U.S. Opposition to U.S. Imperialism

 

By David Starr

 

“Poor and working people of America are sent to kill poor and working people of another country (Iraq) to MAKE THE RICH RICHER. And without racism, SOLDIERS would REALIZE they have MORE IN COMMON with the Iraqi people than they do with the BILLIONAIRES who send us off to war.”

 

Mark Prysner, Army veteran and socialist political activist

 

Supposedly, the words “imperialism” and “imperialist” are not in vogue since the dissolving of the Soviet Union. But due to the continuing attempts of the United States to maintain and expand the rule of capital, those two words are not consigned to the trash heap of history.

 

The words are more important than ever to use nowadays given the fact that Democrats (with few exceptions) and Republicans are intoxicated with imperialism. And there is opposition to it worldwide. There is a history of rebellion and resistance to U.S. imperialism coming from U.S. citizens themselves. 

 

This article will present four major historical events that have shown how U.S. citizens opposed their country’s imperial objectives:

 

The Mexican-American War 

 

Many people in the U.S. were quickly gung-ho for the war. Maj. Danny Sjursen, writing for Truthdig, explained that the slogan, “Remember the Alamo!” “remains a potent battle cry, especially in Texas, but also across the American continent. In the comforting tale, a myth really, [200] Texans, fighting for their freedom against a dictator’s numerically superior force, lost a battle but won war–inflicting such losses that Mexico’s defeat became inevitable. Never is the word ‘slavery’ or the term ‘illegal immigration’ mentioned. There is no room in the legend for critical thinking or fresh analysis.”

 

The roots of the war involve the incursion of white settlement into Texas, a part of Mexico at the time. Many settlers came from the U.S. south, bringing along slaves. In 1829, Mexico abolished slavery, and with that a possible opportunity for slaves to free themselves. And that’s what happened when Mexico’s army marched into Northern Texas. Sjursen wrote, “…many slaves along the Brazos River saw an opportunity and rebelled. Most were killed, some captured and later hanged.” 

 

White settlement and the resulting clash between the Mexican army and U.S. citizens culminated in the “Texas War of Independence,” which was a victory for the United States. The president of Mexico, Antonio Santa Anna, was forced to sign a treaty which gave the U.S. Texas. The Mexican Congress dismissed the treaty. But the Mexican army was in no shape to successfully recapture Texas, although it tried. “Texas was ‘free,’ and a thrilled–and no doubt proud–President [Andrew] Jackson recognized [the] Republic of Texas…” Eventually, 125,000 (mostly Anglo) U.S. citizens poured into Texas with 27,000 slaves.

 

In 1844, slaveholder James Polk won the U.S. presidential election, defeating Henry Clay of the Whig Party: “Clay preferred restraint with Texas and Mexico. Unfortunately for the Mexicans, Clay was defeated, and the expansionist Polk took office in 1845.” 

 

Some U.S. officers saw the Mexican-American War as a chance for “conquest,” while others “were horrified by a war they deemed immoral.” There were 9,200 men who deserted the U.S. Army in Mexico. Some joined the Mexican Army. “Dozens were later captured and hanged by their former comrades.” War crimes were committed by volunteers in the U.S. Army. “[Gen. Zachary Taylor’s] army of mostly volunteers regularly pillaged villages, murdering Mexican citizens either for retaliation or sport. Many regular Army officers decried the behavior of these volunteers, and one officer wrote, ‘The majority of volunteers sent here are a disgrace to the nation.’”      

 

Rep. Luther Severance ridiculed Polk’s claim that American blood was spilt on American soil, the latter being a falsehood based on the conquering of Mexican territory. Severance exclaimed, “[i]t is on Mexican soil that blood had been shed” and that Mexicans “should be honored and applauded” for their “manly resistance.” 

 

Former President John Quincy Adams, who was a representative from Massachusetts at the time of the war, wrote, “But she [America] goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy, for [were she to do so] the fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force…she might become the dictatress of the world.” 

 

As a congressman from Illinois, Abraham Lincoln opposed Polk’s war: “The President, in his first war message of May 1846, declares that the soil was ours on which hostilities were commenced by Mexico; Now I propose to try to show, that the whole of this is, from beginning to end , the sheerest deception.” Lincoln expressed his opposition in Congress by presenting Polk’s claims and refuting them. Lincoln concluded with the following:

 

“But now, at the end of about twenty months, during which time our arms have given us the most splendid successes–every department, and every part, land and water, officers and privates, regulars and volunteers doing all that men could do, and the hundreds of things which it ever before been thought men could not do,–after all this, this same president gives us a long message, without showing us, as to the end, he himself, has, even an imaginary conception. He is a bewildered, confounded, and miserably perplexed man.”

 

Ulysses Grant was a lieutenant at the time and expressed opposition to the war and annexation:

 

“Generally, the officers of the army were indifferent whether annexation was consummated or not; but not so all of them. For myself, I was bitterly opposed to the measure, and to this day regard the war as one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation. Texas was originally a state belonging to the republic of Mexico.”

 

The Philippine-American War 

 

After the defeat of Spain in the Spanish-American war, the Philippines was free of Spanish colonialism, and wanted to establish its First Republic. But, the United States, after reassuring the Filipinos that it supported Philippine independence, did the opposite. Similar to the Mexican-American War, U.S. forces committed a number of atrocities such as torture, murder, forced relocation, etc. in what culminated into the Philippine-American War.

 

In Santa Clara University’s Historical Perspectives Series, Andrew Clem, originally from the Philippines, wrote a paper and accurately called it “The Filipino Genocide.” Clem revealed what U.S soldiers said about Filipinos, calling them “n_______,” and “monkeys.” Clem went further: “Being depicted as animals, children, or even devils, was unfortunately reflected in American action against Filipinos.” 

 

The Filipinos, with their goal of independence quashed my U.S. deception, took up arms and formed a revolutionary army. Emilio Aguinaldo, president of the First Republic, led the army to stop the U.S. invasion. The Filipinos used conventional warfare initially, but were at a disadvantage because of the formidable weapons of U.S. forces. The revolutionary army then tried guerilla warfare in an attempt to wear down the enemy. Clem: “This strategy, while probably the only means of fighting the superior American forces, also resulted in atrocities. The American military was not constrained by the typical rules of warfare. If the Filipinos were unable to be a part of an American based society, they would be exterminated.” (The Final Solution?) 

 

Clem further wrote, “American empire building coupled with widespread racism and the excuse of total war permitted the use of extreme measures such as relocation, concentration camps, and torture. This set the conditions for and inevitably resulted in the genocide of the people residing in the Philippines.”

 

In the Berkley News, Ivan Natividad interviewed cultural studies professor Dylan Rodriquez, a first-generation U.S. citizen, about the consequences of war in the Philippines. Natividad quoted Rodriquez: “They [U.S. forces] exterminated entire villages, including elderly people, children and everybody in between. These were war crimes, and the U.S. military was unapologetic and proud of its actions. The narratives that valorize the U.S. are fraudulent. ...it has been over 100 years, and the United States has still not acknowledged this genocidal conquest.” 

 

During the war, a small but vocal opposition called out the U.S. The Anti-Imperialist League was created in the U.S. in 1898. Its Platform strongly opposed U.S. imperialism:

 

“We hold that the policy known as imperialism is hostile to liberty and tends toward militarism. We maintain that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. 

 

“We earnestly condemn the policy of the present national administration in the Philippines. We deplore the sacrifice of our soldiers and sailors, whose bravery deserves admiration even in an unjust war. We denounce the slaughter of the Filipinos as a needless horror.

 

“We urge that Congress be promptly convened to announce to the Filipinos our purpose to concede to them the independence for which they have so long fought and which of right is theirs… Imperialists assume that with the destruction of self-government in the Philippines by American hands, all opposition here will cease. This is a grievous error. Much as we abhor the war of "criminal aggression" in the Philippines, greatly as we regret that the blood of the Filipinos is on American hands, we more deeply resent the betrayal of American institutions at home.”

 

U.S. powerbrokers were considering annexing the Philippines, something which the League condemned. 

 

One of the more well-known members of the Anti-Imperialist League was author and lecturer Mark Twain. The following are his views about the Philippines:

 

New York Herald, October 15, 1900 – 

 

“I left these shores, at Vancouver, a red-hot imperialist. I wanted the American eagle to go screaming into the Pacific. Why not spread its wings over the Philippines, I asked myself? And I thought it would be a real good thing to do.

 

“But I have thought some more, since then, and I have seen that we do not intend to free, but to subjugate the people of the Philippines. We have gone there to conquer, not to redeem.

 

“And, so, I am an anti-imperialist. I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land.”

 

A 1906 essay, published after his death:

 

“General Wood was present and looking on. His order had been, ‘Kill or capture those savages.’ Apparently our little army considered that the ‘or’ left them authorized to kill or capture according to taste, and that their taste had remained what it has been for eight years in our army out there—the taste of Christian butchers.” 

 

A February 1901 article titled, “To the Person Sitting in darkness” –

 

“There must be two Americas: one that sets the captive free, and one that takes a once-captive’s new freedom away from him, and picks a quarrel with him with nothing to found it on; then kills him to get his land. We have robbed a trusting friend of his liberty; we have debauched America’s honor and blackened her face before the world.

 

“And as for a flag for the Philippine Province, it is easily managed. We can have a special one: we can have our usual flag, with the white stripes painted black and the stars replaced by the skull and cross-bones.”

 

One individual who has been virtually an unknown to the U.S. establishment (but known in the black community in the 1900s) was David Fagen, an African-American soldier sent to the Philippines along with others who were known as “Buffalo Soldiers.” 

 

Fagen was originally from Tampa, Florida and experienced overt racism there. Writing for CounterPunch, Jonathan Melrod asserted that Fagen “grew up where Jim Crow segregation laws prevailed. With the specter of lynching, race riots and the chain gang looming over Tampa’s Blacks, Fagen ‘lived in dread at all times.’” 

 

Deciding to escape the racism, Fagen enlisted in the military, the 24^th Infantry Regiment, “a unit of so-called Buffalo Soldiers,” who numbered 2,100 out of 6,000 African-American soldiers who were sent to the Philippines. Fagen and other Blacks continued to experience the racism in the ranks of the army. There were clashes between Fagen and white commanding officer Lt. Moss, a West Point graduate. From that, Fagen hated the commanding officer. The latter in turn punished Fagen for stepping out of line. 

 

African-American soldiers were expendable, treating them like second class citizens. It was that and the persuasion of Filipino revolutionaries for Blacks to join their cause, in which Fagen decided to rebel and switch sides. After all, both African-Americans and Filipinos had the same racist oppressors. Melrod wrote that 15 Buffalo Soldiers defected to the other side. “The ‘deserters’ of the 24^th infantry proved one thing: systemic racism and oppression by white Americans was enough to forge alliances across vast national and ethnic lines.”

 

According to Melrod, “Fagen was never captured or killed.” While the U.S. military considered Fagen to be a “deserter and traitor,” Filipinos respected him as a guerilla leader. 

 

It is said that Fagen eventually fell in love with a Filipina and both went into the mountains and lived a peaceful life.

 

The Vietnam War 

 

There could have been a chance to significantly curtail U.S. involvement in Vietnam had John F. Kennedy continued to live. But in November 1963, with JFK’s assassination, there was no chance. Ideally, JFK wanted to get the U.S. out of Vietnam and had he lived and got reelected in 1964, he may have done so.

 

JFK got more knowledge about what was going on in Vietnam at the time. There were about 16,000  U.S. special military advisors in Vietnam in the early 1960s. The goal of JFK was to withdraw most of the advisors in 1965, leaving 1,500 in a purely advisory role in South Vietnam. 

 

It was Kennedy’s opinion that the war between North Vietnam and South Vietnam was a Vietnamese affair, for the South Vietnamese to win or lose. He was at odds with the joint chiefs of staff over whether the U.S. should conduct a full-scale war in Vietnam. Kennedy opposed that option, while the joint chiefs favored it. 

 

Things of course changed for the worse after JFK’s murder, and the joint chiefs got their way. Lyndon Johnson was elected as president in 1964. Because he didn’t want to appear “soft on communism,” Johnson sent about 500,000 U.S. troops to Vietnam in 1965. The result: about 58,000 U.S. citizens and over two million Vietnamese died.

 

While the Vietnam War raged, changes occurred in U.S. society. Young people were speaking out. There was talk of rebellion and revolution. And the rank-and-file of the U.S. military were not immune to it. 

 

Derek Seidman, assistant professor of history at D’Youville College in Buffalo, wrote in the Monthly Reviewthat there was “mass appeal of protest politics during the late 1960s and early 1970s. These were years of global insurgency, when many embraced the spirit of rebellion. The polarization around the war deepened and sank into the consciousness of many troops heading to Vietnam. Three movements were particularly important in shaping GI protest: the antiwar movement, Black Power, and the counterculture. These galvanized many soldiers, offering radical critiques and a language of protest they brought into the ranks.”

 

In the mid-sixties, protests by GIs occurred. Seidman called this the “infant stage of a broader antiwar movement.” There was the example of Lieutenant Henry Howe, stationed at Fort Bliss who was present at an antiwar demonstration in El Paso, Texas. Howe carried a sign which referred to Lyndon Johnson as a fascist. Howe was arrested, convicted and sent to jail for “conduct unbecoming to an officer.” There was Captain Howard Levy, who refused to train Green Berets being sent to Vietnam. And there was the Foot Hood 3, three privates who refused to be sent to Vietnam.

 

Seidman brings up an example of two Black marines from Brooklyn, William Harvey and George Daniels, who refused go to Vietnam, and they organized and persuaded other soldiers to resist. “[T]hey declared that black men had no place fighting a ‘white man’s war’ in Vietnam. Harvey and Daniels were court-martialed for ‘promoting disloyalty’ and dealt long prison terms.” But Harvey and Daniels were supported by the antiwar movement, along with the American Servicemen’s Union (ASU), a group that referred to GIs as working class, with the goal of unionizing them and making them radical anti-imperialists.   

 

 

These examples were a spark to ignite and unite civilians and soldiers opposed to the war. It was 1968 that the anti-war movement got more leverage. Seidman: “The GI movement was a collective effort by soldiers, veterans, and civilian activists to build dissent within the military during the war’s last half-decade. It was united by the common goals of organizing troops, ending the war, fighting racism, and defending troop civil liberties.” 

 

There was the creation of GI antiwar coffeehouses, which civilians set up near military bases to attract soldiers and give them a “safe space.” Thus, soldiers had the chance to be exposed to alternative political ideas, heightening their political awareness to the war and other issues. 

 

Also established was a GI underground press, a variety of antiwar newspapers to give soldiers a vehicle to not only develop political awareness, but to also read “uncensored news about the war, heroic reports of GI protest, satiric cartoons that bashed the military authority, information on legal help, and letters written by soldiers.”

 

As a result, soldiers joined antiwar groups with names like GIs for Peace, GIs United Against the War in Vietnam, the Concerned Officers Movement, GI-Civil Alliance for Peace, and the United States Servicemen’s Fund (USSF). These groups supported soldiers who were rebelling against the war. Additionally, lawyers who supported the antiwar movement were provided by the Pacific Counseling Center and the GI Civil Liberties Defense Committee. 

 

A major revelation occurred when Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers, a collection of documents on whether the U.S. can win the war in Vietnam. The conclusion was it couldn’t. This, of course, was kept hidden from the public, until Ellsberg leaked the documents to the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Institute for Policy Studies. 

 

The Nixon regime wanted to suppress the documents because of the embarrassment it would cause to the government; especially for the Johnson administration because of Johnson’s large buildup of the U.S. military in Vietnam and its “justification” for it by lying about the Gulf of Tonkin incident. Nixon’s Attorney General John Mitchell demanded that the NY Times halt publication. The Times refused, and the government brought a suit against it. But the Times won the case. Ellsberg leaked the documents to other newspapers.

 

Ellsberg was adamant in saying what the truth was about the Vietnam War:

 

“It was no more a "civil war" after 1955 or 1960 than it had been during the U.S.-supported French attempt at colonial reconquest. A war in which one side was entirely equipped and paid by a foreign power – which dictated the nature of the local regime – was not a civil war. To say that we had "interfered" in what is "really a civil war," simply screened a more painful reality and was as much a myth as the earlier official one of ‘aggression from the North.’ In terms of the UN Charter and of our own ideals, it was a war of foreign aggression, American aggression.”

 

A major factor was the formidable opposition to it. Rebellion and resistance reached a level where it could not be denied, or stopped.

 

The Iraq War

 

Because of the U.S.’s imperial foreign policy, lies from the government and the media have remained consistent. It was blatant where the George W. Bush Jr. regime is concerned. Lying became an Orwellian act. The often-used slogan, “Freedom isn’t Free!,” from the right bears this out. It was as pathetic as the renaming of French fries into “Freedom Fries.”

 

Unfortunately, many citizens in the U.S. were at first gung-ho about the Iraq war. According to the Pew Research Center, 73% of U.S. citizens supported the war in 2002, before it was launched. The Bush Jr. regime made a case for military action that was convincing to many U.S. citizens. The regime claimed that Saddam Hussein harbored weapons of WMDs, had ties to Al-Qaida, and was involved in the 9/11 attacks. The regime was sure these accusations would sway the U.S. public to support war. 

 

Two examples of the accusations were: 

 

Vice President Dick Cheney’s speech to the VFW, saying, “Simply stated, there is no doubt Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, our allies, and us.”

 

Colin Powell, Secretary of State, made a shameful presentation to the UN, claiming, there were “facts and conclusions based on solid evidence” that Iraq didn’t comply with UN weapons inspections. Powell added, “Leaving Hussein in possession of [WMDs] for a few more months or years is not an option, not in a post-Sept. 11 world.” 

 

The U.S. empire’s war began in 2003, with the Bush Jr. regime boasting that it would result in “shock and awe.” Most U.S. leaders like to condemn others for terrorists acts, but what the empire did in Iraq was a form of terrorism. It got so ugly that an Iraqi resistance formed to combat U.S. soldiers. It reflected a pattern of U.S invasions, occupations and bombings in other nations.

 

Eventually, as the war continued in late 2007, U.S. citizens became skeptical and were tired of war. About 54% were against sending more troops to Iraq. And it wasn’t a matter of just being tired. 

 

Soldiers who served in Iraq were also tired, and outraged. Veterans Against The War made it known that the war was based on lies. In their publication called About Face, it stated that “…terror will rain from the sky upon the people of Iraq, violence will flood the streets of a sovereign nation, and 7,000 miles away U.S. politicians and media will lockstep in their lies to justify it all.” 

 

It continued: “…we were lied into the war by politicians shilling for war-profiteering contractors, [and] incalculable Iraqi lives were cut short or forever changed.

 

“Though George W. Bush and his cronies may wish to repaint their images from blood-thirsty barons to affable retirees, we must continue to accurately recount the Bush administration’s role in manufacturing societal consent for war…”

 

The publication goes on to condemn the “War on Terror,” the “so-called ‘Defense Budget,’” and condemning “war profiteering contractors like Boeing, Raytheon, and Lockheed Martin.”         

 

Just as important, the publication mentioned the worldwide protests against the war: “We must continue to tell the stories of the nearly 36 million people worldwide who protested the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the stories of countless dissenting veterans who put down their [arms] in Iraq,” and to “continue to tell the stories of the millions of Iraqis killed or traumatized by U.S.-led terror who are still fighting for self-determination.”

 

In a piece published in Aljazeera, veterans offered their feedback on the war. Naveed Shah, like many recruits, was inspired to enlist after the 9/11 attacks. He joined the army in 2006, oblivious to the Bush Jr. regime’s lies about Iraq. But on the 20^th anniversary of the Iraq War, Shah was not so gung-ho: “The war was based on a lie. It was wrong for us to be there in the first place.”

 

Kristofer Goldsmith served in Iraq and now has regrets: “My year in Iraq wasn’t pleasant. I can’t say any American, much less any Iraqi, is better off for me having served there.” Eventually, Goldsmith was discharged after attempting suicide: “When I left the military, I lost a big part of my identity. Sharing my story and my experiences really helped me get out of a dark place.”

 

Aljazeera cited a poll by the Pew Research Center done in 2019. It found that 64% of veterans thought the war wasn’t worth fighting. For all U.S. adults, 62% agreed.

 

It’s evident that the military-industrial complex hasn’t learned any lessons about war. Ukraine is an example of the U.S. funding a proxy war. But the U.S., as an empire, must be opposed if it continues on this imperial path.