William Blum, author of the bestselling ROGUE STATE, now gives us a powerful account of America's actions in the world, from China in the 1940s to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Is the US a force for democracy? Here is the most comprehensive answer.
The remarkable international goodwill and credibility enjoyed by the United States at the close of the Second World War, was dissipated country by country, intervention by intervention. The opportunity to build the war-ravaged world anew, to lay the foundations for peace, prosperity and justice, collapsed under the awful weight of ‘anti-communism’.
The weight had been accumulating for some time; indeed, since Day One of the Russian Revolution. By the summer of 1918 some 13,000 American troops could be found in the newly created Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Two years and thousands of casualties later, the American troops left, having failed in their mission to "strangle at its birth" the Bolshevik state, as Winston Churchill put it. The young Churchill was Great Britain's Minister for War and Air during this period. Increasingly, it was he, who directed the invasion of the Soviet Union by the Allies (Great Britain, the US, France, Japan and several other nations) on the side of the counter-revolutionary "White Army". Years later, Churchill the historian, was to record his views of this singular affair for posterity: “Were they [the Allies] at war with Soviet Russia? Certainly not; but they shot Soviet Russians at sight. They stood as invaders on Russian soil. They armed the enemies of the Soviet Government. They blockaded its ports, and sunk its battleships. They earnestly desired and schemed its downfall. But war-shocking! Interference--shame! It was, they repeated, a matter of indifference to them how Russians settled their own internal affairs. They were impartial. Bang!”
