World History Class

Having lived in multiple countries, I’m often asked by Americans why the world hates us so. "We are a peace-loving people who’ve done nothing but help the world with billions of dollars in untold tons of food" they say  with a hurt and confused look on their face. 

They’re right. America HAS done a lot of good in the world. However, we have to understand that in the last 236 years of our nation’s history we also conducted the following wars:

1775-1782 The Revolutionary War (7 years long)

1812-1814 The War of 1812 (2 years)

1846-1848 Mexican American War  (2 years)

1861-1865 Civil War (4 years)

1890 Fought the Lakota in South Dakota.

1890 Fought in Argentina.

1891 Fought in Chile and Haiti.

1892 We pitted our Army against American citizens – striking silver miners – in Idaho.

1893 We overthrew an independent kingdom and unilaterally annexed it. It’s called Hawaii.

1894 The Army was again used to stop a strike in Chicago – this time striking rail workers.

1894 we also fought in Nicaragua.

1894-1895 our Marines were involved in the Sino-Japanese war on Chinese soil.

1894-1896 We fought in Korea.

1895 We sent our Navy into Panama.

1896 We fought in Nicaragua.

1898-1900 we fought the Boxer Rebellion in China.

1898-1902 we seized Cuba from Spain and continue to hold Guantanamo to this day.

1898-1910 Meanwhile we seized the Philippines from Spain in the Spanish American War, killing 600,000 Filipinos in the process. We also got Puerto Rico and Guam as our reward.

1898 was a busy year because we also fought the Chippewa in Minnesota.

1898 We also landed Marines in Nicaragua.

1899 We participated in a battle for the throne in Samoa. We also returned to Nicaragua with another Marine invasion.

1899-1901 Our Army occupied the mining region of Idaho.

1901 We battled the Creek Indians in Oklahoma.

1901-1914 we fought in and took the Panama Canal.

1899-1902 Philippine American War  (3 years)

1903 our Marines intervened in Honduras.

1903 to 1904 we intervened in the Dominican Republic.

1904 to 1905 our Marines landed in Korea during the Sino Japanese War.

1906 to 1909 we intervened in Cuba’s election.

1907 We sent troops into both Nicaragua and Honduras.

1908 Our troops intervened in Panama’s elections.

1910 our troops were in Nicaragua.

1911 we intervened in Honduras’ civil war.

1911-1941 our naval troops continually occupied China.

1912 we intervened in Cuba’s civil war, Panama’s election, and sent troops into Honduras.

1912-1933 we continually occupied Nicaragua.

1913 we evacuated Americans from Mexico during its revolution.

1914 we fought over Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic.

1914 our troops broke up a miner’s strike in Colorado.

1914-1918 World War I (4 years). During that same period we also fought nationalists in Mexico.

1914-1934 we bombed and occupied Haiti.

1915 Federal troops crushed a “Mexican American” rebellion.

1916-1924 we continuously occupied Nicaragua.

1917-1933 we had troops occupy Cuba.

1918-1920 we conducted a “police action” in Panama to “assist” their elections.

1918-1922 we landed five times in Russia to fight the Bolsheviks.

1919 Our troops “helped” the Hondurans in their elections too.

1919 We also fought in Yugoslavia.

1920 For two weeks we fought unionists in Guatemala.

1920-1921 Our troops bombed and fought mine workers in West Virginia.

1922 We fought nationalists in Turkey.

1922-1927 Our naval troops intervened in a nationalist revolt in China.

1923 We bombed Mexico.

1924-1925 Our troops landed twice in Honduras during election troubles.

1925 We sent Marines to suppress strikes in Panama.

1927-1934 We had troops stationed all over China.

1932 we sent our warships to El Salvador.

1932 we also had federal troops suppress a protest by WWI vets protesting their lack of pay in no less than Washington DC. 

1939-1945 World War II (6 years) We ended this one with the mother of all bombs, no less than TWO nuclear bombs!

1943 Our troops suppressed a black rebellion in Detroit.

1946 we figured the nuclear threat we possessed was such an effective tool that we threatened both Iran and Yugoslavia with it. In 1947 we did a “threepeat” by threatening Uruguay.

1947-1949 We directed one side of the civil war in Greece.

1948-1949 We evacuated Americans from China before the Communists took over.

1948-1954 our CIA directed the Huk rebellion in the Philippines.  

1950-1953 Korean War (3 years) We bombed both Korea and China.

1953 our CIA overthrew Iran’s democracy and installed the Shah.

1954 Bombed Guatemala. Being a generally friendly folk, we offered nuclear bombs to France to help them during their Vietnam troubles. We also had our CIA direct an invasion of Nicaragua and bombers from Guatemala when some of our assets were nationalized.

1955-1975 Vietnam War (20 years) Bombed them from 1961-1973

1958 Bombed Indonesia.

1958 We sent naval troops including Marines and the Army to occupy in Lebanon. That same year we sent troops into Panama.

1960 Bombed Guatemala

1959-1961 Bombed Cuba

1962 We blockaded Cuba and nearly went into a nuclear war with the Soviet Union.

1963 Our CIA orchestrated a coup that assassinated the president of Iraq, brought the Ba’ath party into power and and brought a little known man by the name of Saddam Hussein in to become the head of Iraq’s secret service.

1964 Bombed Congo. Our troops also shot people in Panama who were protesting and calling for the return of the Panama Canal that we took from them back in 1914.

1964-1973 Bombed Laos

1965 The CIA assisted in a coup in Indonesia that resulted in over one million deaths.

1965-1966 We bombed the Dominican Republic and sent troops in over an election.

1966-1967 Our Green Berets fought rebels in Guatemala.

1967 The Army killed 43 African Americans in Detroit.

1967-1969 Bombed Guatemala

1969-1975 Bombed Cambodia; sent our Navy and put troops on the soil in a war that ended up killing over two million. From 1971 to 1973 we carpet bombed them while directing the South Vietnamese invasion.

1970 We directed Iran’s naval invasion of Oman.

1973 The Army directed the action against the Lakotas in Wounded Knee, South Dakota.

1973 The CIA directed a coup against a lawfully elected Marxist president in Chile.

1975 We gassed a Khmer ship in Cambodia, not realizing that the crew had already been released. So a) we were willing to gas the ship with friendlies on board and b) our intel was terrible.

1976-1992 Our CIA directed South-African backed rebels in Angola. 

1981 Our jets shot down two Libyan jets on maneuvers.

1983 We bombed Grenada, Lebanon and Syria

1986 Bombed Libya. When France refused us airspace for our flights, we bombed so close to their embassy in Libya that the building was badly damaged and its communications lines were shut down.

1981-1990 the CIA directed the Contras and planted harbor mines in Nicaragua.

1980s Bombed El Salvador and Nicaragua

1982-1984 Our Navy bombed and shelled Lebanon. It was during this period that 241 Marines were killed in a Shi’a bomb attack on their barracks.

1983-1984 We bombed and our troops invaded Grenada four years after their revolution.

1983-1989 We conducted “maneuvers” that ended up allowing us to build the Soto Cano Airbase base near the border of Nicaragua. From then on, after bribing Honduran officials to look the other way, we sent irregular troops into Nicaragua on a routine basis. Soto Cano was notorious for human rights abuses in the 1980s.

1984 We shot down two Iranian jets over the Persian Gulf

1986 Our navy conducted air strikes and bombing to topple the nationalist government of Libya.

1986 Our Army helped raid cocaine fields in Bolivia.

1987-1988 We helped Iraq in its war on Iran using our Navy to bomb Iran

1989 Our Navy shot down two Libyan jets

1989 Our troops suppressed unrest in St. Croix of the Virgin Islands.

1989 Our jets provided air cover to aid the government of the Philippines against an attempted coup.

1989 In December “Operation Just Cause” invaded and bombed Panama. Manuel Noriega was deposed, Endara was sworn in and the Panamanian Defense Force was dissolved. By the way, Noriega had served as a US intelligence asset and was a paid informant (to the tune of $100,000 a year till the 1980 then $200,000 a year) of the CIA since 1967.

1990 Our troops evacuated foreigners during Liberia’s civil war.

1990-1991 First Persian Gulf War (Desert Shield 8/90; Desert Storm 1-2/91) (1 year) This entailed massive bombing of both Iraq and Kuwait. We kept bombing Iraq on a regular basis all the way through the end of the Second Gulf War (see below). Our troops were stationed in Oman, Qatar, Bahrain, UAE, and Israel. More than 200,000 died in Iraq and Kuwait.

1991 Our Navy bombed Kuwait and our troops forcefully returned the Kuwait royal family to the throne.

1991-2003 We continuously enforced a no-fly zone in Iraq; dished out constant air strikes and naval enforced economic sanctions.

1992 Our Army and Marines were deployed against an anti-police riot in Los Angeles, California.

1992-1994 Our Navy bombed and our troops invaded and continued to occupy Somalia in a failed attempt to overthrow a Mogadishu faction.

1992-1994 Our Navy participated in a NATO blockade of Serbia and Montenegro.

1993-1995 Our Jets bombed and patrolled a no-fly zone in Bosnia.

1994 Our navy blockaded the military government of Haiti and our troops restored President Aristide to his office three years after a coup against him.

1996-1997 Our troops were in Zaire at Rwandan Hutu refugee camps when the revolution began. They also came under brief fire in Liberia while evacuating foreigners.

1997 Our troops again came under fire while evacuating foreigners in Albania.

1998 Bombed Sudan with missiles in an attack on a pharmaceutical plant that was supposed to be producing nerve gas for terrorists.

1998 We sent missiles against former CIA training camps in Afghanistan that had been taken over by Islamic fundamentalist groups.

1998 We bombed and sent missiles against Iraq when our weapons inspectors complained they were being obstructed.

1999 Bombed Yugoslavia; we also “accidentally” bombed the Chinese embassy while bombing Kosovo on May 7, 1999.

2001 Our troops pushed back and disarmed Albanian rebels in Macedonia.

October 2001 to present Operation Enduring Freedom (10 years)

• Afghanistan
  
• Philippines
  
• Somalia / Horn of Africa; we bombed them in 1993
  
• Georgia
  
• Kyrgyzstan
  

2001 till present Bombed Afghanistan

2002 Bombed Yemen and had a Predator drone missile attack on Al Qaeda.

2002 A naval training mission in the Philippines devolved into a series of combat missions in Sulu Archipelago, west of Mindanao.

2002-2003 Bombed Pakistan

2003 US Spec Ops backed up the Columbian military in protecting the oil pipeline in Columbia.

2003 Brief peace-keeping intervention in Liberia.

2003-2011 Second Persian Gulf War - Iraqi Freedom (8 years) So basically we bombed Iraq from August of 1990 until 2010, a total of about 20 years. We also “accidentally” hit Iran in April of 2003. We toppled Sadam Hussein (remember – the guy we helped install?)

2004-2005 Our Navy and troops land in Haiti after Aristide is ousted by rebels. Remember this is the guy we invaded Haiti over and installed back in 1994?

2005 till now CIA missile strikes, Spec Ops raids, bombs, Predator strikes in Pakistan

2006-2008 We sent cruise missiles, the navy, troops, and AC-130 strikes to topple the Islamist government in Somalia. We also blockaded the country in an effort to control pirates.

2008 A Spec Ops helicopter raid in Syria killed 8 Syrian civilians.

2009 We sent cruise missiles into Yemen, killing 49 civilians. We also directed Yemeni military assaults on rebels.  

2011 Bombed Somalia

2011 Bombed Yemen

2011 Bombed and sent missiles against Libya

Just to give you some perspective, during that same time period, Iraq sided with Germany during World War I but didn’t invade anyone. Britain invaded Iraq, divided it up arbitrarily, imposed a Hashimite monarchy upon them and defined their territorial limits without taking into account the ethnic and religious differences of the various peoples. When World War II rolled around, their understandable antipathy to the Brits turned them toward the Nazis. Again they were invaded by the allied forces. 

They participated in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war along with the other members of the Arab League. 

1980-1988 They invaded Iran in September of 1980. They then fought Iran in an inconclusive eight-year war that devastated their economy. They also lost somewhere around 250,000 soldiers. 

Then they invaded Kuwait in 1990. Perhaps as many as 100,000 Iraqi soldiers and several tens of thousands of civilians died in the aftermath. In the following years marked by sanctions between 500,000 and 1.2 million of their children died. The US kept using its veto to block any proposal to lift the sanctions. 

So in the same 236 years, while the US participated in 140 separate engagements, Iraq engaged in 3 (Israel, Iran, Kuwait). We invaded them twice, bombed them continually for some 20 years and imposed sanctions that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands and the complete destruction of their economy. The charge? Iraq was a belligerent war-monger. 


We're no different from other European countries that have been at war with each other for hundreds of years. Some of these battles were actually just causes. I'm not an enemy of the US and I'm a former Marine. Just don't tell me that we always wear the white hat, that we are a peace-loving nation who wouldn't hurt a fly unless forced to do so. Don't look me in the eye, lie to me, lie to my children and expect me to say nothing. In the end it is the truth that will set us free.