We have been neo-conned into applying a school of thought about foreign affairs that has failed everywhere it has been tried. Chas Freeman, former diplomat
The dirty little secret is that both Houses of Congress are irrelevant. America’s domestic policy is now being run by Alan Greenspan and the Federal Reserve. America’s foreign policy is now being run by the International Monetary Fund. When the President decides to go to war, he no longer needs a declaration of war from Congress. Robert Reich, USA Today 7th January 1999
The US also knew that its sales to Iraq of dual-use material like helicopters and chemicals could well have facilitated Saddam’s mass-murder campaign. But apart from issuing an official statement that denounced the gassing of the Kurds when it became public knowledge, what did the US do to stop its ally Saddam? Absolutely nothing. In fact the next year American financial aid to Iraq went up. The Fifth Estate: The Lies that Led to War, CBC 2007
We now know that Pinochet’s 1973 coup, which overthrew an elected government, rounded up 70,000 of its supporters, burnt their books, raped the women, tortured and murdered at least 10,000 people, was planned in the dear old democratic US by an intelligence agency which was set up ostensibly to protect democracy. The reason for the coup was that investors in Chile had become sick and tired of laws which tried, usually unsuccessfully, to keep prices down. Low prices meant low profits, and low profits for any length of time were intolerable. Paul Foot, No Time To Make Up
It’s this kind of ideology which has grown up in the wake of the Cold War propounded quite openly by what we are calling Neo-Conservatives in America, that identifies the United States as a Colossus to thwart the world, a new Rome, beyond good and evil. Chalmers Johnson, author Sorrows of Empire
United States of America is a threat to world peace. Because what [America] is saying is that if you are afraid of a veto in the Security Council, you can go outside and take action and violate the sovereignty of other countries. That is the message they are sending to the world. That must be condemned in the strongest terms. Nelson Mandela
The systematic brutality, the widespread atrocities, the ruthless suppression of independent thought in Stalinist Russia were well known in the West while American state crimes were merely superficially recorded, let alone documented. But you wouldn’t know it. It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn’t happening. It didn’t matter. It was of no interest. Harold Pinter, accepting Nobel Prize for Literature
We don’t really give a damn what anybody thinks. We rub everyone’s face in it. We’re Americans and you’re not. We’re talking the Roman Empire here. We do anything we wanna do. Anywhere we wanna do it. And you’re either with us or against us. Charles Lewis, Center for Public Integrity Washington
We need regime change in the United States. We need democracy. We need a government that’s peaceable. We need a government that will take the enormous resources that the United States has and instead of using it for war use it for human needs. Millions of people are dying in Africa. Howard Zinn, Liberty Bound 2004
We need a regime change in the United States. We need something to make the American people proud. You can’t be proud of a military victory over Iraq. You can’t be proud of spending the resources of a government for more and more and more military weapons. Yes, so I think the American Empire is on its way down. And that will be a good thing one day. ibid.
Oil: That was the reason for the first Gulf War in 1991. Oil: That is the reason before all American foreign policy since World War II. ibid.
September 11th was the jumpstart for what is now an accelerated agenda by the ruthless elite: it was a staged war pretext no different from the sinking of the Lusitania, the provoking of Pearl Harbor and the Gulf of Tonkin lie. In fact if 9/11 wasn’t a planned war pretext, it would be the exception to the rule. It has been used to launch two unprovoked illegal wars – one against Iraq and one against Afghanistan. However, 9/11 was a pretext for another war as well: the War against You. The Patriot Act, Homeland Security, The Military Tribunals Act and other legislations are all completely and entirely designed to destroy your civil liberties and limit your ability to fight back against what is coming. Currently in the United States unannounced to most brainwashed Americans your home can be searched without a warrant without you being home, you can in turn be arrested with no charges revealed to you, detained indefinitely with no access to a lawyer, and legally tortured all under the suspicion that you might be a terrorist ... Let’s recognise how history repeats itself. Zeitgeist, 2007
In 2005, an arrangement between Canada, Mexico and the United States was made. This arrangement, unannounced to the public, unregulated by Congress, merges the United States, Mexico and Canada into one entity, erasing all borders ... This isn’t some trade agreement – it’s a total removal of sovereignty from these countries, which will also result in a completely new currency called the Amero ... The American Constitution will eventually be obsolete ... You’re not told what you’re not supposed to know. The North American Union is the same concept as the European Union, the African Union and the soon-to-be Asian Union, and the same people are behind all of them; and, when the time is right ... will be merged together forming the final stages of the plan these men have been working on for over sixty years – a one-world government. ibid.
The problem with America is not that we go broading around the world imposing ourselves, the problem with America in the last ten to fifteen years since the end of the cold war, certainly in the last six years, is that we’re too slow to get involved in conflicts. William Kristol, editor The Weekly Standard
The United States does not target civilians. I think the number of civilians you’re talking about is questionable. I don’t accept your assertion that we’ve killed thousands of innocent people. Douglas Feith, Under Secretary of Defense, interview John Pilger
The struggle between Jefferson’s and Hamilton’s vision for how America comes to terms with its wars is waged every day in the hearts and minds of these cadets. The American Future: A History by Simon Schama, BBC 2008
For a while the flag-draped coffins from Iraq and Afghanistan were hidden from the American people. ibid.
The political leadership of this country, as exemplified by the campaign positions of Bush and Kerry, has become so obsessed with our own security fears and so convinced of our own virtue that it has very little to offer in the way of positive socio-economic development initiatives. To most of the people of Latin America, Africa and Asia, the United States has largely become irrelevant to their hopes for a better future – except as a potential market for some of their goods or as a source of outsourced jobs. Sherle Schwenninger
By the mid-1950s the reputation of the United States in the third world reached rock bottom as it allied itself to some of the world’s most reactionary regimes. Oliver Stone’s Untold History of the United States V: The 50s: Eisenhower, The Bomb and the Third World, Showtime 2012
Commerce, Oil, Money and Power are the only values that come from Washington’s lead, consistently over the years the world has learned to hate all American intervention because it is known full well that at the bottom of every American foreign policy these four corrupting principles are immovably roosted. Even in matters of foreign aid, the USA is abusive and two-faced. The poor USA citizens do not know the extent of the damage that their country’s commercialism-at-all-costs is costing the world. World peace, world economy, third world countries, the environment and international co-operation are all victims of the USA’s blatant greed. Vexen Crabtree, USA: Contempt for United Nations and International Folly, 2003
People don’t sacrifice themselves for no reason. Let’s find out what it is. And if we did something wrong (no doubt we did) let’s apologize, ask for forgiveness, and then ask how we can do better. Jeff Kandt, 2001
Are you an American? Are you paying attention to what your government is doing overseas? All over the world, and in the Middle East in particular, the US government is pursuing a foreign policy that many people consider immoral. We have supported, trained and armed dictators, illegitimate governments and racist and brutal regimes. We have largely ignored the pain and suffering this has caused. Jeff Kandt, 2001
American corporations and popular culture affect the lives and infect the indigenous cultures of millions around the world. The foreign policy of the US government, backed by its military strength, has unprecedented global influence now that the USA is the world’s only superpower – its first ‘hyper power’. America also exports its value systems, defining what it means to be civilised, rational, developed and democratic – indeed, what it is to be human. Meanwhile, the US itself is impervious to outside influence, and if most Americans think of the rest of the world at all, it is in terms of deeply ingrained cultural stereotypes. Ziauddin Sardar & Merryl Wyn Davies, Why Do People Hate America?
Unconstrained by any superpower rival or system of global governance, the US giant has rewritten the global financial and trading system in its own interest; ripped up a string of treaties it finds inconvenient; sent troops to every corner of the globe; bombed Afghanistan, Sudan, Yugoslavia and Iraq without troubling the United Nations; maintained a string of murderous embargoes against recalcitrant regimes; and recklessly thrown its weight behind Israel’s 34-year illegal military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza as the Palestinian intifada rages. The Guardian article Seumas Milne 13th September 2001, ‘They Can’t See Why They Are Hated’