Social Workers and Imperialism

SOCIAL WORK AND IMPERIALISM*
By: James A. Lucas 7/29/05

Thanks for the opportunity to talk to you about Social Workers and Imperialism. Right now our nation is engaged in a bloody struggle in Iraq which sadly is reminiscent of the Vietnam War of over thirty years ago. Many of us are calling for the end of the occupation. As long as the U.S. can continue to occupy a nation that it illegally invaded, other nations will not be safe from similar invasions by the U.S.

Social Workers are needed in this struggle. The goals and philosophy of social work are possibly more attuned than those of any other profession to the gamut of human suffering caused by war policies at home and abroad. We are uniquely qualified to speak with conviction about the suffering of all members of the human family.

A high percentage of social work’s clients are among those most likely to be in military service and to risk their lives. We must demonstrate that Americans are not sheep willing to be led to slaughter. There have also been casualties from other nations.

Over 1700 Americans have died and over 10,000 have been wounded along with over 100,000 Iraqis who have died and a much larger number who have been injured. There have also been casualties from other nations. (1)

The Iraqi people and other peoples are not the only ones harmed by our government. We Americans are harmed too. Financial resources that could be used for humanitarian causes within our county are instead diverted to military purposes and other activities that mostly benefit a privileged wealthy elite. (2)

The attack against Iraq is mainly an imperialist war by the U.S. to gain control of that nation’s oil and to exploit its labor force. That is imperialism - to control another nations resources both natural and human. Other nations, which in the future may incur the wrath of our government, are likely to meet a similar fate. We have entered into a state of perpetual war and we are being told that we are in a struggle with terrorism that will never end. This means that future generations will be asked to sacrifice their lives on the altar of imperialism. We need people from all walks of life to oppose not only that war but also the mindset that supports such acts of imperialism.

The American psyche has been traumatized by the horrendous attacks of September 11, 2001 that killed over 3,000 people. Our government’s reaction to that day unfortunately mainly seems to be to respond with acts of terrorism such as our attack against Iraq. The memory of those tragedies is being used to scare the American people into accepting a harsher form of imperialism and the curtailment of civil liberties at home and abroad.

Acts of terrorism toward the U.S. are mainly the result of a deep resentment throughout the world toward our nation because of its bullying and unilateral policies which have been building for many years, regardless of which of the two major political parties has been in power.

But even if we are not able to end the occupation of Iraq immediately perhaps we can eventually avoid future wars. In about the last 15 years our nation has been conned by our government into two wars against Iraq along with wars against Yugoslavia and Afghanistan, We will also fall prey to facile reasons for going to war in the future unless we understand how we are lied to and what the real reasons are for those wars.

What is the history of U.S. imperialism you may ask? It is a history of deaths of millions of people in other nations at the hands of the U.S. or its surrogates. We have been responsible for many September 11th tragedies around the world. Our history of imperialism goes back about a century. For example according to Zoltan Grossman writes that there have been about 180 landings by U.S. marines. (3)

It is useful to describe some of these interventions in other countries. Many of our early intrusions were small ones. A big one, however was in the Philippines where from 1899 to1902 some “200,000 Filipinos perished and tens of thousands of others were wounded or tortured by U.S. forces in a successful effort to crush Filipino independence. (4)

In Central America in the last three decades there have been a series of tragedies aided and abetted by our leaders.

In El Salvador in 1992 a 10 year civil war came to an end after the U.S. had spent a million dollars a day to support the government in its efforts to crush a movement to bring social justice to the people in that nation of about 8 million people. The UN Truth Commission of 1993 said that 63,000 Salvadorans were killed during that time. (5)

In Guatemala Jacobo Arbenz who was elected President in 1950 pushed agrarian reform. The United Fruit Co. protested when unused portions of its vast holdings were expropriated and distributed to landless peasants. In 1954 a CIA-orchestrated coup put him out of office. (6)

In the 1980s things really got hot in Guatemala. Historian Chalmers Johnson writes about how the “CIA – and the Pentagon supported genocide against Mayan peasants. A 1999 a report on the Guatemalan civil war from the U.N. – sponsored Commission for Historical Clarification made clear that ‘the American training of the officer corps in counterinsurgency techniques’ was a key factor ‘ in the genocide…. Entire Mayan villages were attacked and burned and these inhabitants were slaughtered in an effort to deny the guerrillas protection.’

According to the Commission between 1981 and 1983 the military governments of Guatemala – financed and supported by the U.S. government – destroyed some four hundred Mayan villages in a campaign of genocide in which approximately two hundred thousand peasants were killed “ (7)

Honduras was a staging ground in the early 1980s for the Contras who were trying to overthrow the socialist Sandinista government in Nicaragua. John D. Negroponte, now the U.S. National Intelligence Director,.was our embassador when our military aid to Honduras rose from $4 million to $77.4 million per year.

Also during that time many people were kidnapped, tortured and killed by Battalion 316, a part of the Honduran government. Negroponte denies having had any knowledge of these atrocities during his tenure. However, his predecessor in that position, Jack R. Binns, had reported in 1981 that he was “deeply concerned at increasing evidence of officially sponsored/sanctioned assassinations.” (8)
In the Nicaraguan civil war that ended in 1989, 40,000 people (nls) were killed. The U.S. supported the victorious government regime by providing covert military aid to the Contras (anti-communist guerillas) starting in November, 1981. But when Congress discovered that the CIA had supervised acts of sabotage in Nicaragua without notifying Congress, it passed in 1983 the Boland Amendment which prohibited the CIA, Defense Department, and any other government agency from providing any further covert military assistance. But ways were found to get around this prohibition.The National Security Council which was not explicitly covered by the law, raised private and foreign funds for the Contras. In addition arms were sold to Iran and the proceeds were diverted from those sales to the Contras engaged in the insurgency against the Sandinista government. Both the sale of weapons and the funding of the Contras violated stated administration policy as well as legislation passed Congress, which had blocked further Contra funding. (9)

In the Caribbean the U.S. invaded Panama, Grenada, the Dominican Republic, Haiti and Cuba in about the last 45 years. I would like to provide information on two of those invasions.

In Panama in December, 1989 U.S. troops invaded that country to “arrest” Manuel Noriega, slaughtering 2,000 to 4,000 innocent civilians in the process. For a number of years before this he had worked for the CIA, but he fell out of favor partially because he was not an opponent of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. (10)

In Haiti the U.S. supported for many years the regime of Francois Papa Doc Duvalier which it considered to be a bulwark against communism. He was supported by the U.S.- trained Haiti counter-insurgency forces, although most military aid was channeled through Israel. In early 1990s an ex priest, Aristide, got over 60 % of the vote for President, but his talk of helping the poor caused the U.S. to depose him. (11) Later, the U.S. reinstalled him and very recently they helped depose him again. He is now in South Africa

Now we move to one of the South American nations. The CIA intervened in Chile’s 1958 and 1964 elections. In 1970 a socialist candidate, Salvador Allende was elected president. The CIA wanted to prevent his inauguration with a military coup, but the Chilean army’s chief of staff, General Rene Schneider opposed this. The CIA planned, along with some people in the Chilean military, to assassinate Schneider but this failed and Allende took office. President Nixon ordered the CIA to create a coup climate; “make the economy scream,” he said.

What followed were guerilla warfare, arson, bombing, sabotage and terror. ITT and other U.S. corporations with Chilean holdings sponsored demonstrations and strikes. Finally, on September 11, 1973 Allende was assassinated, although some say he committed suicide.

At that time Henry Kissinger, U.S. Secretary of State, said the following regarding Chile: “I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist because of the irresponsibility of its own people.” (12)

General Pinochet became head of a ruling military junta in Chile and a reign of terror existed over the years under Pinochet.

Now let us consider theAsian part of the world, ssspecifically the countries of the Philippines, Indonesia, East Timor, Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. I discussed the Philippines earlier.

In 1965, in Indonesia, a coup replaced their leader. In the process 500,000 to 1 million people died. The U.S. played a role in the change of that government. Robert Martens a former officer in the U.S. embassy in Indonesia described how U.S. diplomats and CIA officers provided up to 5, 000 names to Indonesian Army death squads in 1965 and checked them off as they were killed or captured. Martens said “ I probably have a lot of blood on my hands, but that’s not all bad. There’s a time when you have to strike hard at a decisive moment.” (13)

In 1975, Indonesia, with U.S. encouragement, invaded Portuguese East Timor and killed 200,000 of its population of about 700,000. The U.S. had supplied Indonesia with all the military hardware and training it needed. Daniel Moynihan, U.S. ambassador to the UN. at the time, said that the U.S. wanted “things to turn out as they did.” Fourteen years later Indonesian soldiers again invaded E. Timor. (14)

The next nation to consider is Korea. John H. Kim who is a U.S. Army veteran and the Chair of the Korea Committee of Veterans for Peace stated in an article that during the Korean War of the early 1950s that “the U.S. Army, Air Force and Navy were directly involved in the killing of about three million civilians – both South and North Koreans – at many locations throughout Korea…It is reported that the U.S. dropped some 650,000 tons of bombs, including 43,000 tons of napalm bombs, during the Korean War.” About 50,000 Americans lost their lives. For more details the reader is referred to an article by Brian Wilson. (15)

In Vietnam, under an agreement several decades ago, there was supposed to be an election for a unified North and South Vietnam. The U.S. opposed this and supported the Diem government in South Vietnam. In August, 1964 the CIA and others helped fabricate a phony Vietnamese attack on a U.S. ship in the Gulf of Tonkin and this was used as a pretext for greater U.S. involvement in Vietnam. (16)

During that war there was Operation Phoenix which was an American assassination operation used to terrorize the South Vietnamese people, there occurred also the famous My Lai Massacre in 1968. About 50,000 Americans and 2 to 3 million Vietnamese died during the war.

Cambodia is located next to Vietnam. It’s leader, Prince Sihanouk, tried to avoid involvement in the Vietnam War and to avoid joining the crusade against communism. He alleged that there were two assassination attempts against him by the CIA. The Vietnam War spilled over into Cambodia and he denounced these incursions. Soon he was deposed by a CIA puppet.

Some North Vietnamese troops were driven by bombing by the U.S. into Cambodia.

From 1969 to 1975 the U.S. bombing killed 600,000 Cambodians and created a famine. Eventually the Khmer Rouge took power, executing between 100,000 and 350,000 people. Other estimates of 1 million deaths included those due to famine. When Vietnam invaded Cambodia later in 1979 the CIA was still supporting the Khmer Rouge. Over the years we have repeatedly heard about the Khmer Rough’s role but not that of the U.S. (17)

Laos is also adjacent to Vietnam. A civil war started back in the 1950s when the U.S. recruited a force of 40,000 Laotians to oppose the Pathet Lao, a leftist political party. In 1975 that party took power.

From 1965 to 1973 the U.S. dropped over two million tons of bombs on Laos – more than was dropped in WWII by both sides. Over a quarter of the population became refugees. This was called a secret war, since it occurred at the same time as the Vietnam War and got little press. Hundreds of thousands were killed. (18)

Next I will discuss Iran, Iraq, Yugoslavia, Afganistán.

In 1951 the prime minister of Iran, Mossadegh, nationalized Iran’s oil. In 1953 he was overthrown with considerable assistance from the CIA and the Shah returned from exile. The Shah created SAVAK, a CIA trained security force which tortured and murdered thousands of his opponents. (19)

In 1976 Amnesty International concluded that this security force, had the worst human rights record on the planet and that its torture techniques were “beyond belief.” The Shah was overthrown in 1979. (20)

The intrusions I have mentioned so far are those that occurred before the end of the Cold War about 15 years ago. It seemed then that the fear of communism would no longer scare Americans into supporting a large military establishment and that it was the right time for a peace dividend which would have consisted of using the money spent on military contractors for social programs.

I was a member of the Peace and Social Justice Committee of Ohio NASW at that time which formulated a position on peace and economic conversion, which was adopted by an NASW Delegate Assembly. But our weapons manufacturers rose to the challenge and met the threat that peace posed to their profits by supporting several wars since that time.

The U.S. supported Iraq in its War with Iran for most of the 1980s. Then Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990. The U.S. ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie, told Saddam Hussein before he invaded that the U.S. had no interest in the dispute between Iraq and Kuwait. The stage was set. Saddam had been lured into invading Iraq. The daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the U.S. falsely testified before Congress that Iraqi troops were pulling the plugs on incubators in Iraqi hospitals. (22) This help to incite a lust for war by the U.S.

The U.S., no longer encumbered by the Soviet Union which had just fallen apart, arranged for sanctions to be put into effect against Iraq, and in early 1991 launched an aerial attack on Iraq followed by a land invasion of Kuwait. (21) The elder Bush decided against conducting a land war against Iraq for reasons he gave in his book. In effect, he predicted the morass that exists in Iraq today. It is not known if his son read his book.

About 200,000 Iraqis died as a result of U.S. violations of international law. Iraqi troops during that war, more appropriately called a slaughter, were mercilessly killed on the Highway of Death and about 400 tons of depleted uranium were left in that nation by the U.S. Less than 200 Americans died. American support was strong for that war. (23)

Sanctions were in effect on Iraq for over a decade and caused about a million Iraqi deaths. This fact, unfortunately, seems to evoke little empathy among Americans - an apparent ignorance and callousness cast in the same mold as the support that was given for slavery and the extermination of native Americans.

Being naïve again, as I had been at the end of the cold war about what could be accomplished, I participated at that time in a local organization in Dayton called the Committee to Save the Iraqi People to make people aware of the genocide being committed against the Iraqi people.

Leslie Stahl, in the mid 1990s, on TV asked Madeline Albright, secretary of state under Clinton, and then U.S. ambassador to the UN about Iraq: “We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that is more children than died in Hiroshima. And – you know, is the price worth it?” Albright then replied, “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price – we think the price is worth it.” This comment caused no groundswell of disgust in the American public. (24)

Yugoslavia was a socialist federation of several republics which had been supported by the U.S. to some extent during the Cold War because that nation refused to be closely allied to the Soviet Union. But when the Soviet Union dissolved, its usefulness to the U.S. ended. So the U.S and Germany worked to convert its socialist economy to a capitalist one by a process primarily of dividing and conquering. From the early 1990s until now it has reduced Yugoslavia to several independent nations whose lowered income, along with CIA connivance, has made it a pawn in the hands of capitalism. (25)

In 1979 the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. According to official stories the U.S. gave aid to the Afghan opposition only after the invasion. Later Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security advisor to Jimmy Carter, revealed the full truth. According to him the U.S. began aiding the Islamic fundamentalist Moujahedeen six months before the Soviets made their move against Afghanistan. He told President Carter that “this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.” Brzezinski defended this decision. “Regret what?” he said. “That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it?” (26)

What were the consequences of that American-supported war in Afghanistan? According to Chalmers Johnson, they are the defeat of a government that was trying to bring Afghanistan into the 20th Century, breathtaking carnage; Moujahedeen torture, half the population either dead, disabled or refugees; and the spawning of thousands of Islamic terrorists who have unleashed atrocities in numerous countries. (27)

The CIA spent 5 to 6 billion dollars on its operation in Afghanistan in order to bleed the Soviet Union. When that 10-year war ended a million people were dead and “Afghan heroin had captured 60% of the U.S. market. (28)

This brings up to our latest war, the current one against Iraq. Just as the end of the Cold war emboldened the U.S. to attack Iraq in 1991 so the attacks of September11, 2001 encouraged the U.S. to launch the current war against Iraq. While in some other wars we learned much later about the lies that were used to deceive us, some of the lies that were used to get us into this war became well- known almost as soon as they were uttered. There were no weapons of mass destruction, we were not trying to promote democracy, we were not trying to save the Iraqi people from a ruthless dictator, etc.

This short and incomplete history of U.S. imperialism can perhaps best be expressed by the words used in 1933 by Lt. General Smedley Butler who won two Congressional Medals of Honor. He said the following “I spent thirty years and four months in active military service….And during that period I spent most of my time as a high-class muscle-man for big business, for Wall Street, and the bankers….Thus, I helped make Mexico, and especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba decent places for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street….In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.”
(29)

But my main point at this juncture is that the history of U.S. terrorism against the rest of the world has been the most significant cause of terrorism against the U.S. If this cycle of terror is to end it will be necessary for the U.S., which has the strongest military establishment and economic reach in the history of the world, to take the lead in reversing this downward spiral.

The attacks of September 11, 2001 have caused our president and our leaders to take certain security measures, including the passage of the Patriot Act. On this matter of civil rights I have not devoted much time in my talk, not because it is not important, but because I wanted to discuss the factors which have been leading many people around the world to look with disgust at the U.S. or, as some people have said, to “hate Americans.” It was not easy for me to ignore the issue of civil rights, since I believe that, if this trend is not reversed we will have lost our freedoms and our republic.

What is the U.S. doing now to create such resentment around the world? We can start with our legal relationships with the rest of the world

Following are some of the treaties that the U.S. will not ratify and conventions from which we have withdrawn. In doing this I am not laying responsibility for this obstinacy, or the whole sordid story I have related here today, solely at the hands of the current administration. I am referring here to The Landmines Treaty, the Treaty On Discrimination Against Women; the Kyoto Treaty, (30) the Biological Weapons Treaty; the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child; and the International Conference on Racism.

In addition the U.S. was ousted from the UN Human Rights Commission, backed out of UNESCO, has refused at times to pay its current or back dues to the UN and avoided its legal obligation to respect the World Court’s decision on Nicaragua. (31)

The U.S. expresses outrage that other nations such as Iran or Korea may develop nuclear weapons. But the world has noticed that Iraq, a nation with no weapons of mass destruction, incurred our wrath anyway. Should we be surprised if some nations will try to get nukes in the belief that Iraq might have been able to keep the U.S. at bay if it really did have nukes?

The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty calls for nuclear nations like the U.S. to work to eliminate its arsenals in return for other nations not developing nukes. Is the U.S. keeping its part of the bargain by reducing its nukes? The answer is “No.” In fact, the U.S. is actually increasing its threat level? We are withdrawing from many nuclear treaties, trying to develop bunker busters, star wars weapons, and we are talking of using nukes in a conventional war. (32)

We are not even- handed in trying to convince other nuclear nations not to join the nuclear club, since we refuse to even admit that Israel has at least 100 nukes. (33)

Hardly a day seems to goes by now without some news item appearing indicating that the U.S. is trying to dictate to some nation how to conduct its affairs or is actively trying to interfere in their internal processes. We are pretty much performing the same bully role that in the past has brought us to our current hazardous state. In effect we say that we are not subject to laws. We call it “leadership.”

Other nations feel threatened. The U.S. has been involved in recent attempts to overthrow Chavez, the democratically elected president of Venezuela. (34) We are pumping billions of dollars in military aid into Colombia, dishonestly claiming that our motive is to stop the production of drugs there, when our real reason is to be able to control future oil production in that country. It has been reported that secret U.S. operatives are in Iran are designating certain sites as appropriate for U.S. aerial attacks. (35) Also, it has been reported that our government may try to overthrow the Philippine government. (36)

Besides having agents of the CIA and other U.S. security agencies operating in many, many nations around the world we have over 700 military bases operating in over 100 nations and we have over 10 carrier fleets patrolling the world, and thousands of nuclear weapons on call to enforce our will if necessary. (37)

We refuse to close the School of the Americas at Ft.Benning, Georgia which trains military personnel from other nations in our hemisphere how to suppress popular and indigenous peoples movement seeking peace and justice. (38) Annual protests each November organized by the School of the Americas Watch continue outside Ft. Bragg, Georgia where the school is located. Many opponents of the school have served prison sentences for their convictions.

The most dangerous step the current administration has taken has been to espouse the concept of preventive war by which we assume the right to attack other nations if we think they may be capable at some time in the future of attacking us. (39) Every nation in the world has been put on notice, in effect, not to even think about attacking the U.S.

Such an idea may have some superficial plausibility, but the world has learned over the years that it is a prescription for disaster. It would be like a group of mutually antagonistic people all standing around with each person pointing a loaded gun ready to use it should anyone else display any aggressive intent.

In conclusion, let me say that our leaders need to know that its citizens will no longer be deceived by false reasons given for war, whether they be to eliminate weapons of mass destruction, to end dictatorships, to promote humanitarian causes or for other reasons. Our leaders need to understand that they cannot continue to brainwash us into condoning this imperialistic approach. We’ve been down this road too often before. It has brought us to dead end.

But public dissent against such policies of our country is being discouraged, and that is why more people, including outspoken social workers are needed to help demonstrate that Americans are not sheep willing to be led to slaughter.

*Parts of this article were presented in a workshop at the Social Welfare Action Alliance’s Annual Convention in Toledo, Ohio on July 29, 2005.




CITATIONS

1. Occupation Watch: http://www.occupationwatch.org/

2, War Resisters League http://www.warresisters.org/
National Priorities Project: http://www.nationalpriorities.org/

3. Zoltan Grossman http://www.neravt.com/left/invade.htm
Michael Parenti Against Empire (San Francisco: City Light Books) 83

5. Virtual Truth Commission http://www.geocities.com/~virtualtruth/date5.htm

6. Virtual , http://www.geocities.com/~virtualtruth/date3.htm

7. Chalmers Johnson Blowback (New York Henry Holt & Co. LLC) 13-14

8 Michael Dobbs, Negroponte’s Time in Honduras at Issue,,, Washington Post, March 21, 2005
9. Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia, retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran-Contra_Affair")

10. Mark Zepezauer, The CIA’s Greatest Hits, (Odonian Press 1998) 83

11. Zepezauer, Hits, 86

12.William Blum Killing Hope (Maine, Common Courage Press 1995) 209

13.Virtual, http://www.geocities.com/~virtualtruth/date4.htm

14.Virtual, http://www.geocities.com/~virtualtruth/date4.htm

15.S. Brian Wilson, Documenting U.S. War Crimes in North Korea (Veterans for Peace Newsletter) Spring, 2002) http://www.veteransforpeace.org/

16.Zepezauer, Hits, 24, 40

17.Zepezauer, Hits; 44
Virtual, http://www.geocities.com/~virtualtruth/date4.htm

18.William Blum Rogue State (Maine, Common Cause Press) 136

19.Zoltan Grossman http://www.neravt.com/left/invade.htm
Virtual: http://www.geocities.com/~virtualtruth/date4.htm

20.Zepezauer, Hits, 10

21.Ramsey Clark, The Fire This Time (New York, Thundermouth Press 1992) 23

22.Clark, This Time, 31-32

23.Clark, This Time, 52-54

24.William Blum Rogue State (Maine, Common Cause Press) 5-6

25. Sara Flounders “Bosnia Tragedy:The Unknown Role of the Pentagon” in NATO in the Balkans (New York: International Action Center) 47-75

26.Blum, Rogue, 5

27.Blum, Rogue, 4-5

28.Zepezauer, Hits, 76

29.Chalmers Johnson, Sorrows of Empire (New York Metropolitan Books 2004)

30.Johnson, Sorrows, 76

31.Johnson, Sorrows, 75

32.Johnson, Sorrows, 290

33.Peace Heroes, Israel and Nuclear Weapons: http://www.peaceheroes.com/MordecaiVanunu/israelnuclearweapons.htm

34. Sohan Sharma and Surinder Kumar, Colombia: A Proxy County for US Intervention in Venezuela, http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/SHA412A.html

35.Seymour Hersh The Coming Wars The New Yorker, January 7, 2005 http://www.cnn.com/2005/ALLPOLITICS/01/16/hersh.iran/

36.E. San Juan, US Designs on the Philippines (Asia Times, July 5, 2005)
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/GG06Ae02.html

37.Johnson, Sorrows, 154
38.School of the Americas Watch: http://www.soaw.org/new/
39.Johnson, Sorrows, 256