The assertion that America is a force for good in the world, or at least it could be, is a bedrock framework for even the most liberal end of the press, the educational system, and all the defining institutions in this country.
But right now, your government is not just defending, but funding, and providing military support for an unjust and genocidal attack by Israel on the Palestinian people in Gaza.
Here's one case study to challenge basic assumptions and illusions about America: This country is not, has never been, and cannot be a force for good in the world.
If you have thought that Biden really cares about preventing the killing of innocent people, which is one reason why he says he is arming Ukraine to fight Russia, time for a reality check.
Biden has accused Russia’s ruler Putin of “starving the world” by cutting off exports of Ukrainian grain; of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide, in its unjust invasion of Ukraine and in killing civilians.
Starvation!? Israel has cut off not just food but water, medicine, and fuel to 2.2 million people in Gaza as it bombs apartments, hospitals, and schools. And war crimes and crimes against humanity!? How does targeting an entire people, imposing collective punishment by locking them down, bombing their homes, telling them to flee and bombing them as they do, not amount to war crimes?
And genocide? Israel is a country built on genocide as defined by the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, including killing and causing bodily and mental harm to a group of people; and deliberately inflicting conditions aimed at destroying a group of people in part or as a whole. Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestine has reached genocidal proportions.1
When the United Nations condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Biden self-righteously declared, “We will stand up for international law, the UN Charter, and the rights and protections it affords to Ukraine and its people – and to every state and people everywhere.”
Do all the research you can. From Hiroshima to Vietnam to the Congo, from Indonesia to Iraq to Iran, from Guatemala to Argentina to Chile... and many many other parts of the world, when the vital interests of the U.S. empire are at stake, no crime is too horrific, no violation of international law too egregious, no slaughter of innocent civilians too massive, sadistic, and ghastly… to be funded, endorsed, and defended by the rulers of this country.
In the words of the revolutionary leader Bob Avakian, “How can any decent person deny that we need a revolution to overthrow this system?!”
