The Deep Racism Underpinning Our Wars

This week, I hope to draw readers’ attention to a very clearly stated article by Walden Bello which appeared on Common Dreams website. Walden Bello is Filipino and has occupied himself in the diplomatic area most of his life.
Currently he is co-founder and senior analyst at Focus on the Global South.  He is winner of the Right Livelihood Award. But plenty of public figures have awards and honors, which doesn’t mean they know how to think straight. Walden is one of the few Incorruptibles still standing.

“The Racist Underpinnings of American Wars” is a clear and simple statement.  It points out that America’s two original sins are the cornerstones of its foundation: The Native American genocide, and the slavery of Black Americans. The one “cleared” the territory we now refer to as continental U.S.; the other’s free labor made her fabulously wealthy. As a history of our origins, neither is in dispute.

But karma has a way of replicating itself without end. What distinguishes Walden’s article is that it focuses exclusively on America’s wars in Asia, subjects American’s like to overlook: War in the Philippines, World War II against the Japanese, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. It passes over U.S. nuclear “testing,” the massive detonations over the Marshall Islands resulting in American children being born with an average 10% lower IQ in its top year, 1963, and in the loss of native habitat which became unlivable, with the maiming of the bodies of the Marshallese and their descendants for all eternity.  What traits do these wars hold in common?

Marshallese being forced off their island

Reviewing them briefly here, all were waged against Asian people of color. All were accompanied by racial epithets for the “enemy:” “gugus” and “nigger” for the Filipinos, whereas the Americans self-identified as “Indian Fighters;” the ultimate expression of racial hatred was the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki; in Korea the U.S. learned to marry murder with technology, dropping more bombs than all the bombs it unleashed during World War II; and in Vietnam, the aim was to “bomb the gooks back to the stone age,” dropping 70 tons of bombs for every square mile, or 500 bombs for each man, woman and child.  Bello overlooks the U.S. use of defoliant and unexploded ordnance, the gift that keeps on giving, with maimed victims, and deformed Vietnamese births occurring to this day.  

Just another imperialist war

Returning to his simple two premises, Walden leaves us with a clearer under-standing of how American racism replays itself endlessly in U.S. wars, and in denial of its own racist origins. When we take to the streets now because finally we seem to have tired of our own genocidal behavior at home, we need to remember that we march for those millions of dead we have let pile up in our genocidal wake.

READ “Let’s Defund the Pentagon, Too”

(MLK JR. realized the U.S. would “never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw skiils and money.”)

SIGN: Cut the Pentagon Budget.

WATCH: Election Protection Zoom Monday, 7/13, 2-3:30 Pacific

VOLUNTEER: Write PCs to reluctant voters at Daily Kos.

READ: “Why did the Bureau of Prisons impose a national lockdown.”

ACT: Oppose the racist federal prison lockdown.

BACK: Peace, not another war.

New report this week finds economic benefits in protecting 30% of planet’s land and ocean outweigh the costs 5 to 1.

Resolution halting 5 G has passed the Hawaii County planning board, and set to be voted on by Hawaii City Council.

World rebukes U.S. over Iran sanctions.

CIA-backed Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) indicted for 20-year-old ghoulish crimes by war crimes court at Le Hague.

More than 100 Jewish lawyers  and judges call on Israel to halt annexation plans.

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Chesapeake Energy files for bankruptcy.

Court orders shut down and removal of oil from Dakota Access Pipeline, although company plans to ignore court.

United States Court of Appeals Tenth Circuit rules against Exxon and Suncor in case can proceed in state and federal court.

Supreme Court rules nearly half of Oklahoma still native American territory.

Inter-American Court of Human Rights rules for indigenous people of Saita, Argentina after 22 years of litigation, ordering govt. of Argentina to cede 4,000 km2 of territory to the Lhaka Honrat Assn.

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Lawsuit seeks documents on #45 order “expediting fossil fuel project approvals."

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Massive Chicago protest: No to the continuation of theft of Palestinian land.

Zionist  lobby loses latest appeal against American Studies Assn.

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In Charleston, S.C. dock workers shut down nation’s 4^th busiest port during George Floyd’s funeral to show BLM solidarity.

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Washington State law puts limits on facial recognition technology.

Florida Democratic candidates organize to protest Florida Democratic Party.

Common Cause announces GOP National Committee drops lawsuit blocking Gov. Newsom from sending every California voter a vote-by-mail ballot for Nov. election.

‘Historic victory for working people’: City of  Seattle passes progressive tax on big business to fund relief.

After weeks of protest, Minnesota pushes legislative change to distribute reparations for slave descendants in St. Paul.

Milton, Mass. rally protests anti-racist teacher’s suspension.

Ford workers ask company to stop assembling and selling police cars as protests continue.

FCA Toledo plant workers support call for rank-and-file safety committees.

Federal Appeals Court upholds block on  transit ban.

Strike set for July 20 for BLM in 25 cities wins union support.

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Sanders calls on do-nothing Senate to approve $200 month checks, cancel rent, and expand Medicare.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey places $3 million behind coalition of mayors considering universal basic income for residents in Oakland, Los Angeles, and Compton.

Biden “vows” to share any COVID vaccine with world. (But read up on a Trojan horse at https://blog.nomorefakenews.com/2020/05/25/covid-vaccine-what-else-could-they-put-in-the-shot)

As progressives demand far more work, Biden-Sanders panels unveil policy blueprint.

New House bill would tax Wall St. windfalls to guarantee good jobs.

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Protests against police violence could help make formerly homeless Candace Valenzuela the first Afro-Latina in Congress.

San Francisco to pay six-figure settlements in police excessive force lawsuits.

We could certainly slow the aging process down if it had to work its way through Congress. – Will Rogers.