The illegal war for the conquest of Iraq and the establishment of a new American Empire has begun. It is a shame that the American history that all Americans are required to take, usually in high school, is sanitized. Few Americans are familiar with the multiple American incursions into Nicaragua during the early twentieth century — and thus appreciate how destabilizing those incursions were. In effect the United States managed to destroy a Central American democracy. Fewer Americans seem to be aware of the Philippine-American War, which saw the death of over a million Filipinos who died resisting American dictatorial rule over the islands (the United States won the Philippines as a consequence of the Spanish-American war). And few Americans seem to have paid attention to the fact that the 1994 invasion of Haiti has done nothing to create a flourishing democracy.
Time and again, American troops have been sent abroad for dubious geopolitical purposes. And time and again, there have been significant negative unintended consequences. While there is a tendency in the neoconservative press to point to World War II as an example of American intervention abroad, we must remember, humbly, that World War II has been the rare exception and not the general rule. South Korea after the Korean War was little more than a corrupt dictatorship until the early 1990s. Vietnam was, for a variety of reasons, a disaster. Panama in the years following the ouster of General Noriega served as a conduit for more illegal drugs, especially cocaine, than it had during Noriega’s rule. Its political institutions were more corrupt after the Panama invasion than before. More recently Afghanistan is a monument for how not to support a puppet government. It is doubtful that Americans will ever see an invoice for the millions if not billions of dollars bribe money that were thrown about in the quest to destroy the Taliban and harass al-Qaida.
It is uncertain what course the second gulf war will take. It could be over in a matter of hours, or it could drag into a quagmire with significant civilian and military casualties. A few things are certain, however.
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