The United States Empires Achilles Heel: Its Barbaric Racism by Glen Ford!
(2021-08-19 at 22:24:29 )

The United States Empires Achilles Heel: Its Barbaric Racism by Glen Ford!

More than nine years ago the late BAR publisher Glen Ford captured the essential character of the United States involvement in Afghanistan that is as relevant and revealing today as it was in 2012.

The United States of American atrocities in Afghanistan roll on like a drumbeat from hell.

With every affront to the human and national dignity of the Afghan people, the corporate media feign shock and quickly conclude that a few bad apples are responsible for United States crimes, that it is all a mistake and misunderstanding, rather than the logical result of a larger crime: the United States of Americas attempt to dominate the world by force.

But even so, with the highest paid and best trained military in the world - a force equipped with the weapons and communications gear to exercise the highest standards of control known to any military in history - one would think that commanders could keep their troops from making videos of urinating on dead men, or burning holy books, or letting loose homicidal maniacs on helpless villagers.

These three latest atrocities have brought the United States occupation the point of crisis - hopefully, a terminal one. But the whole war has been one atrocity after another, from the very beginning, when the high-tech superpower demonstrated the uncanny ability to track down and incinerate whole Afghan wedding parties - not just once, but repeatedly. Quite clearly, to the United States of Americans, these people have never been more than ants on the ground, to be exterminated at will.

The Afghans, including those on the United States payroll, repeatedly use the word "disrespect" to describe United States of American behavior.

But honest people back here in the belly of the beast know that the more accurate term is racism.

The United States cannot help but be a serial abuser of the rights of the people it occupies, especially those who are thought of as non-white, because it is a thoroughly racist nation. A superpower military allows them to act out this characteristic with impunity.

United States of American racism allows its citizens to imagine that they are doing the people of Pakistan a favor, by sending drones to deal death without warning from the skies.

The United States calls Pakistan an ally, when polls consistently show that its people harbor more hatred and fear of the United States than any other people in the world.

The Pakistanis know the United States long propped up their military dictators, and then threatened to blow the country to Kingdom Come after 9-ll-01, if the United States military was not given free rein.

They know they are viewed collectively as less than human by the powers in Washington,D.C. - and, if they do not call it racism, we should, because we know our fellow United States of Americans very well.

The United States lost any hope of leaving a residual military force in Iraq when it showed the utterly racist disrespect of Iraqis at Abu Ghraib prison, the savage leveling of Fallujah, the massacres in Haditha and so many other places well known to Iraqis, if not the American public, and the slaughter of 17 civilians stuck at a traffic circle in Nisour Square, Baghdad.

What people would agree to allow such armed savages to remain in their country if given a choice???

The United States was conceived as an empire built on the labor of Blacks and the land of dead natives, an ever-expanding sphere of exploitation and plunder - energized by an abiding and general racism that is, itself, the main obstacle to establishing a lasting American anti-war movement.

But, despite the peace movements weaknesses, the people of a world under siege by the United States of Americans will in due time kick them out - because to live under barbarian racists is not a human option.

For Black Agenda Radio, I am Glen Ford.

This commentary originally appeared in Black Agenda report on March 14, 2012.

Reprinted here with the gracious permission of:"Black Agenda Report"- News, commentary, and analysis from the black left!