Memorial Day - Let's do War By the Numbers Because We Love to Kill

Memorial Day should be the saddest day of the year for Americans and a day of profound reflection.  The parades, honoring the war dead/wounded and cheering US wars is what Memorial Day is all about but does anybody ever stop to pause and ask "Why did they die or survive to come home with debilitating injuries?".   It's frequently been said that young men die for old men's wars. While young folks who voluntarily enlist in the military are indeed smitten with the belief that they are actually serving their country and that military service is the highest form of patriotism, the real tragedy is that they have been duped by a government and military industrial complex that does not value their life or humanity.  Soldiers are merely pawns on the geopolitical chessboard as wars are endlessly waged for resource control, defense contractor profits and the never ending game to make the rich richer and the poor poorer.

Liberal or conservative, Republican or Democrat, Americans are addicted to the fantasy that war is noble, that murder is moral and that righteous people kill in the name of their flag.  Defending the homeland is the chronic battle cry.  Last I checked, America hadn’t been invaded by a foreign power since the War of 1812.   Yet, America has been involved in non-stop murderous wars for well over a century. Evergreen State College documented US wars and foreign interventions since 1890. It's a shocking documentation of the raw aggressiveness of American foreign policy and the waging of criminal wars against nations who did absolutely nothing to America nor threatened America in any way.

FROM WOUNDED KNEE TO LIBYA: A CENTURY OF U.S. MILITARY INTERVENTIONS

While it would be extremely difficult and time consuming to do an actual body count of all the wars listed in the above link, we can do a body count on what has been documented for the major wars and we can also document other estimates of deaths resulting from US foreign policy.

WW I resulted in the deaths of 35,000,000 folks. Historian Martin Gilbert puts the military death toll (soldiers killed) at 8,626 million. “The destructiveness of the First World War, in terms of the number of soldiers killed, exceeded that of all other wars known to history.”. But as with most wars, it is the civilians who bear the brunt of the horrors of war.

What caused WW I? A Serbian nationalist named Gavrilo Princip shoots and kills on June 28, 1914 Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife in Sarajevo, Bosnia (a component of the Austro-Hungarian Empire). Within weeks, Europe breaks out into total war. Two murdered members of a European royal house triggered the deaths of 35 million folks.

How did America get involved? No Americans were killed and all the insanity of Europe’s ruling families and their long history of wars and empires was not an American problem. But was it? America own brand of royalty, Wall Street banking houses, gambled heavily on the outcome of the WW I by funding the governments involved, notably Britain and France. The Banksters were losing their bets and were about to lose all their money so they hatched a plan to get America involved. The horror of that Bankster Bailout is documented in the following blog post.

World War I, the Banksters, the Lusitania and Bailing Out America’s Wealthiest Families

World War II killed approximately 50 millions people and its documented that the rise of Hitler and Nazi Germany were funded by US and British banksters. Behind every war, a bankster is lurking like a lascivious and carnivorous beast ready to drink the blood of its victims and devour its body. No one really knows for sure how many folks died during WW II but historian Martin Gilbert estimated that in excess of 46 million were killed and he only counted those nations that lost a million or more. The numbers are staggering; here’s a list of nations who lost a million or more:

Country                         Civilian Deaths           Military Deaths

Soviet Union                    7.0 million                   13.3 million
Germany                          3.6 million                    3.1 million
China                               6.0 million
Japan                               2.0 million                    1.0 million
Poland (3 million Jews)     6.0 million
Jews (non-Polish)             3.0 million
Yugoslavia (mostly Serbs) 1.5 million

Total                             29.2 million                  17.4 million

With WW I and WW II killing a minimum of 85,000,000 million folks, how many more folks have been killed since the end of WW II? It’s estimated that America and American foreign policy are directly responsible for another 20,000,000-30,000,000 kills since the end of WW II.

“US covert and overt criminal Wars of Aggression caused 20-30 million deaths of human beings since World War 2, according to the outstanding documentation of James Lucas of Countercurrents.org. The US use/support of armed attacks is documented in 37 countries..." Read the rest here.

Major post WW II deaths include the death tolls from the Korean War and the Vietnam War. Wikipedia estimates the deaths from the Korean War at 2,500,000 – 3,500,000 and the deaths from the Vietnam War at 2,500,000-6,000,000, here.

Ironically, the Republican Party is now being dubbed the War Party and righteously so because the GOP’s Evangelical base screams for non-stop war, murder and plunder. But America’s conservative Republican Christians were not always a gang of murderous psychopaths and the GOP at one time opposed foreign interventions. In fact, WW I, WW II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War and the Balkan Wars were all initiated by liberal, progressive Democrats (Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Lyndon B. Johnson and Bill Clinton). Harry Truman also dropped two big atomic bombs on Japan, despite knowing that Japan would surrender, was unable to continue the war and was finished.

Let’s recap the war dead attributable to America, American foreign policy and American Banksters, all of which vastly enabled war by funding it while contributing to the massive death tolls.

WW I, 35,000,000 dead

WW II, At least 50,000,000 dead

Since the end of WW II, another 20,000,000 to 30,000,000 folks have died as a direct result of U.S. foreign interventionism. 

American politicians love to talk about American Exceptionalism and the flag waving voters eat it up. We are exceptional all right – exceptional in the art of war and murder.

What has our lust for blood cost us? It’s cost us ‘Shock and Awe’ economic destruction. We are now barely a shadow of our once free and prosperous republic and we’ve morphed into Nazi Germany.  America is now the Evil Empire that threatens life, peace and prosperity everywhere. 

When will the American blood lust be satiated? When Americans vote to fire the warmongers and replace them with constitutionalists who believe in the peaceful foreign policy of our founders.

Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. James Madison

Memorial Day?  I'll pass on the celebrations and mourn what I know will be our fate.

The government propaganda and media complex can be counted on to leap into high gear with lies, deceptions, false flag attacks and a whole menu of psychological manipulations to con “we the people” into believing that war and murder are noble, just and patriotic.

But by far the worst manifestations of power transgress beyond the horrifying spectacle of the physical carnage of war because those same folks who deceptively internalized that war is noble also become its ultimate victims. Sooner or later the flag waving stops when folks realize that they have been systematically shorn of their own liberty and prosperity, and condemned to a miserable life under totalitarian tyranny. The film clips of euphorically happy flag waving Germans idolizing Hitler and his evil is a stark contrast to the starving, homeless and terrified Germans in bombed out and burned out German cities at the end of WW II. Worshiping the flag is most dangerous when folks fail to even realize precisely the flag stands for.

For Americans, they will eventually come to the frightening realization that they put their faith and trust in a government that betrayed them as they are forced to accept that they have been nothing more than pawns on the financial chessboard of empire wherein the wealth and power of the nation has been viciously concentrated into the hands of the ruling few – Banksters and their power brokers who delivered unto the people unemployment, economic misery, fiat currency, wars and grim futures.

At this point, what does the flag stand for? Nothing but the tens of trillions poured down the scary black hole of dark nothingness and militarism gone mad as they ponder the failures of an evil debt ridden empire that utterly bankrupted and destroyed a once great, glorious and prosperous nation.

Memorial Days should be about mourning the 100 million plus bodies that would never have been needlessly snuffed out had it not been for the evil US Empire, the military industrial complex and the banksters.  Memorial Day should be about deep soul searching and about how can the American people reject the insanity and reclaim their long lost moral compass.

President Andrew Jackson, a flawed and morally inconsistent man who opposed public debt and who also declared war on the national bank, was smart enough to understand human nature and its perennial quest for concentrated powers, whatever the cost.

“I am one of those who do not believe that a national debt is a national blessing, but rather a curse to a republic; inasmuch as it is calculated to raise around the administration a moneyed aristocracy dangerous to the liberties of the country.”

And what do we have today – a moneyed aristocracy with raw and absolute power and they have crushed the nation, destroyed the prosperity of the people and its evil military industrial security Bankster complex has decimated human beings all over the planet.

This is what U.S. foreign policy has delivered to America, yet we drink the poison because we lack the courage to think the unthinkable and to speak the unspeakable as we sellout out liberty with each election and march off into totalitarian statist hell.

Two time Medal of Honor winner Maj. General Smedley (USMC) spent over 3 decades fighting wars and concluded in 1933:

 War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses. 

I believe in adequate defense at the coastline and nothing else. If a nation comes over here to fight, then we'll fight. The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns 6 percent over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100 percent. Then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag. I wouldn't go to war again as I have done to protect some lousy investment of the bankers. 

There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket.