The US Has Invaded 70 Nations Since 1776 –
Make 4 July Independence From America Day
By Dr Gideon Polya
05 July, 2013
Countercurrents.org
The 4th of July is Independence Day for the United States of America and commemorates the 4 July 1776 Declaration of Independence for America, the key passage of which is “ We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. ” Unfortunately American racism has grossly violated the proposition that “all men are created equal” and the worst form of racism involves invasion of other countries. The US has invaded about 70 countries since its inception and has invaded a total of about 50 countries since 1945 [1]. The World needs to declare a transition from the 4th of July as Independence for America Day to the 4th of July as Independence from America Day.
The following is a list of countries invaded by the US forces (naval, military and ultimately air forces) since its inception in order of major incidents. This catalogue derives heavily form the work of US academic Dr Zoltan Grossman's article “From Wounded Knee to Libya : a century of U.S. military interventions” [1], Gideon Polya's book ‘Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” (that includes a brief history of all countries since Neolithic times) [2] and William Blum's book “ Rogue State ” [3]. This list includes instances of violent deployment of US forces within America (e.g. against demonstrators, miners etc), and includes small-scale bombing and military intervention operations, military evacuations of Americans and specific instances of explicit threats of use of nuclear weapons. The list does not include the 1801-1805 US Marine Barbary War operations against Barbary pirates based in Morocco , Algeria , Tunisia and Libya , and also ignores massive US subversion of virtually all countries in the world.
(1) American Indian nations (1776 onwards, American Indian Genocide; 1803, Louisiana Purchase; 1844, Indians banned from east of the Mississippi; 1861 onwards, California genocide; 1890, Lakota Indians massacre), (2) Mexico (1836-1846; 1913; 1914-1918; 1923), (3) Nicaragua (1856-1857; 1894; 1896; 1898; 1899; 1907; 1910; 1912-1933; 1981-1990), (4) American forces deployed against Americans (1861-1865, Civil War; 1892; 1894; 1898; 1899-1901; 1901; 1914; 1915; 1920-1921; 1932; 1943; 1967; 1968; 1970; 1973; 1992; 2001), (5), Argentina (1890), (6), Chile (1891; 1973), (7) Haiti (1891; 1914-1934; 1994; 2004-2005), (8) Hawaii (1893-), (9) China (1895-1895; 1898-1900; 1911-1941; 1922-1927; 1927-1934; 1948-1949; 1951-1953; 1958), (10) Korea (1894-1896; 1904-1905; 1951-1953), (11) Panama (1895; 1901-1914; 1908; 1912; 1918-1920; 1925; 1958; 1964; 1989-), (12) Philippines (1898-1910; 1948-1954; 1989; 2002-), (13) Cuba (1898-1902; 1906-1909; 1912; 1917-1933; 1961; 1962), (14) Puerto Rico (1898-; 1950; ); (15) Guam (1898-), (16) Samoa (1899-), (17) Honduras (1903; 1907; 1911; 1912; 1919; 1924-1925; 1983-1989), (18) Dominican Republic (1903-1904; 1914; 1916-1924; 1965-1966), (19) Germany (1917-1918; 1941-1945; 1948; 1961), (20) Russia (1918-1922), (21) Yugoslavia (1919; 1946; 1992-1994; 1999), (22) Guatemala (1920; 1954; 1966-1967), (23) Turkey (1922), (24) El Salvador (1932; 1981-1992), (25) Italy (1941-1945); (26) Morocco (1941-1945), (27) France (1941-1945), (28) Algeria (1941-1945), (29) Tunisia (1941-1945), (30) Libya (1941-1945; 1981; 1986; 1989; 2011), (31) Egypt (1941-1945; 1956; 1967; 1973; 2013), (32) India (1941-1945), (33) Burma (1941-1945), (34) Micronesia (1941-1945), (35) Papua New Guinea (1941-1945), (36) Vanuatu (1941-1945), (37) Austria (1941-1945), (38) Hungary (1941-1945), (39) Japan (1941-1945), (40) Iran (1946; 1953; 1980; 1984; 1987-1988; ), (41) Uruguay (1947), (42) Greece (1947-1949), (43) Vietnam (1954; 1960-1975), (44) Lebanon (1958; 1982-1984), (45) Iraq (1958; 1963; 1990-1991; 1990-2003; 1998; 2003-2011), (46) Laos (1962-), (47) Indonesia (1965), (48) Cambodia (1969-1975; 1975), (49) Oman (1970), (50) Laos (1971-1973), (51) Angola (1976-1992), (52) Grenada (1983-1984), (53) Bolivia (1986; ), (54) Virgin Islands (1989), (55) Liberia (1990; 1997; 2003), (56) Saudi Arabia (1990-1991), (57) Kuwait (1991), (58) Somalia (1992-1994; 2006), (59) Bosnia (1993-), (60) Zaire (Congo) (1996-1997), (61) Albania (1997), (62) Sudan (1998), (63) Afghanistan (1998; 2001-), (64) Yemen (2000; 2002-), (65) Macedonia (2001), (66) Colombia (2002-), (67) Pakistan (2005-), (68) Syria (2008; 2011-), (69) Uganda (2011), (70) Mali (2013), (71) Niger (2013).
The human cost of these US interventions has been horrendous. A major component of war- or hegemony-related deaths is represented by avoidable deaths from violently-imposed deprivation. Since 1950 the UN has provided detailed demographic data that have permitted calculation of such avoidable deaths, year by year, for every country in the world. 1950-2005 avoidable deaths total 1.3 billion for the whole world, 1.2 billion for the non-European world and 0.6 billion for the Muslim world [2], the latter carnage being 100 times greater than the WW2 Jewish Holocaust (5-6 million Jews killed, 1 in 6 dying from deprivation) [4, 5} or the “forgotten” WW2 Bengali Holocaust in which the British with Australian complicity deliberately starved 6-7 million Indians to death for strategic reasons [6]. Currently 18 million people die avoidably each year in the Developing World on Spaceship Earth with the US in charge of the flight deck.
Here is a summary of post-1950 avoidable mortality/ 2005 population (both in millions, m) and expressed as a percentage (%) for each country occupied by the US in the post-1945 era. The asterisk (*) indicates a major occupation by more than one country in the post-WW2 era (thus, for example, the UK and the US have been major occupiers of Afghanistan , Iraq and Korea , leaving aside the many other minor participants in these conflicts). Data is also given for the US: US [8.455m/300.038m = 2.8%], Afghanistan* [16.609m/25.971m = 64.0%], Cambodia* [5.852m/14.825m = 39.5%], Dominican Republic [0.806m/8.998m = 9.0%], Federated States of Micronesia [0.016m/0.111m = 14.4%], Greece* [0.027m/10.978m = 0.2%], Grenada* [0.018m/0.121m = 14.9%], Guam [0.005m/0.168m = 3.0%], Haiti* [4.089m/8.549m = 47.9%], Iraq* [5.283m/26.555m = 19.9%], Korea* [7.958m/71.058m = 11.2%], Laos* [2.653m/5.918m = 44.8%], Panama [0.172m/3.235m = 5.3%], Philippines [9.080m/82.809m = 11.0%], Puerto Rico [0.039m/3.915m = 1.0%], Somalia* [5.568m/10.742m = 51.8%], US Virgin Islands [0.003m/0.113m = 2.4%], Vietnam* [24.015m/83.585m = 28.7%], total = 82.193m/357.651m = 23.0%.
Thus in the period 1950-2005 there have been 82 million avoidable deaths from deprivation (avoidable mortality, excess deaths, excess mortality , deaths that did not have to happen) associated with countries occupied by the US in the post-1945 era. However the US has subcontracted a huge amount of violence to nuclear terrorist, democracy-by-genocide, racist Zionist-run Apartheid Israel for which the related data is as follows: Apartheid Israel [0.095m/6.685m =1.4%] - Egypt* [19.818m/74.878m = 26.5%], Jordan* [0.630m/5.750m = 11.0%], Lebanon [0.535m/3.761m = 14.2%], Occupied Palestinian Territories* [0.677m/3.815m = 17.7%], Syria* [2.198m/18.650m = 11.8%], total = 23.858m/106.854 = 22.3% i.e. Apartheid Israeli aggression has been associated in 1950-2005 with 24 million avoidable deaths in the countries it has violently occupied, a carnage similar to that caused by the German Nazis in Russia duringWW2.
Except for the Global Avoidable Mortality Holocaust of over 1.3 billion avoidable deaths since 1950 and 18 million avoidable deaths per year, the above analysis does not take into account US subversion of virtually every country on earth. One visible expression of this subversion is the presence of US forces in hundreds of bases around the world. Thus the Saudi Arabia-occupied Bahrain dictatorship is not listed above but is a major base for the US Navy.
According to Canadian geographer Professor Jules Dufour : “The US has established its control over 191 governments which are members of the United Nations. The conquest, occupation and/or otherwise supervision of these various regions of the World is supported by an integrated network of military bases and installations which covers the entire Planet (Continents, Oceans and Outer Space). All this pertains to the workings of an extensive Empire, the exact dimensions of which are not always easy to ascertain. The main sources of information on these military installations (e.g. C. Johnson, the NATO Watch Committee, the International Network for the Abolition of Foreign Military Bases) reveal that the US operates and/or controls between 700 and 800 military bases Worldwide…In this regard, Hugh d'Andrade and Bob Wing's 2002 Map 1 entitled “ U.S. Military Troops and Bases around the World, The Cost of ‘Permanent War' ”, confirms the presence of US military personnel in 156 countries. The US Military has bases in 63 countries. Brand new military bases have been built since September 11, 2001 in seven countries. In total, there are 255,065 US military personnel deployed Worldwide. These facilities include a total of 845,441 different buildings and equipments. The underlying land surface is of the order of 30 million acres. According to Gelman, who examined 2005 official Pentagon data, the US is thought to own a total of 737 bases in foreign lands. Adding to the bases inside U.S. territory, the total land area occupied by US military bases domestically within the US and internationally is of the order of 2,202,735 hectares, which makes the Pentagon one of the largest landowners worldwide (Gelman, J., 2007).” [7].
How does your country feature in the history of the genocidally racist American Empire?
My country Australia, one of the richest and most peaceful countries in the world, is popularly known as the Lucky Country because of this good fortune. However since the US forced Japan into WW2 [6] , Australia has shifted its allegiance from the UK to the US and has become the American Lackey Country. Appalled by the Vietnam War, the reformist Whitlam Labor Government (1972-1975) promised to get out of Vietnam and abolish racism and also sought clarity on Australia 's role in US nuclear terrorism. Whitlam was sacked in a CIA-backed Coup in 1975 [3]. A cowardly Australian Labor Party (aka the Australian Lackey Party) quickly realized that the only way top get back into office was to adopt a craven “All the way with the USA” position and leading Labor figures became intimate with the Americans. When in the 2004 election campaign Labor Opposition Leader Mark Latham promised to bring Australian troops back from Iraq “by Christmas” he was publicly rebuked and vetoed by the US Ambassador, lost the election and has been reviled and ridiculed by the pro-war, pro-Zionist, US lackey Australian Mainstream media and MPs ever since.
In 2010 extremely popular Labor PM Kevin Rudd raised the ire of the Americans by suggesting destruction of US- protected Afghan opium crops that were destroyed by the Taliban in 2000-2001 but restored by the US to 93% of world market share by 2007 and which have killed over 1 million people world-wide since 2001 (including 200,000 Americans, 50,000 Iranians, 18,000 British, 10,000 Canadians, 8,000 Germans and 4,000 Australians) [8]. Kevin Rudd also raised the ire of the traitorous racist Zionists by mildly protesting the large-scale Apartheid Israeli forging of Australian passports for Israel state terrorism purposes and the kidnapping, shooting, tasering, robbing and imprisonment of Australians in international waters by Israeli state terrorists. On 24 June 2010 PM Kevin Rudd was removed by a US -approved, foreign mining company-backed, pro-Zionist-led Coup. Rudd's pro-war, pro-Zionist and slavishly pro-American successor PM Julia Gillard rapidly moved to allow the US to station 2,500 child-killing Marines in Darwin with suggestions of bases for US nuclear–armed warships, US drones and US warplanes. Nevertheless WikiLeaks revealed that 2 of the Coup plotters were US “assets” who would regularly update the American Embassy about internal Labor Government matters. The disastrous and extremely unpopular Gillard Government [9] has finally recently been replaced by a new Rudd Labor Government and it appears that PM Rudd has learned his lesson and is evidently shifting Right to keep Big Business and the Neocon American and Zionist Imperialist Lobby happy (he hasn't much choice – 70% of Australian newspaper readers read the media of extreme right-wing, Australian-turned-US-citizen, media mogul Rupert Murdoch in Murdochracy, Lobbyocracy and Corporatocracy Australia).
Conclusions.
America has invaded 70 countries since its 4th of July Independence Day in 1776. American imperialism has made a major contribution to the 1.3 billion global avoidable deaths in the period 1950-2005. The Neocon American and Zionist Imperialist One Percenters can be seen as the New Nazis. The World, including ordinary Americans (1 million of whom die preventably each year) [10], must shake off the shackles of endless American One Percenter warmongering, imperialism and mendacity. The World must make the Fourth of July Independence from America Day. Tell everyone you can.
References.
[1]. Dr Zoltan Grossman, “From Wounded Knee to Libya : a century of U.S. military interventions”, ” http://academic.evergreen.edu/g/grossmaz/interventions.html .
[2]. Gideon Polya, “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950”, now available for free perusal on the web: http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com.au/2012/01/body-count-global-avoidable-mortality_05.html .
[3]. William Blum, “ Rogue State ”.
[4]. Martin Gilbert, “Jewish History Atlas”.
[5]. Martin Gilbert, “Atlas of the Holocaust”.
[6]. Gideon Polya, “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History. Colonial rapacity, holocaust denial and the crisis in biological sustainability”, now available for free perusal on the web: http://janeaustenand.blogspot.com.au/ .
[7]. Jules Dufour, “The world-wide network of US military bases”, Global Research: http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-worldwide-network-of-us-military-bases/5564 .
[8]. “Afghan Holocaust Afghan Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/afghanholocaustafghangenocide/ .
[9]. Gideon Polya, “100 reasons why Australians must reject Gillard Labor”, Countercurrents, 24 June, 2013 : http://www.countercurrents.org/polya240613.htm .
[10]. Gideon Polya, “One million Americans die preventably annually in USA ”, Countercurrents, 18 February 2012: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya180212.htm .
Dr Gideon Polya has been teaching science students at a major Australian university for 4 decades. He published some 130 works in a 5 decade scientific career, most recently a huge pharmacological reference text "Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds" (CRC Press/Taylor & Francis, New York & London , 2003). He has published “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” (G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 2007: http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com/ ); see also his contributions “Australian complicity in Iraq mass mortality” in “Lies, Deep Fries & Statistics” (edited by Robyn Williams, ABC Books, Sydney, 2007: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ockham/stories/s1445960.htm ) and “Ongoing Palestinian Genocide” in “The Plight of the Palestinians (edited by William Cook, Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2010: http://mwcnews.net/focus/analysis/4047-the-plight-of-the-palestinians.html ). He has published a revised and updated 2008 version of his 1998 book “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History” (see: http://janeaustenand.blogspot.com/ ) as biofuel-, globalization- and climate-driven global food price increases threaten a greater famine catastrophe than the man-made famine in British-ruled India that killed 6-7 million Indians in the “forgotten” World War 2 Bengal Famine (see recent BBC broadcast involving Dr Polya, Economics Nobel Laureate Professor Amartya Sen and others: http://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/history/social-economic-history/listen-the-bengal-famine ). When words fail one can say it in pictures - for images of Gideon Polya's huge paintings for the Planet, Peace, Mother and Child see: http://sites.google.com/site/artforpeaceplanetmotherchild/ and http://www.flickr.com/photos/gideonpolya/ .