American Imperialism
From BillionQuotes
- "The term “imperialism” is no more precise, and its overuse and recent abuse is making it nearly meaningless as an analytical concept....“imperialism” is “more often the name of the emotion that reacts to a series of events than a definition of the events themselves. Where Colonization finds analysts and analogies, imperialism must contend with crusaders for and against." --Benevolent Assimilation The American Conquest of the Philippines, 1899-1903, --Stuart Creighton Miller, (Yale University Press, 1982): page 3 quoting Professor Archibald Paton Thorton author of the book Doctorines of Imperialism.
- For decades, the West tolerated large-scale suppression by certain regimes of their own ethnic minorities, such as the measures taken by the government of Saudi Arabia against the Shia population in the eastern provinces and the laws passed by the Turkish government of Saudi Arabia against the Kurds, prohibiting any activates which displayed any aspects of Kurdish national culture and forbidding the use of the Kurdish language in public. On numerous occasions the West looked the other way when large ethnic populations suffered aggression and genocide of the kind perpetuated by the Iraqi regime against the Kurds. During the Gulf War, Iraqi forces used chemical weapons against Kurdish guerillas with the full knowledge of Western diplomats who reported to their foreign ministers.
- In fact, the first proven use by Iraq of chemical weapons was reported as early as 1982, when they were used against Iranian troops on the Majnoon Islands in the southern marshes. But it was not until March 1988 that some politicians in the West decided to condemn the use of such weapons, and even then this was due to a coincidence rather than a planned policy. On 16th March 1988, only hours before Saddam Hussein gave his approval for the use of hydrogen cyanide and mustard gas against its seven thousand inhabitants, the Kurdish mountain village of Halabaja fell into Iranian hands. It was thus subsequently possible for the Iranians to fly Western television camera crews to the village and for the world to see the horrific effects of Iraqi genocide which had resulted in the deaths of over five thousand Kurds, mainly women and children.
- When Western interests were at stake, such behavior was met with only muted condemnation or was simply ignored. Maintenance of the status quo, as long as it was compatible with Western interests, was the main concern. This was the case with Iraq during the Gulf War, Israel in the occupied territories in Palestine and in Lebanon in 1978, 1981 and 1982, and Syria in Lebanon in 1976, 1988 and 1990.--Darwish, Adel and Alexander, Gregory "Unholy Babylon, The Secret History of Saddam's War" (Victor Gollenz Ltd London, 1991): page 74
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