America At War – Home and Abroad.

If you think America is a peace loving country, think twice

by Sami Jamil Jadallah

 
Though the government (prosecution and defense) rested its case and the judge ruled on the evidence, the public jury remained unconvinced that the September 11, 2001 attack was not an inside job, a false flag Coup d’ Etate to justify America’s declaration of war on the world and on its own citizens.
I was so curious about America’s involvement in wars and to my surprise and after due diligent research (thanks to Wikipedia, CRS and Google), I discover that America for most of its history has been engaged in wars around the world and at home. (My next article will be about America and its wars against its citizens and taxpayers).
I do not mean to bore you but sit down and relax, perhaps grab a beer or cup of tea or coffee and with me let us go over the many wars the US been involved in. I simply could not believe it and I am sure you all will be surprised.
Without forgetting to mention the American Revolutionary War (1774-1783) and subsequently many little wars and then the Second War of Independence (1882-1885), America has been involved in wars all over the world.
America the newly founded democracy of Jackson, Monroe, Wilson, Roosevelt, Truman, Nixon, Reagan, Clinton, Bush, and Obama could not find a war it did not like. So there was the First Barbary War (1801-1805), then the Second Barbary War of Algeria (1815) with the West Indies Anti- Piracy Operation (1817-1825) with Aegean Anti Piracy Operation (1825-1825), with the Far East First Sumatran Expedition (1832) followed by the Second Sumatran Expedition (1838-18390.
Now in the Pacific the United States began to look for places to engage in wars and it found Fiji, Samoa and Tabiteau named as United States Exploring Expedition (1838-1842), with the Battle of Ty-ho Bay (China) from (1855-1858), then First Fiji Expedition (1855), soon followed by the Second Fiji Expedition (1859). Remaining in the region with Second Opium War/Second China War (1856-1859) and the Formosa/Taiwan Expedition (1867) then the Korean Expedition or Shinmiyangyo (1871-1871) and the Second Samoan Civil War (1898-1899) after which Samoa became American and of course our involvement in the Boxer Rebellion (1899-1900).
With the onslaught of the Spanish American War (1890) the US took its worships and wars to the Caribbean, Cuba, Puerto- Rico as part of the war campaign, expanding its reach to the Far East to Guam and the Philippine as part of the Pacific Theater.
Closer to home and its back yard, the United States also got into war with Mexico (1846-48) gaining California, New Mexico and Arizona and the capture of Monterey in 1842, with the bombardment of San Juan de Notre or Bombardment of Greytown, Nicaragua in 1854 and the Paraguay Expedition (1859), the Occupation of Haiti (1915-1934), the Occupation of Dominican Republic (1916-1924) and once again the Occupation of the Dominican Republic (1965-1966) the attempted invasion of Cuba in the Bay of Pigs ( 1961), the Invasion of Dominican Republic ( 1965-1966), and of course the Invasion of Grenada ( 1983) and Panama ( 1989)
The United States did not abandon its military presence in Central America with the Occupation of Nicaragua (1912-1933), the Occupation of Haiti (1915-1934), and the Occupation of the Dominican Republic (1916-1924), not to forget the Mexican Revolution and the Pancho Villa Expedition (1914-1919).
The US simply loved to have its hands in all of the mess and civil wars in Central and Latin America and was always a key and central players in support of the military dictatorships and civil wars that costs hundreds of thousands of lives. The US was involved in Bolivia (1970-1982), in Brazil (1964-1985), in Chile (1973-1990), in Cuba (1933, 1952-1959), in Argentina (1976-1983), in Nicaragua (1961-1990), in El-Salvador (1979-1992) and of course in Guatemala.
No need here to go over the First or Second World War because the public knows these wars too well, and I wanted to shift the attention to the many wars America was and is engaged in at home.
We start first with the Civil War which raged from 1861-1865 killing over 600,000 some in mass slaughters with tens of thousands dead in one battle, with dead from same families on both sides of the war. Ken Burns of PBS perhaps has the best and most moving documentary on America’s Civil War.
The war campaign against the Indians was long and costly with millions of Indians killed, exiled or “transferred” to reservations that continue to day. While there are too many, these are some of the key wars engaged by America against the Indians. Among many minor expeditions these are among the major wars declared against the Indians; First Seminole War (1817-1818) then the Winnebago War or Le Fevre Indian War of 1827, with the Black Hawk War of 1832 and the Second Seminole War (1835-1842), the Cayse War (1847-1855), the Apache War (1851-1900), Puget Sound War (1855-1856), Rogue River Wars (1855-1856), Third Seminole War (1855-1858), Yakima War (1855-1958), Palute Indian War (1860), The Dakota War against the Sioux ( 1862),Red Cloud War against the Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians ( 1866-1868), Comanche War against the Cheyenne, Arapaho, Comanche and Kiowa Indians ( 1867-1875) , Red River Hills War against Lakota, Northern Cheyenne and Aropaho Indians ( 1876-1877), the Modoc War ( 1872-1873), the Nez Perce War ( 1877), the Bannock War ( 1878), the Cheyenne War ( 1878-1879), the Sheepeater Indian Schoshone War ( 1878), White River War ( 1879-1880), the Pine Ridge Campaign or Ghost Dance War against the Sioux Indians ( 1890-1891). Perhaps the most moving movie I ever saw was the Cheyenne Autumn with Richard Widmark, Carroll Baker, James Stewart, and Edward G. Robinson, the epic story of the Northern Cheyenne Exodus of 1878-1879.
As I said before, American could not find a country or area it did not like to engage in war. Beside World War I (1917-1918) and World War II (1941-1945), which saw, the US military engaged in war all over Far East from Japan to New Zealand, to the Philippine, to Burma, to France, Norway, Italy, Germany and North Africa.
The US got itself engaged in wars in the Far East, actually an extension of its previous wars and “expeditions” only to engage in full scale war in Korea (1950-1953) with the US maintaining large contingency of well armed and well equipment army, navy and air force, certainly with nuclear weapons.
Vietnam War, a war which most of us remember went on for many years (1953-1973) way before our official involvement in with Agent Orange and Napalm as weapons of choice and Pacification Program as legalized and sanctioned killing and of course the all infamous “body count” read to us by all three major television network at dinner time.
The more than one million Vietnamese dead, the 55,000 Americans dead, the hundreds of thousands American injured earned Dr. Kissinger the Noble Peace Prize. Our war spelled over to Laos and Cambodia and of course we all remember the Killing Fields of Cambodia where over 2 millions killed and murdered.
The Cold War saw the US involved in wars directly and indirectly with the US arming, training and funding the Taliban’s and Alqaeda (Mujahideen) against the Soviet Union sawing the seeds for War on Terror it nurtured in Afghanistan during the Soviet Union only to consume the US in relentless and losing wars costing tens of thousands of American lives, millions of lives overseas and more than $3 Trillions.
In the Middle East, America’s active involvement in the Mujahideen War came to haunt us with the US declaring War on Afghanistan a war duped Operation Enduring Freedom commencing on 7 October, 2001 with no end in sight. It did not bring freedom to us, or the Afghanis, in fact it simply destroyed the country or what was left of it after years of the Soviet Union and years of the Taliban rule. One thing the US did not forget to do is keeping the Opium Fields open to fund both the Taliban’s (the terrorists) and its war machine fighting the terrorists.
With the US almost abandoning its wars in South East Asia, it turned to its most favored place, the Middle East. Not so sure is it for the love of the Arabs, but certainly it is for the love of Israel. The US and for the last two decades became fully engaged in wars in the Middle East to add to its brief wars in Lebanon in 1958 and 1982 during which the US took out the USS New Jersey out of mothballs to fire its 1,200 kg ammunition on coastal areas of Lebanon.
The US anxious to take revenge on the new Islamic Republic of Iran for its embassy hostage, unleashed its dog Saddam Hussein to attack Iran in what became known as the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988) where over one million of Iraqis and Iranian died, with Saddam using US/ West European supplied chemical weapons against both Iran and the Kurds with estimated over $400 billions wasted on this war, money which could have been used to rebuild the entire infrastructure of the Middle East from Morocco all the way to Yemen.
As if one war is not enough for America’s dog Saddam he decided to invade Kuwait, a country that gave him tens of billions in support of his war on Iran. The US lead some 20 nations in what became known as Operation Desert Storm (17 January 1991- 28 February 1991), war that ended in routing Saddam out of Kuwait, with America having well established basis though the Gulf and that estimates put the costs of war at some $700 Billions for both Iraq and the Gulf State.
As if two wars are not enough the US prompted by a bunch of evil lying Zionist Neocons convinced George Bush to invade Iraq on the pretext that Saddam is having Weapons of Mass Destruction. Of course America’s controlled Zionist media took the charge and marketed the war to both Congress and the American people, a war (2001-2011) that cost the US some $800 Billions, thousands of dead, tens of thousands of veterans injured and abandoned, million of Iraqis dead, millions of Iraqi refugees and Iraq that is fragmented, unsafe, almost a failed state, with sectarian violence killings hundreds if not thousands of innocent people every month. Iraq is anything but Operation Iraqi Freedom.
In addition the US was engaged in Somali War 1992-1994) and way before September 11th and the War on Terror the US also flexed its muscles attaching Sudan (1998) sending cruise missile to destroy a factory of “WMD” only for the US to end paying compensation to the owners since the factory was but pharmaceutical factory contrary to the “intelligent CIA” analysts sitting in Langley. Bill Clinton also fired few cruise missiles to attack some of the Taliban’s basis in Afghanistan in “ Operation of Infinite Reach”. Don’t you just love these names? Someone should give the Pulitzer Prize to those guys in the White House and in the Pentagon for coming up with such out of this world names.
Beside brief engagement in the Libyan Civil War of 2011, the US continues to be active in its drone wars against Alqaeda in Somalia and in Yemen. God only knows which Arab country the US will bomb next. Of course one must not forget the US Operation Noble Anvil against Yugoslavia and in support of Kosovo (1990). I guess this should do it for now. Thanks.

Sami Jamil Jadallah

Sami, a Palestinian-American and a US Army Veteran (66-68), recipient of the “soldier of the month award and leadership award from the 6th Army NCO Academy, is an international legal and business consultant with over 40 years of international experience, in construction, hospitality services, conservation, and defense, in the Middle East, Europe, and North Africa. Sami is a holder of BA, MPA in Public and Environmental Affairs, Jurist Doctor from Indiana University. While at IU he was elected class president, student government president and chairman of the Indiana Students Association,

Active in peace movement as a co-author of the pre-amble for the One State for All of its people and voluntary service program SalamNation. A frequent contributor on national and international affairs. He resides in the United States.