wave of stillborn and maimed children are the result of the radioactive ammo US forces used to shoot through houses
When Blackwater conducting an operation in Fallujah against the advice of US military commanders were captured and killed, US military commanders decided to make an example out of Fallujah with an exceptionally brutal campaign of occupation that included the temporary relocation of the city's entire population. Many of the survivors will never be allowed to return. US forces were accused of unleashing indiscriminate air strikes, artillery, mortar and sniper fire in the densely populated Iraqi city upon anything that moved and many things that did not, of targeting ambulances and even the local hospital in an apparent effort to prevent news reporters from sending pictures of the suffering and wounded to the outside world.
The US military initially denied using white phosporus and will neither admit nor deny the use of other advanced weaponry such as lethal microwave devices, but there is compelling evidence that all these were employed against Iraqi fighters and the civilian population of Fallujah.
Depleted uranium munitions were a staple of the 1990s Gulf War, and of the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Uranium is the densest naturally occurring mineral, several times the weight of lead. The extra-heavy munitions easily penetrate armor, pass through walls and other obstacles, and a large part of the uranium is dispersed in tiny, dust-size particles small enough to be inhaled, and deadly for scores of years afterward.
Depleted uranium weapons kill more than enemy soldiers. They cause many kinds of cancer and other ailments, as well as gross deformities like those in the video above, and they keep killing indiscriminately for decades to come. The willingness of the US military to employ such heinous devices belies any US claim to moral superiority over any conceivable foe.
It's worth noting too, that the US military publicly claims that it makes no attempt to ascertain numbers of civilain casualties in Iraq or Afghanistan, or presumably for its drone war in Pakistan. Some lives and some sacrifices count. Others don't.
Something to remember the next time you see that commercial about “a call to serve,” and 'a global force for good."
The struggle against systemic racism and the police state in the US is integral and linked to the struggle against US wars of aggression overseas.
Community control of police and prison abolition have been completely removed from the conversations dictated by a mainstream and complacent narrative.
Global Displacements is an examination of the impact of the global organization of capitalist accumulation and exploitation on the life and labor of Haitian and Dominica
It was agreed that dropping the federal charges and seeking no jail time in return for pleading to a very low-level DC Code charge was an important victory.
What has recently been condemned as corrupt and brutal policing is actually consistent with historical tradition of localized repression.
