The current whirlwind of controversy around ‘The 28 redacted’ pages is coming to a climax with all the related public unrest and so on. There’s little hope that our feckless corporate media will turn a super critical eye to these types of issues until they have run out of Drumpf stories.
But on a favorite online political comedy show of mine, Redacted Tonight, the host Lee Camp delivered an epic segment on this. He related America’s potential outrage towards Saudi Arabia (around 9/11) to the outrage that people in other countries might feel about America’s involvement in violent conflicts around the world.
Here’s the segment
Lee runs down a pretty extensive list of interventions, some much more well-known than others. “Oh right, the precedent of allowing victims to sue foreign governments for their role in various attacks. I mean, that could open… the possibility that we could be sued for, like, the Korean War, you know?” It starts off with some obvious stuff and then you realize he is still going… and going. Nicely executed.
The unfortunate truth in all of this, is that we have quite the history of creating violence in other places, and it is not always in self-defense. You know those ‘country flag overlays’ people put over their facebook photo when European countries have tragedies? If facebook had been around for 6 decades, there would have to be one of those for like half the countries in Central/South America and Africa, partly attributable to us. Most of that for the love of money.
It’s not that I think we’re going to have a world where nobody needs a military and everyone get’s along. I was in the Army, I know better than that. But what I also learned, is that we generally disregard the consequences, even the ones that affect our own citizens. Families, home and abroad, are permanently changed by these interventionist strategies. Let’s make sure that we only do them when we need to- not when there is a business case for it.
Here’s the (i think) entire list of countries referenced by Lee:
- Korea
- Vietnam
- Iran x2
- Cuba
- Indonesia
- Cambodia
- Laos
- Chile
- Angola
- Nicaragua
- Libya x3
- Bolivia
- Iraq x2.5
- Somalia x2
- Yugoslavia
- Haiti x2
- Sudan
- Afghanistan x2
- Yemen
- Columbia
- Venezuela
- Pakistan
- Syria x2