(PCgeek) Really? They have caused most of the wars? We'll go through the most notable wars...
This is one of the most inaccurate summaries of the issue I've seen here.
Not only does it get a lot wrong about what it includes, but it also excludes inconvenient wars and other actions.
WWI - Pretty sure that after the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, everything just imploded from there due to alliances as far as Europe is concerned. The sinking of the Lusitania and the Zimmerman Telegram were provocation enough for the US to enter if you ask me.
The US did not start WWI - but it had a pretty corrupt role in terms of our democracy.
Not only did we not get involved in the war for years, President Wilson won on a campaign that 'he kept us out of the war'. Then at some point, he changed his mind - some argue it was some of the powers telling the US we had better help them or we'll lose out on money they owe us. Whatever the reason, he reversed his position, and suddenly we had the phrase about 'making the world safe for democracy'.
Here's where it gets ugly: the American people did not want in the war. Wilson pioneered an approach for the government to tell the people what their opinion should be, in that he hired thousands of people to go around the country and give speeches favoring entering the war. You can read something about this in Walter Lippmann's "Public Opinion", written after his experiences in that propaganda campaign. It wasn't exactly 'self defense' that got us in that war - and it was not very democratic.
More to the story there, too, that's not told much. We faces two terrible forces (is Italy worth mentioning?), between the aggressive and murderous Hitler, and a militaristic Japan where terribly militaristic forces had gradually won out against the peaceful political groups and they were ready to cause all kinds of problems, being a cruel invader.
But we forget things about how we and the UK had economic interests involved, creating conflicts over Japan wanting to become a stronger economic power that we opposed to protect our power in Asia - we'd cut off their oil, which they needed to import - it wasn't entirely a one-way street. The US was 'cheating' helping Germany's enemies well before entering the war as a supposedly 'neutral' nation.
For all the great benefits our getting involved and helping defeat terrible regimes had, the American people hadn't wanted to enter the war - there are some suggestions FDR had wanted to provoke a Japanese attack to get public support for war - and before and after Pearl Harbor the American people weren't too interested in war with Hitler.
The public complained about FDR joining the European war more before the Pacific.
Korean War - Pretty sure the North invaded the South (A UN ally) necessitating a response.
You left a couple things out. After WWII, when the Japanese were driven out of Korea (and other colonies like Vietnam), the Koreans *opposed* the split of their country; they had a government set up they were happy with, it was a liberal government. When the war ended, MacArthur refused to meet with them because he wanted a puppet, put a US general in charge, and then found a right-wing figure who would be pro-US, who launched aware against left-wing citizens, killing tens of thousands.
The country's split was forced on them from cold war politics of the US and USSR:
This division of Korea, after more than a millennium of being unified, was seen as unacceptable and temporary by both regimes. From 1948 until the start of the civil war on June 25, 1950, the armed forces of each side engaged in a series of bloody conflicts along the border. In 1950, these conflicts escalated dramatically when North Korean forces attacked South Korea, triggering the Korean War.
So, the US didn't 'start' the Korean War, but it played a role in supporting a cold-war based division the Koreans were opposed to leading to conflict, and in telling the Koreans they couldn't have the government they wanted, pushing a right-wing figure who would serve the US, who did get elected in 1948 (I've little doubt the US played a role in that).
Vietnam - The north was attacking the French occupied South. The French ran away and the US wasn't going to let the south be overrun.
Talk about leaving things out. After WWII, like Korea, Vietnam wanted independence from being occupied - and asked the US not to support France re-colonizing them when Japan was driven out. They made a Declaration of Independence copied on the US. The US was in a period of opposing such independence, and backed France re-colonizing them - leading to war by the Vietnamese people against the occupation. The US at the height of the war was paying for 90% of the French war costs.
When the French lost (they hardly 'ran'), the US had another choice what to do. It started out with a middle approach, with some support for the southern half of the country it had helped create (as in Korea). The US had blocked the elections it had promised to hold to re-unify Vietnam because its guy wasn't going to win, much as the USSR blocked elections in Korea to re-unify them.
Kennedy held off a larger war in Vietnam as he gradually came to decide to withdraw by 1965; LBJ becoming President changed that, and the US did launch an aggressive war.
The US had been training terrorists and sending them into North Vietnam to assassinate and sabotage public resources; our pretense for the war was two purported attacks by the North Vietnamese on US Destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin. Funny thing is, one of the two hadn't happened; and the destroyers were reportedly escorting these South Vietnamese US-trained terrorists into North Vietnam at the time, and in North Vietnamese waters - which we lied and said we were not when attacked.
Vietnam was clearly a war of our choosing, that we started, because we thought it was part of the cold war we were in.
We killed two million Vietnamese, largely farmers, with little justification.
Gulf War - Saddam invades Kuwait. Unacceptable.
Among other things you left out, the Iraq invasion of Kuwait was a direct result of the Iraq war on Iran, which we had encouraged and supported.
We'd sent Saddam the signal that we would not get involved if he invaded Kuwait, something he wanted to do for a variety of reasons but mostly because he had come to owe Kuwait a large amount of money from the war with Iran, in which Iraq reportedly lost hundreds of thousands of people; Iran had a million casualties (funny, you left that US-encouraged war off the list).
Somalia - UN presence was there to prevent genocide when Pakistani peacekeepers were killed. Genocide = unacceptable.
I agree.
Afghanistan - 9/11 ring any bells?
Afghanistan had a decent, socialist government - when the US decided it would serve its cold war interests to draw the USSR into a quagmire there. The US began undermining the government, aiding people to attack it, driving the government to ask the USSR to save it - which they promptly did by arriving and executing the Prime Minister who invited them and taking over, leading to that quagmire.
That war had strengthened the radical Islamic forces, who we then just left - leading to the Taliban, who were headed by a man who was friends with Osama bin Laden.
9/11 was a power grab by Osama bin Laden, but the US had provocations, such as placing US military forces in Saudi Arabia, offending many Muslims.
Iraq - Harboring insurgents that were making life difficult in Afghanistan. Repeatedly ignoring UN Resolutions to disarm. Mass bombings against militant groups. I personally think that while Saddam did not directly engage the US/UN with his military forces, that doesn't mean that there wasn't support for the forces that were engaged with the US/UN.
Funny, they kept 'ignoring UN resolutions to disarm' from weapons they didn't have.
The Iraq was was, simply, an aggressive, illegal war by the US.
It had its positives - removing the tyranny of Saddam - but countries aren't allowed to go launching wars against people they don't like.
Libya - I'm pretty sure no one has invaded Libya. I'm equally sure that Quadaffi started the civil war and people cried out to the UN/US for help.
Actually, I think the people started the civil war and Qadafi responded with brutality, but otherwise, I agree.[/quote]
It is also important to note that in all of these cases the conflict was not initiated on the US/UN side for territorial/monetary gain. In the most general sense, if the US/UN were not attacked, crimes against humanity necessitated some sort of response.
I'll give you just a sampling you left off.
Check out the history of the US in the Philippines sometime - hundreds of thousand killed and a long occupation for no reason. There was the US giving Indonesia weapons with a restriction they only be used for defense; then President Ford and Kissinger giving Indonesia secret and illegal permission to use them to invade East Timor, killing 250,000. We've back too many right-wing dictators to count - overthrowing democracy in Iran to install the Shah's dictatorship; Somoza in Nicaragua, Marcos in the Philippines, Duvaliers in Haiti, death squads we trained and sponsored in El Salvador (remember the raped, murdered nuns), supporting the overthrow of democracy in Chile replaced by Pinochet's reign of terror (and one of Milton Friedman's right-wing economic playgrounds, killing labor leaders), ordering the assassination of Patrice Lumumba to push right-wing dictatorships in Africa (just before JFK became President and was ready to support Lumumba), a major program of assassination and terrorism in Cuba, not to get into all kinds of Latin American examples, we could go on.
The US, the CIA, have been involved in countless activities that sometimes undermine democracy, assassinate, start wars.
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