An examination of the United States’ historical relationship with the crime of genocide
Matthew McKenna
The days of engaging in geopolitical conflict, hot or cold, without an adjacent public relations campaign are long in the past. While it would be refreshing for a behemoth empire, unbound by international law, to be forthcoming about its reasoning for its belligerence, it would also seem uncouth in our age. Presently nations, including the United States, still engage in foreign conflicts entirely motivated by self interest. However, to stay in lockstep with the purported values of the post WWII international law that the US was so intricate in crafting, intentions in conflicts are often coated with vague (and on their surface hypocritical) concerns about human rights or crimes against humanity. One does not have to be a scholar of international law to know that the gold standard of these violations is genocide. It is the word that is forever, if unfairly narrowly, associated with Nazi death camps, and the view of the United States as the savior of those otherwise condemned to mass slaughter by the Third Reich. It is the perceptual reasoning for professional warmongers in our political culture to recall the necessity for the Allied powers to have entered the conflict against Germany, their failure to do so soon enough, and thus the nouveau reasoning for the US to enter some new ill advised conflict. But does the United States stand against genocide? Does a review of its own relationship with the practice reveal a nation that is likely to meaningfully stand against the practice in the future?
“A Problem From Hell,” was the titular focus of former US ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power’s famous work of the early 2000’s. In it, Power laments that that the United States has in the past sat on the sidelines whilst horrible atrocities were committed, failing to act when it could. Power comes to the conclusion, one that she would act on later, that the awesome force of violence wielded by the US military can and should be utilized to prevent and stop human rights abuses around the world. Of course deeply present in her conclusions are several assumptions which rest upon very thin, if any, evidence. The most offensive of her assumptions is the one that is the most harmful. That is, that the United States has historically been a neutral, if passive, player in genocides, mostly guilty of failing to act in opposition. However, the historical record reveals not a country that failed to use its great power to prevent or stop genocide, but rather a nation whose relationship with genocide is mostly defined by complicity in its commission, obfuscation of its perpetration, and support in the form of diplomatic cover for its perpetrators.
A Word about World War Two:
Both the cynical warmongers and genuine believers in the utility of US force as a tool to stop or prevent genocide, rely heavily on the case of World War Two, which is used to boast as an example of the success of the intervention. The problem is that this case requires an extreme narrowing of context for the arguments to make sense. To start with, the United States did not become involved in WWII with any intent to stop genocide, and was largely ignorant of the full extent of Hitler’s crimes to begin with. The eventual defeat of Germany and liberation of the death camps were overwhelmingly products of efforts (and tremendous sacrifice) of the Soviet Union. The portrayal of the United States as having entered the war on some brave quest to save Jews and communists from the ambition of the Third Reich would also require ignoring the deep anti-semitism within the United States, not to mention the long history of anti-communism that preceded the conflict. It requires ignoring the many American industrialists who supported the Nazi regime in its ascendence to power. It necessitates ignoring the fact that Hitler was inspired by racist policies in the United States toward the indigenous and African Americans. One would need to suspend an understanding that as the United States fought Germany, it was supporting Churchill’s Britain that was literally committing genocide during the second World War in India. It would require an explanation for why the United States suddenly presented a concern about genocide, when Europeans had long been practicing the art of mass murder on their imperial subjects with little objection from the United States. One would also need to explain why, if the United States was so antithetical to Nazism in its ethos, did the foreign policy of the US immediately shift to partnership with former Nazis and fascist collaborators after the war ended? It would also be worth inquiring as to why the United States turned away the very refugees – for whom now in the popular conscience we are convinced the second World War was fought on behalf of.
Domestic Extermination:
As is always the case when rendering judgement, be it personal or international, engaging in a bit of self reflection is a useful practice. First off, a disclaimer. The term genocide did not become a common word in the English language until 1941, in the context of the Second World War. The term describes “the deliberate destruction of a nation or an ethnic group,” and has mostly been applied to occurrences since the fall of the Nazi regime. However, the term can also accurately be extended uncontroversially to a litany of historical atrocities committed by a variety of groups including, but not limited to, the Assyrians, the Romans, the Belgians, and the United States. The original sins of the United States predate the term and the nation itself. They are, of course, slavery and empire, both interwoven and attached to a plethora of other misdeeds.
Compared to the manner by which the crimes of the Third Reich are discussed, the physical and cultural destruction of the indigenous people of this nation occurred with guise of more palatable names such as, the War of 1812, Manifest Destiny, Indian Removal, the Gold Rush. and the Homestead Act. Aside from disease, which operated as the main ally of European Americans in the destruction of the indigenous people, the extermination included many of the hallmarks of genocide that we have come to associate with the “gold standard” of the category, the Holocaust. This included outright massacres, hunting people for sport, clearing land of its inhabitants for living space (Lebensraum) for a perceived superior race, and relocation of peoples into enclosed open air prisons. The “more humane” approach to this subjugation favored total destruction of Native cultures as outright total war against the tribes fell from favor. This policy of cultural demolition was sold under the slogan “Kill the Indian Save the Man.” While defenders of US behavior toward the Natives may point to the fact that while decades later Germany held onto its genocidal pursuits until its ultimate defeat, the United States had modified its own behavior from outright slaughter of the indigenous to one that was less harsh by comparison. Then again, the United States has the luxury of not having lost a major war to a foreign power that could dictate its terms of how to conclude its commission of genocide. In a counterfactual, suppose Germany had avoided crushing defeat but still closed its death camps in the 1940’s. If it then proceeded for the following 100 years to maintain a reservation system for Jews and other conquered peoples, wherein they were brainwashed from an early age, forced to give up cultural traditions, and indoctrinated into nationalistic German culture, it seems unlikely that the crimes of Hitler’s regime would be discussed as having ended when the gas chambers ran for the last time.
But the Communists Made Us Do It!!
When the “Samantha Powers” of the world fret about the US and its sidelined behavior during the commission of mass murder, do they consider that throughout the 20th century the US took a much more active role? Do they consider that in the past and presently, the US has proven itself to be far more on the side of genocide than against it? The US took an active role in support of, and thus complicity with, genocidaires throughout the Cold War. In 1965, Indonesia, as the fourth most populated nation in the world, was perceived as a key geopolitical battleground, at least to those obsessed with binary by-nature ideas of the domino theory and containment. It was also the nation with a leading role in the Third World Movement, the precursor to the Non-Aligned Movement. When President Sukarno spoke at the Bandung Conference in 1955, he spoke of a more equal world, one guided by self determination and free of imperial exploitation. The lengths to which the United States went in order to crush Sukarno’s vision of an independent Indonesia, and more broadly a formerly colonized world that could dictate its own future, is representative of the larger opposition to self determination that Washington displayed for the entirety of the Cold War. It had already been clear by the 1960s, that if a nation were to step outside of Washington’s orbit, or worse flirt with the idea of Soviet influence, then they would be subject to US intervention. This ranged from psyops in the Philippines, information warfare in Iran, and outright bombing campaigns in Guatemala. In all three cases, the result was a change in government to suit the agenda of the US. However, those cases paled in comparison to the Cold War victory the US gained in Indonesia. Recently freed of its Dutch imperialists, Indonesia was a post-colonial experiment in many ways. The populace was very active in politics and had a growing involvement of a variety of political parties. Most concerning to Washington, was the growing popularity of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI), the largest in the world. The unarmed party, operating within the legal political system of Indonesia, had grown in influence under Sukarno (himself not a communist, but friendly to the agenda). After years of attempting to break up the nation through covert bombing campaigns, grooming support for various religious groups, and training of military officers, the opportunity to act more forcefully presented itself at the end of September in 1965. Using the murder of 8 military officers as pretext (in a suspiciously coordinated and organized reaction) the right wing military leader Suharto seized power in Jakarta. We do not know to this day the motives, intentions, or players behind the scenes of the September 30th Movement. What we do know is that the United States was an active participant in the events that followed. Definitionally, what proceeded was extermination. The terms “genocide” and “politicide” have also been used to describe the events of October 1965 to March 1966, but that semantic debate obscures the larger point. With the complete complicity of the United States, Suharto and his ascendent military government executed a campaign of mass slaughter of up to a million suspected leftists. This was accomplished with total support of the United States national security apparatus both before, during, and after the extermination. Following a decade that the CIA had dedicated to breaking up Indonesia, just prior to September 30, had been aiding the Indonesian military in clandestine operations. The goal was to provoke a PKI to commit a violent action, from which a violent crackdown could be justified. The US ambassador in Jakarta, Marshall Green, expressed his desire to exploit the moment. In the chaos, he saw “an opportunity to move against Communist Party” as expressed in a state department cable. In the same cable, Green further expressed his perceived urgency to move against the leftists stating, “It’s now or never.” From there, the CIA proved to be an invaluable partner to the genocidaires, providing lists of suspected leftists to be executed and providing the instruments and technology to spread wild propaganda about the PKI to justify the mass slaughter that was taking place. On top of that, US officials were openly jubilant about the occurrence. US embassy official Robert Martens was one of the dutiful cold warriors who prepared lists of the (doomed) suspected communists. He commented on his own actions, “It was really a big help to the (Indonesian) army. I probably have a lot of blood on my hands, but that’s not all bad.” As blood flooded from the streets of Jakarta to the beaches of Bali, US media could not contain their joy. James Reston of the New York Times characterized the events as a “hopeful political developments in Asia” in an article headlined “A Gleam of Light in Asia.” For the partners in genocide, Indonesia and the United States, there has been no real reckoning with the extermination since its perpetration. Washington continued its patronage of its newly spawned anticommunist military government of Suharto for decades after. This included a supporting a subsequent invasion and arguable genocide in the tiny island territory of East Timor. In 1975 Indonesia invaded the former Portuguese colony with the tacit approval, diplomatic cover and arming of the US, killing some 300 thousand people(1/5th of the population). The Indonesians and East Timorese, who still suffer the trauma of the US supported extermination campaigns in their nations, would likely be perplexed by officials like Samantha Power. In response to the advocation for the use of the blunt tool of force to prevent or stop genocides, a retort might be that first the US needs to cease participation in its commission of the crime. The mass murders on these islands did not occur because of the lack of US involvement, but because of it.
Unfortunately, the behavior of the United States in the Cold War is far more characterized by the support of, and outright commission of mass murder, than attempts to stop it. Aside from the aforementioned examples of Indonesia and East Timor, Uncle Sam’s influence was omnipresent in other episodes of extermination during the 44 year stalemate. While President Nixon and his National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger were negotiating a relationship with China, the common ally in Pakistan turned its ire toward the inhabitants in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). Led by the military strong man, General Yahya Khan, the newly formed state sought to suppress the Bangladeshi separatist movement in brutal fashion. Kissinger, ever the pragmatist, saw it unfit to level any concern regarding what was becoming very obviously an extermination campaign, When US foreign service officer based in Dhaka, Archer Blood, lamented that “Our government has failed to denounce atrocities. . . . Our government has evidenced what many will consider moral bankruptcy,” the Nixon administration responded by recalling him from his position. When Kenneth B. Keating, the US ambassador to India, referred to the situation as “a matter of genocide” he was also dismissed, with Nixon referring to him as “a traitor.” Even amidst other warnings, the US continued to provide arms, economic support, and spare parts to the Pakistani army committing the atrocities. Nixon affirmed his pro genocide position by ensuring that his state department would not issue any words condemning the slaughter publicly. Estimates for the total killed range from the State departments’ conservative estimate of two hundred thousand to three million according to Bangladeshi officials. This tragedy falls into the category of Nixon’s plethora of war crimes, (along with those in Cambodia and Vietnam) that are all subsumed by the Watergate scandal; a political act in which no one was killed but will forever be marked as the greatest crime of an international mass murderer. The lesson is clear, be complicit in the murder of millions is acceptable, while engaging (read getting caught) in shady political behavior against American elites renders a president impeachable. Google “Nixon’s crimes” and the result will illuminate you to exactly where mass murder ranks in our collective sense of criminality and justice.
In rare cases, and often well after the fact, there are attempts to bring war criminals to justice. However, it takes a nation with a semblance of self awareness and a collective desire for reconciliation to accomplish such legal proceedings. Alas, such proceedings have never occurred in the United States, but have recently occurred in North America, albeit several miles south of the land of the most prominent war criminals. In Guatemala, Efrain Rios Monte was indicted for genocide and crimes against humanity for his leading role in the 1980’s mass killings of the Mayan population of his country. This was accomplished through the use of death squads who were armed and trained by the United States. Defenders of Reagan will attest to the administration’s ignorance of these actions, and thus exoneration of guilt. However, countering this, it should be noted that even as he was campaigning for president, generals advising the future president traveled to meet with the right wing Central American government to inform them that “Mr. Reagan recognizes that a good deal of dirty work has to be done.” It is also worth noting that preceding Reagan’s election, brutal tactics against the Mayans had already long been employed, even leading the Carter administration to ban weapon sales to Guatemala (a ban Reagan would later subvert). Proceeding forward with that “dirty work,” actions directed against the rural Mayan population included massacres of whole villages, often leaving few or no survivors. Those who lived through the slaughter were detained in detention camps which were supported by the U.S. Agency for International Development. Whilst providing the training, arms, intelligence and diplomatic support to the right wing Guatemalan military, the Reagan administration consistently downplayed the claims of mass killings by their hemispheric anti-communist bulwark, as “Exaggerated.” The administration also provided moral support, describing Rios Montt as “A man of great integrity,” even as reports of US trained death squads were becoming increasingly public. Ross Montt described his own policy of mass murder “If you cannot catch the fish, you have to drain the sea.” In this metaphor, “the fish” are suspected leftist guerrillas… and the sea is the indigenous people whom the guerrillas were perceived to have support from. It is the same tired justification for mass murder used when a perceived enemy receives any level of popular support from a people be it in Vietnam, Gaza, Iraq, or Yemen. “Draining the sea” involved the mass murder of over two hundred thousand Guatemalan civilians, disproportionately members of the indigenous community. If there is anything encouraging about revisiting these crimes, it is we can at least say there has been some reconciliation with an ugly past in Central America. The fact that Rios Montt was even brought to trial is a testament to the superior dedication to justice and reconciliation present in Guatemala, when compared to that of the United States.
Ok, But We’d Never do That Today.. Right?
There is a “forest from the trees” dynamic in play when discussing current events. That is, from the lens of the current moment (whenever that may be), there is an inherent inability predict how the historical record will evaluate the actions of one’s nation. However, while this frame of thinking is useful for providing nuance when evaluating past events, there are instances wherein we could very accurately predict how future generations will view the actions of present actors. Take for example the Barack Obama initiated and Donald Trump continued war on Yemen. Now, the term “war” may be semantically debated, as will the term “genocide,” but the latter term more accurately characterizes the situation. Since the Obama 2015 decision to fully support Saudi Arabia and the UAE in its war on the people of Yemen, hundreds of thousands of Yemenis have been killed by aerial bombardment, famine, and disease. The US has assisted the war on the poorest nation in the Middle East by providing the weapons, intelligence, diplomatic support, and even refueling Saudi planes while en route to bomb civilian targets. Even as (late) efforts to stop the war from within the United States congress have increased, executive actions have repeatedly thwarted these attempts. As the COVID-19 pandemic threatens to significantly worsen conditions in a country already turned into a hell scape by foreign actors, the United States continues its support for the bombing and starvation campaign.
While contemporary liberal thought would have one believe that America only descended into this level of depravity after the election of Donald J. Trump, this crisis in Yemen serves as a reminder of the persistent, bipartisan affinity for war making. In the context of having just inked the (unnecessary then and now defunct) Iran Nuclear Deal, the Obama administration gave the green light to an operation euphemistically named “Decisive Storm.” This was a plan to crush (highly exaggerated) Iranian influenced Houthis and restore the Saudi and US friendly Mansour Hadi to power. The “decisive” part of that operation’s name tests the limits of Oxford’s dictionary’s definition of the word. Five years later, over a hundred thousand killed, and the continued worst humanitarian disaster in the world due to cholera outbreaks and famine, no “decisive” solution has been found. Meanwhile, as Yemeni civilians continue to be targeted for slow extermination, the American arms industry flourishes at their expense (following the proud American tradition of profiting off of extermination). And what of our human rights advocate Samantha Power? Surely this crisis drew her ire as she was then a person of considerable influence in the Obama administration. As a matter of fact it did. Power publicly denounced the mass slaughter, then proceeded to resign from her position in the administration. She then wrote an op ed in the New York Times detailing how the US inflicted mass murder of Yemenis was so inconsistent with her values that she could not remain at her post. Oh, wait… that didn’t happen. Instead of these actions that would have caused a serious examination of the policy, the former idealist showed that the best method of curing a problem from hell is outright supporting it through diplomatic cover at the UN. Power was keen to show us that what we need to understand about genocide is that an intricate part of the definition, is that it is only committed by non-allies of the United States. The damn fine print with this stuff! While Power is easy target practice, she is far from the most culpable in the genocide that continues. She certainly does not bear the responsibility of Mohammad Bin Salman, Barack Obama, or Donald Trump. At its core, this is Obama’s war, continued and escalated by Trump. It is the ultimate manifestation of Obama’s “lead from behind, light footprint” ethos. The 44th president did an excellent job in ensuring that war and expanding empire were not felt by the average American. Special forces, drones, proxy forces, and prosecution of whistleblowers ensured that American wars would be quietly expanded, all at the cost of thousands of lives (but not American lives). Obama’s wars were started, expanded, and continue today as white noise in the backdrop of a failing and increasingly badly behaving empire.
In addition to the starvation, and rampant spread of disease due to deliberate destruction of civilian infrastructure, for five years US made explosives have been detonating on civilian gatherings, including weddings, markets, funerals, and school buses. Of course Obama knew better and had been informed by the UN and human rights organizations of the bloodshed he was complicit in. His own administration was cognizant that they might at one point be implicated for war crimes in Yemen. However, the level of concern never breached past the level of state department communications. American high officials really do not have to worry about international prosecution anyway. That is something reserved for other nations and unthinkable that the nation that violates international law most frequently should be held to account. The Obama and Trump administrations, along with their foreign proxies, would all be guilty of aiding and abetting war crimes if were they held to the precedent set at the prosecution of Liberian leader Charles Taylor, which determined “practical assistance, encouragement or moral support” is sufficient to determine liability for war crimes.” If providing the munitions that rip through flesh of the targeted Yemeni population does not qualify as “practical assistance” then I’d say that it’s high time we start a “free Charles Taylor” movement. Yet, putting dark humor aside, the murder in Yemen continues, un-prosecuted and unnoticed.
While Obama approved over $100 billion of weapons contracts toward the Saudi cause, he at least went through the motions of masking mass murder with a veneer of statesmanship. Trump won’t even do that. “I don’t like the concept of stopping an investment of $110 billion into the United States” was his justification for continuing US support to the Saudis. If the effects of such a policy were not mass murder, it might be refreshing to hear Trump’s barbaric honesty that his predecessor was too cowardly to express. However, it can’t be denied that Obama was successful. He so effectively detached American warfare from the domestic populace, that the genocide in Yemen can be carried out with our complicity, and even on the liberal networks it receives almost no airplay; ceding it’s coverage time to wild conspiracy theories about foreign interference. There is a consistent inquiry regarding the German populace during Hitler’s reign as to how much the citizenry actually knew of, and thus how complicit were they in their government’s actions. Perhaps the 21st century analogue to that ignorance-complicity dynamic is the fact that even in an age of instant communication and global connection, the average American is oblivious or apathetic to the fact that their government is five years into the extermination of a people who never once presented a threat to the homeland. Seeing as information about this tragedy is easily accessible outside of the major networks, “complicity” is likely to become the operative word that future generations assign to our current populace.
Our Own Very Dirty Hands:
Thus far in this historical analysis of the relationship between the Untied States and genocide, I focused on the genocides that occurred wherein the United States did have the opportunities to act, perhaps prevent or stop an extermination in its process. These were genocides perpetrated by American allies or proxies with whom the US undoubtedly has far more clout to influence than the alleged US enemies (presumably they are deemed enemies to begin with for their disobedience to US demands). Defenders of US behavior will logically counter my charges against the nation by pointing out that, while these cases of complicity point to some moral confusion, at least (other than the case of the indigenous genocide) the mass murder campaigns were not actually carried out by the US forces. However, this would require dismissing the many instances of more direct US perpetration of the crime where it actively committed its own military and diplomatic power, to acts of extermination. The extreme violence visited on the people of the Philippines, Vietnam, Korea, and Iraq have all been termed genocides by various scholars. Rigid as the boundaries of the term may be, it does not take a wild imagination to assert that these cases reach the minimum standard for the crime in the minds of many educated on the topic. In the Filipino-American War, the US pioneered concentration camps, purposeful massacres of civilian population, and torture. In Korea, the deliberate bombing densely populated civilian areas resulted in the extermination of roughly 20% of the North Korean population. Additionally, the Koreans served as ideal guinea pigs for the use of Napalm and its horrific effects. The Russell Tribunal, convened during the Vietnam War, found that among other crimes, the industrial scale slaughter of nearly 4 million Vietnamese satisfied the legal definition for genocide.
The 1990s economic sanctions imposed on Iraq by the United States, have been labeled as genocidal by many experts. The decade of economic warfare was preceded by the purposeful targeting of civilian infrastructure in the Persian Gulf War, designed to accelerate the devastating effects of the sanctions. Indeed it worked, as the policy caused mass scale malnutrition and lack of access to medicines. Speaking from his own experience of having served as a humanitarian coordinator with the UN, Denis Halliday explained his rationale for his characterization of the sanctions as being genocidal, “The United Nations Security Council member states … are maintaining a program of economic sanctions deliberately, knowingly killing thousands of Iraqis each month. And that definition fits genocide.” With the resultant death toll estimates ranging from five hundred thousand to 1.5 million Iraqis, disproportionately children, it is hard to disagree with Halliday’s assertion. Even high ranking US officials of the time did not refute the large scale of the the devastation, but dismissed the suffering as being “worth the price.“
While the broad “War on Terror” has targeted variety of ethnicities across different nations, the alarming numbers of the dead are the cause for the genocide consideration. With Physicians for Social Responsibility estimating a death toll well into the millions across Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan as a direct result of US actions, now is the time, if ever, for a serous evaluation of US actions with regards to the thresholds of genocide.
When illuminating the record of the United States in its complicity or outright commission of genocide, it is important to not get drawn into the “whatabout-ism” accusation. While an honest self assessment is beneficial for all nations, the fact is that the United States is the most powerful empire that has ever existed, and thus it is of paramount importance that its populace is well versed in its history; specifically in relation to the most severe of international crimes. The road to reconciliation for our crimes is not through massive military campaigns against foreign actors deemed to be evil in some sort of attempt to balance out the genocide checkbook. Advertising devastating military interventions as human rights activism or “Responsibility to Protect” may rally support from well intentioned people for what would otherwise be seen as grave violations of other nations’ sovereignty. However, these actions have a terrible track record of being based on outright falsehoods, (see Libya, Iraq), and most frequently increase the suffering of the intended beneficiaries. If self branded human rights advocates like Samantha Power were truly against genocide, rather than opportunistically opposed to it as it served their careers, they would be actively working to improve our alleged democracy’s record with the practice. If we are truly against genocide, we should cease the endless veneration of organizations complicit in the crime like the military and Central Intelligence Agency. We should end the idolization of individuals whose records are stained with participation in extermination campaigns. We should demand that the United States ratify and cease its outright belligerence toward the International Criminal Court. We should press for a full reckoning, truth and reconciliation, reparations, and yes, prosecutions of surviving collaborators and perpetrators of the crime. Unless US citizens understand the shameful history of their nation and genocide, it will forever ring hollow when Americans raise a voice against foreign perpetration of the crime, and further increase the chance that we will once again be complicit in its commission.