Abolish the Imperial Project

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From Guatemala to Iraq, U.S. imperialism has harmed our subjects and our citizens.


Myo Myint, from Burma Soldier


I recently watched the excellent HBO documentary Burma Soldier about Myo Myint, a heroic dissident who left the Burmese army to fight against his country’s evil system. It is a terrifying story—the man was arrested, tortured and locked up in solitary confinement for years by a brutal military dictatorship. He has one leg, one arm and three deformed fingers. At the end of the film Myint moves to America to join his family, who emigrated over a decade earlier. The civilized nature of our free society made America look like the antithesis of Burma’s regime. At the time I couldn’t help but contemplate the irony of how America’s policies—which have been rooted in imperialism and given rise to countless regimes as ruthless as Burma’s—completely contrasts with that picture. The scope of America’s empire is almost worldwide and deeply ingrained in our culture. Stephen Kinzer’s Overthrow, America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq offers a nice outline of how this has played out during the past century.

Kinzer’s description of life in Guatemala after the United States organized a military coup to overthrow the democratically elected government of Jacobo Arbenz in 1954 and impose a military dictatorship favorable to American corporate interests describes the situation in Burma today, as depicted in Burma Soldier: “death squads roamed with impunity, chasing down and murdering politicians, union organizers, student activists, and peasant leaders. Thousands of people were kidnapped… Many were tortured to death on military bases. In the countryside, soldiers rampaged through villages, massacring Mayan Indians by the hundreds.” Kinzer adds that “This repression raged for three decades, and during that period, soldiers killed more civilians in Guatemala than in the rest of the hemisphere combined.” Throughout, “the United States provided Guatemala with hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid.” Furthermore, “Americans trained and armed the Guatemalan army and police… and dispatched planes from the Panama Canal Zone to drop napalm on suspected guerrilla hideouts.”

Cont'd at the link: http://www.splicetoday.com/politics-and-media/abolish-the-imperial-project