On America

Published on September 9, 2014 (↻ February 5, 2024), filed under Everything Else (RSS feed for all categories).

This post is partially outdated.

As you read this post, note that I’ve lived in and care about the United States. I’m critical of other countries, including my home country, too. I believe in peace, and not in violence.

The United States have so far engaged in 71 wars in which they killed 13.8 million people; not counted are the World Wars they ended with nuclear strikes on Japan. The U.S. have led 26 proxy wars in which they took 1.4 million lives. The U.S. have displaced entire regions with millions more people, removing them off their own soil. (Numbers retrieved manually and likely higher—also see notes.) The U.S. have been an aggressor in most of these conflicts, they escalated several of them into genocides, and there is no end in sight.

No organization ever attacked the United States in like form (and, for respect of life and principles, no one should). Pearl Harbor and 9/11, even following U.S. government and not independent third-party accounts of these events, do not justify U.S. violence, destruction, exploitation, and atrocities committed in response.

We look at but a mosaic of history here and so it must fail to put United States military and economic aggression into a more powerful perspective. It stands little chance of reaching the U.S. public to, for once, review their past and present conduct. It’s only suggestive in how the U.S. have become everyone’s best friend because of their aggression, and it misses to demonstrate how friends of the U.S. get economically exploited, politically undermined, culturally and socially drained, and, lastly, put under surveillance.

For positive and constructive change we can’t resort to United States methods of back-room politics, manipulation of public opinion, and violence (Chomsky). We face a hard problem that involves systemic and philosophical issues as well as other countries, most notably England. What do I know, but it seems to me we need to tackle all of these issues, together (the time is not now, but close). We must recognize that we all are one people who are here to grow and learn. We can grow and learn to respect each other, trust each other, and work with each other, so that at some point, no nation, not one, engages in wars and conflicts, leads proxy wars, or displaces entire regions. Wars may seem so natural and common, but they’re not, they must be unacceptable, and as mankind we need to move on.

Notes. People means people like you and me. Numbers of U.S. victims extrapolated from Wikipedia and likely higher due to U.S. bias of reporting (for research see e.g. Herman’s and Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent). Statements based on tangential studies, and not taken lightly. Atrocities by the European powers are in a similar league of terror and horror. This post is pro-peace and pro-rights, not anti-American (in a way it has nothing to do with the U.S. per se); the “anti” rhetoric is idiotic and needs to stop for criticism is important, and we criticize because we care. I’m a friend of the United States and I’d much love them to, when fit to do so, lead by wisdom and virtue, not slaughter and exploit.

Afterword

The United States has gone to war, actually killing people, over a dozen times since Vietnam: Cambodia […], Iran […], Lebanon, Libya […], Panama, Grenada, Gulf I, Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya again. We’ve aided and abetted killing in the Falklands, El Salvador, Afghanistan […], Angola, Cambodia, Colombia, and Israel/Palestine. We are a very aggressive and warlike nation. Denying our collective responsibility for these activities, whether they were right or wrong, is like scurrying around the house of an alcoholic hiding empty bottles and never mentioning the drinking.

—Karl Marlantes: What It Is Like to Go to War (2011).

I quick-researched and wrote this post in March. It was one of these things that then bugged me for some time after. It still comes early. Now, in September, the United States are fueling the next war against an enemy they themselves may have created. The bending of truth seems to have become so embarrassingly low, if it wasn’t also so unbelievably serious—once more killing people for power and profit—one could get hung up on making bombardments social media events alone.

We can, and we must, do better.

About Me

I’m Jens (long: Jens Oliver Meiert), and I’m a frontend engineering leader and tech author/publisher. I’ve worked as a technical lead for companies like Google and as an engineering manager for companies like Miro, I’m a contributor to several web standards, and I write and review books for O’Reilly and Frontend Dogma.

I love trying things, not only in web development (and engineering management), but also in other areas like philosophy. Here on meiert.com I share some of my experiences and views. (Please be critical, interpret charitably, and give feedback.)