Dear Starchild,
I think you have summed this up rather well as far as I can see with the
[below statement]! I can see no need for our rather prosperous country or
our reasonably well-meaning agents to want anything other than peace.
There are many things about the Bush Administration that I do not like but
I still think even George Bush would like the Iraq war to end as soon as
possible.
Best wishes - - -
Bob Parkhurst
[The bottom line as far as I can see is that most of the bloodshed of the
past decade and a half in the world has not been due to excessive military
interventions by USgov, the UN, or other powerful and reasonably
well-meaning agents seeking to restore peace and order (i.e. exercise the
role of a very limited world government). Rather, this horrific bloodshed
has largely occurred in the absence of such interventions, or in other
words under conditions of international anarchy.
Yours in liberty,
<<< starchild >>>]
[Original Message]
From: Acree, Michael <acreem@...>
To: <lpsf-discuss@yahoogroups.com>
Date: 4/26/2006 3:13:27 PM
Subject: RE: [lpsf-discuss] Re: International anarchy, UN influence,USgov
hegemony, and bloodshed
Thanks, Starchild, for the list of wars and deaths. I think it's also
important to bear in mind, though, that oppression isn't measured just by
number of deaths. If one government is sufficiently more powerful than
others, it doesn't need to do a lot of actual killing, except as a last
resort (which may be a sign that it's power is breaking down). You recall
Al Capone's saying, "You can get a lot farther with a kind word and gun
than with the kind word alone." John Perkins makes this point in
_Confessions of an Economic Hit Man_, that the U.S. has a graduated series
of devices for getting what it wants from other countries; and invasion, as
in Iraq, happens only in exceptional cases, when everything else fails.
The questions you raise about Africa, in particular, are interesting and
important; but it is my impression that a lot of what is happening there,
as well as in the rest of the world, is long-run consequences of earlier
interventions by the U.S. and other colonial powers. We defined national
borders in ways that suited our interests, and often installed minorities
in leadership, to guarantee conflicts which might take decades to come to
open war; then we blame them. Africans, like Europeans and Asians, have
always slaughtered one another, but maybe not in the ghastly numbers that
they have in recent decades.
From: lpsf-discuss@yahoogroups.com [mailto:lpsf-discuss@yahoogroups.com]
On Behalf Of Starchild
Sent: Wednesday, April 26, 2006 1:31 PM
To: LPSF Discussion List
Subject: [lpsf-discuss] Re: International anarchy, UN influence, USgov
hegemony, and bloodshed
This topic seemed far enough removed from discussion of the LPSF lists
that I thought I'd re-create it as a new thread. I've also moved it to
lpsf-discuss, which is a more appropriate forum than lpsf-activists.
I've also thought it very interesting to consider, among the usual talk
of how there has rarely if ever been a functioning anarchy, that the world
generally is and has always been an anarchy in the broad sense, i.e. there
has never truly been a world government. The widespread failure of people
to recognize this fact is probably one more indicator of the degree to
which nationalism has shaped peoples'
thinking. When people think of government, or lack thereof, they think of
individual nation-states rather than the system as a whole.
The United Nations is the closest thing in history that there has been
to a world government. To the extent that it can be described as a
government, it is obviously a very, very limited one (and we should hope it
stays that way). It's probably best described as a junta, with the junta
generals being the five permanent members of the Security
Council: The governments or regimes with jurisdiction over the U.S.,
Britain, France, Russia, and China.
But whether this arrangement has been better or worse than the more
complete anarchy which existed previously and still largely prevails, seems
to me an open question. When the UN has actually managed to act militarily
in an efficient manner, I think its role has been a generally positive one.
Its greatest failures have been when it has failed to act. It's still easy
to find fault with the U.N., and I'm open to the argument that the world
would have been better off if it never existed, but I'm also rather
skeptical of the proposition.
I'm even more skeptical of any claim that the relatively unchecked clout
of the U.S. government (USgov) during the post Cold War period has been a
negative thing. Here is a list of conflicts that have been going on since
1990, and an estimated number of casualties in each (from
http://www.scaruffi.com/politics/massacre.html):
1980-92: Sendero Luminoso - Peru's civil war (69,000)
1980-92: El Salvador's civil war (75,000)
1980-99: Kurds vs Turkey (35,000)
1981-90: Nicaragua vs Contras (60,000)
1982-90: Hissene Habre, Chad (40,000)
1983-2002: Sri Lanka's civil war (64,000)
1983-2002: Sudanese civil war (2 million)
1987-: Palestinian Intifada (4,500)
1988-2001: Afghanistan civil war (400,000)
1988-2004: Somalia's civil war (550,000)
1989-: Liberian civil war (220,000)
1989-: Uganda vs Lord's Resistance Army (30,000)
1991: Gulf War - large coalition against Iraq to liberate Kuwait
(85,000)
1991-97: Congo's civil war (800,000)
1991-2000: Sierra Leone's civil war (200,000)
1991-: Russia-Chechnya civil war (200,000)
1991-94: Armenia-Azerbaijan war (35,000)
1992-96: Tajikstan's civil war war (50,000)
1992-96: Yugoslavia's civil war (260,000)
1992-99: Algerian civil war (150,000)
1993-97: Congo Brazzaville's civil war (100,000)
1993-2005: Burundi's civil war (200,000)
1994: Rwanda's civil war (900,000)
1995-: Pakistani Sunnis vs Shiites (1,300)
1995-: Maoist rebellion in Nepal (12,000)
1998-: Congo/Zaire's war - Rwanda and Uganda vs Zimbabwe, Angola and
Namibia (3.8 million)
1998-2000: Ethiopia-Eritrea war (75,000)
1999: Kosovo's liberation war - NATO vs Serbia (2,000)
2001: Afghanistan's liberation war - USA & UK vs Taliban (25,000)
2002-: Cote d'Ivoire's civil war (1,000)
2003: Iraq's liberation war - USA, UK and Australia vs Saddam Hussein
(14,000)
2003-: Sudan vs JEM/Darfur (180,000)
2003-: Iraq's civil war (50,000)
2004-: Sudan vs SPLM & Eritrea (?)I think one of the patterns that clearly emerges from the list is that a
very large portion of the bloodshed has been in Africa. Not coincidentally,
I think, Africa is an area of the globe where USgov has relatively little
clout and has exercised very limited military intervention.
It gives one particular pause to consider how many of the estimated
4.7 million total deaths from various conflicts in Zaire/Congo might have
been prevented had the country been under the control of a well-armed
outside force during that period. I was actually shocked myself to see 3.8
million deaths cited in this list for the regional war centered on the
Congo dating from 1998. Considering that huge number of fatalities, not to
mention the number of countries involved, the conflict received extremely
little press in the United States. I couldn't even tell you with any
accuracy what the combatants were fighting over. It is hard to avoid the
conclusion that whether it's because Africans tend to be poor, black, or
both, African lives seem to matter little to the powers that be.
Of the millions of casualties in the above list, it seems to me that a
relatively small percentage can be credibly laid at the feet of USgov
hegemony. In several of the conflicts on the list in which USgov was
indirectly involved, [Peru and El Salvador (aid to the governments), and
Nicaragua (aid to the insurgents)], I believe the bulk of the killing took
place before the collapse of the Soviet Empire. Indeed I believe the end of
the conflicts in El Salvador and Nicaragua can likely be traced to USgov
pressure on the Sandinista regime, which faced with the loss of support
from its Cuban and Soviet backers, gave in and agreed to hold elections and
was subsequently voted out, thereby bringing its backing for the Marxist
insurgency in El Salvador to an end as well. Without USgov and NATO
intervention, the casualty total for the Balkan conflict (listed as
Yugoslavian civil war) also could have easily been substantially higher.
The bottom line as far as I can see is that most of the bloodshed of the
past decade and a half in the world has not been due to excessive military
interventions by USgov, the UN, or other powerful and reasonably
well-meaning agents seeking to restore peace and order (i.e.
exercise the role of a very limited world government). Rather, this
horrific bloodshed has largely occurred in the absence of such
interventions, or in other words under conditions of international anarchy.