Last weekend in a speech in Europe, Joe Biden hit one of the major themes of the Ukraine war. We thought these pictures of rubble were memories of the past.
Of all people, you, the Russian people, as well as all people across Europe, still have the memory of being in a similar situation in the late thirties and forties — the situation of World War Two… Whatever your generation experienced — whether it experienced the Siege of Leningrad or heard about it from your parents and grandparents — train stations overflowing with terrified families fleeing their homes; nights sheltering in basements and cellars; mornings sitting through the rubble in your homes — these are not memories of the past. Not anymore.
This is a disturbing statement. It feels almost sociopathic in its disregard of history: the rubble throughout the Middle East, much of it caused by Americans or our allies.
Iraqi cities were reduced to rubble by an American invasion that was certainly a war crime by the standards everyone cites for Russia. The invasion caused millions to flee their homes in terror. Iraq has not recovered, and millions are still displaced. The U.S. has had a hand in Syrian rubble, Afghanistan rubble, and Libyan rubble.
Then there are the main events of recent years: The genocide in Yemen, where we support the Saudis/the Israelis out of some geopolitical calculus that ought to be interrogated under oath at the Hague (“We will continue to work with our Saudi partners to strengthen their defenses” — the State Department’s latest). And Israel’s regular destruction of Gaza City and all its infrastructure, not to mention thousands of civilian lives, on the rationale that it has to “mow the lawn” of Islamic extremism every few years.
None of these is memories of the past. They are the living experiences of Middle East capitals, and many Muslim societies, mostly Arab ones. Joe Biden voted for the Iraq war, and he was part of the Obama administration when it was bombing seven Muslim countries. For a little while it looked like the New York Times was going to scrutinize U.S. war crimes in Afghanistan. That didn’t last.
The Iraq war caused 655,000 civilian deaths by 2006, a leading study showed. The Yemen war caused “the deaths of nearly a quarter of a million people” since 2015, Human Rights Watch reports this year. In Gaza, several thousand have been killed in four onslaughts and 2 million people are blockaded and immiserated in ways that reminded me of the Warsaw Ghetto when I visited the place 13 years ago.
You hear the same theme on the network news and public broadcasting too. That we thought these pictures from the Ukraine were a thing of the past, meaning World War 2. I’ve heard it said so often I stopped writing down the offenders.
I know that they think they get off the hook because they are talking about Europe. And no, we haven’t seen such destruction in Europe since, oh, the siege of Sarajevo in the 90s, in which the United States again took part in the bombing.
But that’s not an excuse. Imperial history, and American history, cannot be segmented on such a racial/geographical basis. It smacks of white supremacy and “clash of civilizations” talk, when the continuity of human suffering is the only morally justifiable way of looking at such events.
I deplore the Russian invasion and my heart is with the Ukrainian refugees. But saying these are images of the past gets a lot of elite American foreign policy experts off the hook for atrocities we are responsible for. It’s just that some victims are faceless.
h/t James North, David Higgins, Scott Roth, and Donald Johnson.
Few in the media bringing this callous, brutal avoidance of what the Bush/Cheney administration did in Iraq, yes Afghanistan too, however the “unprovoked” issue falls right in line with Russia/Ukraine and the U.S./Iraq comparison. “War crimes”….”Butchers”….”unprovoked” Every night we hear Nicole Wallace, Ari Melber, Joy Reid (actually has touched upon the hypocrisy a tiny bit) Chris Hayes, Velshi in for Maddow last night did the dance of hypocrisy with Anne Applebaum discussing the war crimes of Putin and using that line “has not happened in Europe in 70 years” comparison.
Ignoring the death and destruction caused by U.S. administrations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen etc.
Absolutely nauseating.
You nailed the issue Phil.
Medhi Hasan awhile back, although felt like he needed to feel guilty that he was addressing the issue of how the “unprovoked” U.S. invasion of Iraq.is comparable to Russia’s “unprovoked” invasion of Ukraine. All of this needed talk about holding Putin accountable for “war crimes” yet Bush barely a whisper at least in U.S. press about Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz etc be held accountable for their war crimes.
Medhi nails it down awhile back
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqHPnTxy-oU
Just alarming how Chuck Todd, (on Friday on Daily MTP) and Ari Melber are more than willing to have Iraq war hawks David Frum and Bill Kristol on their programs regularly. What the hell is up with that.
Hillary Clinton being promoted as some kind of savior or women. She is a war criminal in so many ways.
One correction or update— the UNDP estimates the current war- relateddeath toll in Yemen is 377,000. ( the majority from famine).
https://www.ye.undp.org/content/yemen/en/home/library/
Recent events have brought renewed focus to law and hypocrisy. A window of opportunity for justice has opened. Time to rethink how best to move forward.
“Imperial history”, and the mechanics of imperial policies are analyzed in John Hobson’s 1902 classic study of imperialism, “Imperialism. A Study”, available free online here.
https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/hobson-imperialism-a-study
Hobson shows that ultra-wealthy investors drive imperial policies, for their own benefit and at huge cost to the rest of society, including the immense cost of wars.
“By far the most important economic factor in Imperialism is the influence relating to investments.”
Their main goal is to plunder the resources of other countries, using their home country’s military as the muscle. This military “business expense” is off-loaded to the citizens of their home country. The financiers also invest heavily in the bombs and bullets, and reap large profits from the war itself.
The key concepts are laid out in Part I of Chapter IV: “Economic Parasites of Imperialism”
Hobson goes on to attribute America’s departure from its original foreign policy to one of imperialism to the high financiers who extended their tentacles from the City of London into Wall Street.
As is well-known, Russia has vast natural resources.
How easily we forget. Visiting Dubrovnik in 2008, I was struck, when walking along the city walls, by how many houses has brand-new terracotta tile roofs. It took me a few minutes to realise the reason for them.