By Global Times Staff Reporters, From GT investigates: US war-mongering under guise of ‘democracy’ inflicts untold damage on the world (I understand the Global Times is a Chinese state publication. What matters is whether or not the article is true.)
“The US is the most warlike nation in the history of the world.”
— Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter
Exporting wars, launching “color revolutions,” fomenting extremist ideologies, and promoting economic instability…the US has left countless trails of bloodshed and turmoil around the world.
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“War is the American way of life,” said US historian Paul Atwood, noting that the US was born, grew, and became a superpower out of war, slavery, and human slaughter.
In its more than 240-year-long history since declaring independence on July 4, 1776, there have only been 16 years in which the US was not at war. From the end of World War II (WWII) to 2001, the US has initiated 201 of the 248 armed conflicts in 153 locations, accounting for over 80 percent of total wars fought. Since 2001, wars and military operations by the US have claimed more than 800,000 lives and displaced tens of millions of people.
Experts and observers reached by the Global Times said that the US, ignoring the objective reality of its own shambolic democratic record, instead attempts to use “democracy” as a pretext to wage war and as a cover for its numerous crimes such as causing humanitarian disasters and destroying sovereign order, is the real culprit threatening the world.
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For a long time, the US war machine has rumbled across the world, leaving countries in disarray, and people’s livelihoods decimated.
The Korean War (1950-53) resulted in the deaths of more than 3 million civilians and approximately 3 million refugees. During the war, US forces strafed hordes of refugees due to fears that North Korean intelligence agents had infiltrated the refugees, and carried out notorious No Gun Ri and Sinchon Massacres resulting in the deaths of more than 30,000 innocent civilians.
The Vietnam War, which took place from the 1950s to the 1970s, was equally bloody and brutal. The Vietnamese government estimates that as many as two million civilians died in the war, many of whom were systematically slaughtered by US forces in the name of fighting Viet Cong communists.
Data show that US forces dropped more than three times as many bombs on Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia as were dropped by all sides during WWII.
According to the New York Times, since the war officially ended in 1975, nearly 40,000 Vietnamese have been killed by land mines, cluster bombs, and other ordnances, and 67,000 have been maimed.
Worse still, 20 million gallons of Agent Orange which contained the deadly chemical dioxin, were dropped by the US army during the war, causing cancer or other diseases in much of the local population.
In the Middle East, the US’ flames of war also lasted for decades.
In 1991, US-led coalition forces attacked Iraq to start the Gulf War, directly leading to about 2,500 to 3,500 civilian deaths and the destruction of approximately 9,000 civilian homes in air strikes. The war-inflicted famine and damage to local infrastructure and medical facilities has caused a huge humanitarian crisis, even resulting in the deaths of about 500,000 children, according to United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) estimates.
In 2001, the US sent troops to Afghanistan in the name of fighting terrorism. The war has not only killed at least 100,000 civilians and led to 2 million people becoming refugees, but has also left the country with difficulties in rebuilding its economy and political system.
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In 2003, the US invaded Iraq on trumped-up charges, despite widespread international opposition, resulting in an estimated 200,000 to 250,000 civilian deaths, of which more than 16,000 were directly caused by US forces.
The US-led coalition also extensively used depleted uranium bombs, cluster bombs, and white phosphorus bombs in Iraq, and did nothing to reduce harm to civilians, Sun Degang, professor and director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Fudan University, told the Global Times.
The United Nations estimates that Iraq still has about 25 million landmines and other explosive ordnances that need to be removed today.
Since 2001, the US has declared at least 91,340 strikes, including operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, which may have directly killed at least 22,679 civilians and possibly as many as 48,308, according to a September report by a British investigative organization Airwars.
“War is one of the key means by which the US executes its foreign strategy and achieves global hegemony,” Li Haidong, a professor at the Institute of International Relations of China Foreign Affairs University, told the Global Times, noting that in the historical process of its rise, the US has always adhered to a militarization mentality and attached great importance to the joint machinations of military alliances in the diplomatic field, repeatedly relying on war to achieve the strategic need to consolidate the country’s sphere of influence.
“The US is the most warlike nation in the history of the world,” former US president Jimmy Carter once confessed. The Global Times found that, since WWII, almost all US presidents have waged or intervened in foreign wars during their terms of office, with a variety of reasons for waging wars.
Many countries believe that war is highly destructive and should be avoided, but in the US’ view, war can bring prosperity, and a war can sweep away the inertia of American society, thus keeping the US vital and dynamic, which is an inherent concept and tradition of the elite group formulated in the 240-year development history of the country, Li said.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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