The Quiet Slaughter – 1945-95
Since the end of the Second World War, we have been encouraged to think of the endless series of wars that have followed as being unrelated. But there is a unifying theme that relates almost all of the reported conflicts – the involvement of the United States as “the World’s Policeman”. I imagine that Julius Caesar, Adolf Hitler and all the others in between have viewed themselves in the same benevolent light – we are doing it for your own good. I am your saviour, it is my enemy that is Satan.
But unlike Hitler, whose terribly earnest attempts at helping us all to become better people, failed by 1945, his successors as the dominant power brokers have maintained a much more sustained period of success.
Their assault on other Nations – either through direct military invasion or through the sponsoring of brutal, local elements sympathetic to their needs – has continued for much, much longer. This continuous assault I describe as the Third World War.
Just as Hitler waged many different campaigns – Western Europe, Russia, Africa, even the Caribbean, the Third World War takes the same pattern. Campaigns in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya and Yemen in the early 21st Century are presented as separate wars, but they all have one country in common. There is continuous and overlapping U.S. intervention all the way through from 1945 which I present year by year below. There is no gap in this history, no moment of epiphany when the approach changes. We reveal the pattern of abuse and because of course action is more important than talk, what we can do about it.
I describe this as the quiet slaughter as many of the events were unreported at the time, and some remain unacknowledged even today. We can compare it to U.S. operations in Africa in the 2020s under their Africa Command Unit, Africom. Deaths of U.S. soldiers are being reported in countries where the U.S. have not even declared that their Military personnel are present.
The quiet slaughter takes the form of U.S. aerial bombing, ground invasion, U.S.-backed military coups or U.S.-backed “counter-insurgency” to help the local dictator kill a few thousand of the more active locals – usually just before an election.
The following countries have in all cases been subjected to one or more of these tactics, in all cases with monstrous amounts of accompanying murder and stealing. Kleptocracy in action.
The Third World War since 1945.
1947 – Greece
After apparently fighting the Second World War against fascism, Britain takes the unusual step of re-instating pro-Nazi support. This evokes armed resistance. U.S. take over with counter-insurgency, carnage and terror against the anti-Nazi resistance and in support of the King and Queen, both Nazi supporters. 160,000 dead, 20,000+ victims of torture chambers and imprisonment without trial in concentration camps for re-indoctrination. Political murder, mass surveillance and deportations with protesters’ names in Greece and U.S.A forwarded to the FBI.
1948 – Korea
Cheju Island – 30-40,000 killed.
Late 1940s – South Korea – 100,000 killed by Security Forces installed and directed by the U.S.. This is before the Korean War “officially” started and so the 140,000 deaths reported above are news – they were not reported at the time.
1949 – Panama
In spite of extreme domination of the U.S. in Panama – they have claimed the Panama Canal as their own land and abolished the Panamanians’ own Army – pro-Nazi elements are allowed to overturn democracy to create a totalitarian state, without reaction from U.S. A similar chain of events occurs in Columbia.
1951 – Honduras
United Fruit’s PR team, headed by Edward Bernays invites the North American Press to witness faked atrocity photos and a “Communist riot” to pave the way for the “anti-Bolshevik” invasion of Guatemala.
1952 – Cuba
U.S.-supported client Dictator Batista stages another coup to avoid election defeat – abolishes the constitution, dissolves congress, outlaws the Communist Party and gets more aid from the U.S. to expand the military.
1953 – Iran
Eisenhower arranges a coup to overthrow Mossadeq’s national government and restore the absolute power of the Shah.
1954 – Guatemala
U.S. invade to overthrow the only democratic government in Guatemalan history. 150,000 dead, In one town in Quiche province, the town were rounded up and put in the town building – the men were decapitated, the women raped and murdered, the children killed by smashing their heads with rocks.
1956 – Vietnam
The height of Kennedy’s anti-communist hysteria – “Vietnam represents the cornerstone of the free world in South East Asia… red tide of communism” etc. All this while the U.S.’s dictator Diem enjoyed “inspiring political liberty” courtesy of the U.S., by slaughtering the locals in a typical Latin American-style terror state.
1957 – Haiti
U.S. client “Papa Doc” Duvalier elected. Haiti becoming a byword for poverty, repression and the notorious Tontons Macoutes, Papa Doc’s private army. U.S. aid for the Duvalier dictatorship continued at about $70 million per year right through until the fall of Baby Doc 30 years later.
1958 – Cambodia and Indonesia
Cambodia – Election – Despite massive U.S. efforts to subvert, 9 Pathet Lao (NLHS) victories including Prince Souphanouvong, 4 “left”, 5 “right”, 3 non-party delegates. U.S. didn’t like the result, and so the ultra- right were installed in power pending the next election, so crudely rigged that even pro-U.S. observers were appalled.
Indonesia – U.S. attempt to overthrow President Sukarno using CIA-trained dissidents and mercenaries in the Philippines.
1961 – Cuba
The Bay of Pigs – 1500 mercenaries, 5 U.S. ships, 2 battleships, 3 freighters loaded with tanks and artillery from Nicaragua and all escorted by 2 U.S. Navy Destroyers invades.
Early 1960s – Cambodia
U.S. and Kissinger unleash the equivalent of 5 Hiroshimas.
1962 – South Vietnam
U.S. bombing attempted to herd people into strategic hamlets away from the Viet Cong, to execute Viet Cong supporters and to persuade the rest to support the U.S. while under armed guard, having been driven from their homes by Napalm bombing.
1964 – Brazil
U.S. back a military coup, creating the 21-year Dictatorship of the Generals. “The nation needed it in order to free itself of a corrupt government which was about to sell us out to international communism” (General O’Meara testifying to U.S. congress, 1965).
1965 – Dominican Republic
Constitutionalist coup to restore elected Leader Juan Bosch. 23,000 U.S. troops invade to “protect Americans”, and oust Bosch for not selling plantations to U.S. companies. Fraudulent election to legitimise invasion.
1966 – Guatemala
Napalm bombing by U.S. planes from Panama. 10,000 peasants killed. 95,000 political killings, 40,000 disappearances since 1954 noted by the New York Times.
1967 – Egypt, Syria, Jordan and the Lebanon
U.S.-armed and trained loyal client Israel invades Egypt, Syria, Jordan and the Lebanon. No U.S. condemnation.
1968 – Laos
Phosphorus bombing. 65 villages destroyed in the last 3 years. Heaviest bombing in history (until Cambodia a few years later).
1969 – Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia
Withdrawal of some U.S. troops co-ordinated with most devastating and ferocious campaign of mass murder yet undertaken by the expeditionary U.S. Force. Also escalation of war against civilians in Laos and Cambodia. 12,000 air raids per month on Laos.
1970-1974 – Cambodia
1973 was the peak of the heaviest bombing in history, and they still don’t even admit they were there. From 1970-75, 600,000 dead and 1 million refugees killed by starvation and disease.
1973 – Uruguay
In the early 1970s, as part of Operation Condor, a murderous CIA-sponsored Campaign across six countries in the southern Americas, a military coup installs a Military Dictatorship on June 27th, 1973. It lasts until 1985.
1973 – Chile
Having failed in 1970 to directly engineer a military coup against Chile’s democracy, US President Nixon’s “Track 2” initiative finally bears fruit in 1973 with a group led by General Pinochet leading a military coup to overthrow the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende.
1975 – East Timor
Indonesian invasion. 200,000 dead by 1979. U.S. Senator Daniel Moynihan blocks UN action on East Timor. He says… “The U.S. Department of State desire that the UN prove utterly ineffective …this task was given to me.”
1977 – El Salvador
Elections – military intervention to abort elections and install dictatorship. Backed by the U.S. as they did before in 1972, 1961 and all the way back to 1931.
1978 – Nicaragua
100,000 since 1960s have fled from the US-sponsored dictatorship of the Somoza family.1979 and 1980 – El Salvador.
1979 Coup led by General Majano. Jose Napoleon Duarte installed in 1980 as President. Carter’s “Matanza 2” starts. Church Human Rights tabulates 8062 political murders. World War 2 Italian fascist murderer Stefano delle Chiaie advises Major Roberto d’Aubuisson on anti-subversive tactics. Council on Hemispheric Affairs say El Salvador and Guatemala are the worst human rights violators in Latin America, replacing Argentina. The Rio Sumpul massacre – 600 civilians murdered in joint operation as they try to flee into Honduras. A true repetition of Nazi SS activities during the second World War. San Salvador University destroyed. Massacre of political opposition. Independent media destroyed.
1983 – Grenada
Alleged internal political instability within the governing New Jewel Movement leads to the murder of Maurice Bishop and other leading members of the Government. 6,000 U.S. Marines invade on pretext of defending U.S. students on the island.
1984 – El Salvador
U.S. bombing raids on villages and crops with napalm and white phosphorus, before attacks by ground forces and removal of prisoners to “Strategic hamlets” (concentration camps as pioneered in the Indian Wars and used in Vietnam). Improved bombing accuracy co-incides with increase in civilian deaths. It reduces the population by up to 50% in the attacked zones for the year.
1986 – Nicaragua
During the Irangate hearings, the CIA are implicated in using proceeds of drugs and arms trading to arm and support the Contras in their attempts to overthrow democracy in Nicaragua.
1988 – Guatemala
Human farms discovered in San Pedro Sula in Honduras, and in Guatemala where corpses found of babies aged 11 days to three months with missing organs. The Director of the latter, on arrest, declared that the children “were sold to American or Israeli families whose own children needed organ transplants at a cost of $75,000 per child. As grisly and repulsive as any story to emerge from Nazi Germany.
1989 – Panama
U.S. invasion to oust previous ally Noriega… Helicopters fire on civilian buildings, U.S. tank destroys public bus killing 26, troops shooting at ambulances. Hospitals and non-Government groups estimate more than 2,000 dead, mostly civilians.
1990, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95.
Iraq, Somalia, Rwanda, Burundi, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Bosnia? Or one of the old US favourite targets for imposing a profitable dictatorship. Brazil holds the dubious privilege in 1996 for the world’s most divided society with military police massacring the ghetto and the world hears “war on drugs” and military police shooting children in the city who escaped the massacre in the ghetto. War on the Poor. Who armed the coup that started Brazil on this trail?
1996 until whenever now is
I wrote the above in the mid-1990s. It is always tempting to think that progress is being made and that the atrocities of the past are a thing of the past.
Now I’m writing this part in 2020. But are you reading this in 2040, 2060, 2100? In later chapters where I outline the abuses country by country, I expand and update to demonstrate that the abuse of national sovereignty by the U.S. continues – unchanging and relentless. It did not stop in 1989 in Panama. And it will not stop until we stop it. You will know when this has happened.
Whatever the levels of concealment and propaganda may be in your particular era, have a look to see whether the U.S. are fighting for democracy around the Globe, or actually looking to overthrow it.
Although I wish this work to be timeless, I cannot outline historical events if they have not yet occurred. I may be outlining history which of course is past but please ask yourself if the example that such history demonstrates no longer exists. It will probably be almost invisible in the mainstream media by then but look on your era’s social media for new outlets still determined to tell things as they are, without overt concealment of the facts.
I ask you to stretch the concept of time in your mind and to understand that if it happened 50 years ago then it may as well have been yesterday if similar examples of abuse from the same perpetrator exist in your era. So we travel into the future. It’s 2200. My proposed solutions did not gain sufficient exposure or traction and it still goes on. Maybe the dubious honour of Quiet Slaughter of the Year goes to another war that hasn’t been told in a new country whose borders have yet to be redrawn by the victors. It’s guessing games for me and you until the Aid agencies start counting the bodies and a national publisher decides to take the risk of Establishment disfavour and publish it.
We’ve got satellite telephoto lenses that can spot a sugar cube floating in a cup of tea but we’re told that it’s impossible for the world’s omnipresent media to spot the murder. So if they won’t report it, it comes down to people outside the institutions to expose the acts, and allow the mainstream to drift gently into irrelevance. Reality exists. Above are the pictures that they’re not allowed to show you. The empire at work year by year across the Globe.
So we see above the raw data, the statistics, the pattern of abuse, the common and universal tactics. But this is personal – it wouldn’t matter if it was just numbers. What’s it like to actually be in the middle of all this? To be a Victim of the Quiet Slaughter? Picture this…
It’s 1969. Hippie festivals and jungle Napalm. “There’s something happening here. What it is ain’t exactly clear”. Congratulations media mystifiers, you confused Credence Clearwater Revival. At the time, which is what always counts given that we live in the eternal present.
But only now is it coming out that Cambodia got the Napalm treatment too. But the world didn’t know that in 1969. And this is 1969. And you’re in Cambodia. And the world can’t hear you screaming. At least in Vietnam, you know that the world knows that you’re dying. In Cambodia you die knowing that no-one even knows that you died in a war.
And now you’re in East Timor and it’s today, right now as I write these lines in 1995. Right now you’re screaming and you’ve been screaming for 20 years since the Indonesian invasion. The world still can’t hear you. The United Nations made two polite noises about it by passing two resolutions in 1975 and 1976 when the Indonesian invasion began. But the world didn’t seem to hear them. That’s because it was Senator Daniel Moynihan’s job to block UN action on Timor. His rather honest confession bears repeating… “The U.S. Department of State desire that the UN prove utterly ineffective …this task was given to me.”
The Guardian Newspaper apologetically spoke up once on 12th February 1994 when it finally allowed credibility to one witness having been confronted for twenty years by many, many others. And after twenty years the British Foreign Office still couldn’t fathom why the fact that British ground-attack aircraft have murdered 200,000 people means that you shouldn’t sell weapons to murderers. Defence must be one of the most frequently and routinely misused and abused words in the English language.
The war isn’t happening because the Government Wire Service isn’t signaling to the media. So the media aren’t free to tell us under a big headline. So, sorry, we still can’t hear you screaming in East Timor. So the people gathered to push the media to tell. And slowly they tell us.
But even if huge public pressure succeeds in forcing the media to tell us what happened, we still only get the one story – they will give it to us in isolation from the other stories of injustices committed by Western elites across the globe. These elites know that if the pieces are put together systematically then an unfavourable picture of Western values will emerge to squash all the propaganda about benevolent Western intentions to assist the rest of the planet progress to freedom and democracy.
But this same pattern in history has been going on a lot longer than the United States. The history of the last three millennia is a history of empires overthrown by advance from without or decay from within. Up until now, one empire has merely been succeeded by another. The fight now is not only against the US Empire but against any empire that wishes to replace it. In your era in the year 2100, 2260, 2850, wherever you are in history (unless we change its course) the name of the Imperialist will probably no longer be the U.S.
It is too long since people lived without the power of private property above them. It would be quite easy to forget that distant time if it wasn’t for the fact that the concept of justice won’t go away.
Next we will look in detail, country by country, and investigate the effect of U.S. interventions – the effect on people’s lives. Before we fully understand the need for change, we must fully understand the nature and the sheer scale of the problem.