Carlos, Tommie Smith, Peter Norman
While I agree wholeheartedly with the slogan “Black Lives Matter,” U.S. racism isn’t just in U.S. cities and politics (as the popularity of Joe Arpaio and Donald Trump clearly demonstrates) but in our longstanding foreign policies. We would rather win wars than succeed in mutual peace with other cultures. We (and our NATO allies) created the disasters in the Middle East and Southeast Asia and ruined a number of small countries with our myths of being do-gooders to the Third World we’ve invaded and abused. This problem is rooted in our twisted self-image which has allowed us to be “forgiven” without compassion, understanding, remorse or amends.
We and our allies won World War I and managed conquered territory like we owned it without much concern or regard for the needs, wishes, or predilections of the indigenous people. We bankrupted Germany and stole Palestine, Kuwait, and Bahrain Island (and massive amounts of precious oil) from our allies, the Arabs. This was done selfishly and ruthlessly and continued the criminal legacy of colonialism that was so distasteful to our founding fathers. Much of today’s fighting has roots in the unfair, unworkable resolutions which made the next colonial war, WW II, almost inevitable.
NATO, not the population of the southern half of Vietnam, created the dictatorship of South Vietnam and we again tried to cram our ideas down the throats of their population using guns and bombs to try and win the hearts and minds of a country that was founded centuries before Buddha or Jesus were around. Three million Vietnamese lives later, we left and this supposed “threat” to us vanished into thin air as if it had never been. Fourteen years later, the Cold War ended, again with a whimper as our Cold War “enemies,” the USSR and China, morphed seamlessly from “communists” to “capitalists” without any significant change in enmity or foreign policy except the release of ruined Eastern European colonies by out First and Second World War Allies, the Russians. The U.S. electorate have not been seeing things with any clarity or understanding — because the Vietnamese civil war was a small part of a global effort to make more money by conquest (colonization), war and unnecessary violence (see War Is A Racket).
Iraq was the one Arab country uniquely NOT involved in any suicide terrorism when we unilaterally and illegally invaded their (at the time) generally moderate, tolerant, and modern country. Osama bin Laden was from a wealthy, well-educated Saudi Arabian family. He headed an organization that consistently fought colonialism throughout the Middle East. The United States supported Osama bin Laden and al Quida when it opposed Soviet colonialism and fought with the same people for opposing our own colonialism. The pilot that first hit the World Trade Center was an Egyptian with a master’s degree in architecture which he earned in Germany. His friend, from the United Arab Emirates, piloted the second plane to hit the WTC on 9/11/01. No member of al Quida was ever in or from Iraq!! Their beef was with this colonialism I’ve been talking about. (see Dying to Win) Our President lied to us about Iraq and, when our armed forces were done, Iraq was in ruins, over a million well-educated, progressive, moderate Arabs escaped to surrounding Arab countries as refugees from our war and those remaining at home were battered, abused and experiencing daily lawlessness and violence. (see Baghdad Burning or buy the book by the same name)
When you switch the word “colonialism” for the word “communism,” you get a somewhat clearer picture of what the Cold War (as well as the two World Wars and the Korean War) were all about. And to get an even clearer picture, forget about “good” and “evil” labels which both sides used to cloud judgments and pretend that war isn’t also evil and terrorizes both sides and the people caught between them.
We are currently boycotting North Korea for doing what we have done many times over: threaten the world with atomic weapons. We’ve filled the oceans and continents of the world with weapons of mass destruction and we pretend that our fickle democracy is somehow more stable, reliable and secure than a North Korean dictatorship three generations old.
Today, we spend more than the next ten countries combined on war and oppression; on policies designed to incite opposition and retaliation; on bullying people outside our borders to do as we say, not as we do. It is, in short, a way to make more money by hurting populations that the average citizen doesn’t really value.
We (even the poor) aspire to be millionaires as the apex of “success” while reality and humanity take a back seat to these selfish ambitions. We see making peace rather than war as a sign of “weakness,” as our rejection of Jimmy Carter, showed. Instead, we elected Ronald Reagan, a man who sold us fancy doorbells for inefficient homes, myths about the Old West, Iran-Contra, Star Wars (SDI), and trickle-up-and-out economics, not to mention a Cabinet and administration opposed to protecting consumers, workers, investors or the environment.
God HAS blessed America in all kinds of ways: abundant, beautiful, rich, fertile land; defensible borders; courageous, inventive, hardworking people; and vast wealth and prosperity. Like any unmerited gift, it is meant to be enjoyed and shared. Instead, it is held jealously and squandered pointlessly in a never-ending drive for more and more and more.
This problem with our egos is running full-tilt into the brick wall of reality. Something will have to give.
Black Lives Matter
Brown Lives Matter
Arab Lives Matter
Asian Lives Matter
We are all in this together and we need to get real about our interdependence, we need to treat others as EQUAL to ourselves, and, for God’s sake, actually follow the Golden Rule: do unto others as we would have them do unto us!!
Dave's World 
1 thought on “All Lives Matter”