The rulers of this system—Republi-fascists and Democrats—go on and on about the “greatness of America.” Biden and the Democrats talk about defending the “rules-based order” that has existed since World War 2, with the U.S. as the great world defender of “freedom and democracy.” This is a lie, soaked in the blood of millions killed in America’s wars, invasions and coups.
What follows is a chart that lays bare the reality of America’s reign on top of this system of capitalism-imperialism. This shows just some of the horrific injustices and atrocities America has committed since World War 2. These crimes were carried out in the U.S. and all over the world—under both Democratic and Republican presidents.
1945
Nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
As World War 2 was coming to an end, in August the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on two Japanese cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, instantly incinerating tens of thousands of people, mostly civilians, and killing some 200,000 overall. The U.S. remains the only country ever to use nuclear weapons.
Learn more: American Crime Case #97: August 6 and 9, 1945—The Nuclear Incineration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, revcom.us
1945-1949
Military intervention in the Chinese Revolution
U.S. tanks during the Korean War.
When civil war broke out in China between the revolutionary forces led by Mao Zedong and the reactionary Nationalist Party (Kuomintang/KMT) under Chiang Kai-shek, the U.S. funneled billions of dollars in aid and military equipment to back the KMT.
Learn more:American Crime #49: 1950-53—Encircling, Threatening and Attacking the Chinese Revolution, revcom.us; William Blum, Killing Hope–U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II (Common Courage 1995), pp. 21-23
1946-present
School of the Americas—pro-U.S. mass murderers and torturers
Victims of death squad murders, El Salvador, 1981
The School of the Americas (now called Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation) has trained military officers from pro-U.S. countries in Latin America to become torturers, assassins, and coup leaders. The school’s curriculum has included the use of torture, rape, disappearances, assassinations, and mass killings.
Learn more: American Crime Case #91: School of the Americas, revcom.us
1948-present
Support for Israel’s crimes
Some of the 750,000 Palestinians driven from their homes and lands, 1948. Photo: Wikipedia
The state of Israel was created through violent expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians from their lands and homes, seizure of more than 78 percent of historic Palestine, ethnically cleansing and destroying about 530 villages and cities, and killing 15,000 Palestinians in mass atrocities. Since then, the U.S. has backed Israel because of its role as a heavily armed bastion of support for U.S. imperialism in a strategically important part of the world. And since 2023, the U.S. has given unwavering military, political and diplomatic support to Israel’s genocidal slaughter in Gaza.
Learn more: The Case of Israel: Bastion of Enlightenment or Enforcer for Imperialism, revcom.us; Palestine, Israel, U.S. Imperialism & Revolution, Bob Avakian, @BobAvakianOfficial
1950-53
War in Korea
Some of the 1,800 South Korean political prisoners executed by U.S.-backed South Korean puppet Syngman Rhee, July 1950.
The U.S. orchestrated a UN invasion with 340,000 troops, 90 percent American. U.S. planes carpet-bombed North Korea and leveled the entire country. Thousands of tons of napalm—jellied gasoline that burns people alive—were also dropped. President Truman threatened to use nuclear weapons against then-socialist China, which was defeating the American forces for a time during the Korean War—one of 25 times when America has threatened to use nuclear weapons since dropping them on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The U.S.-led war killed more than two million North Korean civilians.
Learn more: American Crime Case #93: U.S. Invasion of Korea—1953, revcom.us; 25 Times… That’s How Often America Has Threatened to Use Its Nukes, revcom.us
1953
CIA coup in Iran
Reactionary mobs joined by the military in the streets of Tehran Iran, August 18 1953.
The CIA and British intelligence launched a military coup overthrowing Iran’s elected prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, who had nationalized Britain’s Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, replacing him with Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi. The Shah ruled as a brutal U.S. puppet for 25 years.
Learn more: American Crime Case #98: 1953 CIA Coup in Iran: Torture and Repression—Made in the USA, revcom.us
1954
Coup in Guatemala
Presidents Truman and Eisenhower authorized the CIA to organize a coup to overthrow the popularly elected government of Jacobo Árbenz and replace him with a right-wing military junta.
Learn more: Banana Republics Made in the USA, revcom.us; The United States of Atrocity: When It Comes to War Crimes, USA Is “Number One,” revcom.us
1954-56
Operation Wetback
Mexican immigrants packed into trucks for deportation, June 1954 Photo: Wikipedia
The U.S. government carried out a military-style campaign of round ups and deportations of Mexicans living in the United States, naming their campaign after a racist term for Mexican immigrants. Some 1.3 million immigrants were deported, tearing apart families and terrorizing entire communities in California, Arizona, and Texas.
Learn more: American Crime Case #78: “Operation Wetback,” revcom.us
1956-71
COINTELPRO
The FBI operated an illegal covert program targeting the Black civil rights and liberation movements, communists, socialists, nationalist independence movements, the New Left (student radicals and the antiwar movement), and gay rights and environmental activists with harassment, disruption, and outright murder. Among its many crimes: assassination of Chicago Black Panther Party leader Fred Hampton; inciting violence that led to the death of scores of Native Americans at Wounded Knee; and the railroad and lifelong imprisonment of Leonard Peltier.
Learn more: American Crime Case #42: COINTELPRO—The FBI Targets the Black Freedom Struggle, revcom.us; American Crime Case #41: COINTELPRO—The FBI Targets the New Left, revcom.us; American Crime Case #74: The FBI-Chicago Police Assassination of Fred Hampton, revcom.us; Secret COINTELPRO plot to infiltrate and destroy the American Indian Movement, Monthly Review
1957-86
Enforcing brutal rule on Haiti
Members of Tonton Macoute.
The U.S. backed Francois “Papa Doc” and Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier for 28 years as they ruled over the people of Haiti, relying heavily on the Tonton Macoute militia, whose members raped and murdered ordinary people at will.
Learn more: The U.S. in Haiti: A Century of Domination and Misery, revcom.us
1961
Murder of Patrice Lumumba in Congo
Patrice Lumumba arrested, shortly before his assassination.
A firing squad executed the Congolese anti-colonialist leader Patrice Lumumba just months after he was elected prime minister of the newly founded Republic of the Congo. This brutal murder was carried out by Lumumba’s Congolese enemies, but President Eisenhower’s CIA Director, Allen Dulles, had declared that “[Lumumba’s] removal must be an urgent and prime objective.”
Learn more: American Crime Case #73: The CIA-Directed Murder of Patrice Lumumba, revcom.us
1961-75
Vietnam War
My Lai massacre, March 16, 1968. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Destruction in North Vietnamese capital city of Hanoi after 12 days of round-the-clock U.S. bombing, December 1972
The U.S. sent more than 500,000 troops and dropped millions of tons of bombs on this country in Southeast Asia in an effort to defeat the national liberation struggle of the Vietnamese people. By the time the war ended in America’s defeat in 1975, its military had slaughtered two million Vietnamese civilians, including in mass killings like the massacre at the rural village of My Lai.
Learn more: American Crime Case #96: Vietnam, March 16, 1968—The My Lai Massacre, revcom.us
1961
Bay of Pigs invasion
U.S. B-26 plane shot down by Cuban forces during the Bay of Pigs invasion.
President John F. Kennedy green-lighted the CIA-organized invasion of Cuba by reactionary Cuban exiles, in an attempt to overthrow the Castro government. The invasion was defeated, but some 2,000 to 6,000 Cuban soldiers, militia personnel, and others were killed, wounded, or went missing.
Learn more: American Crime Case #45: The Bay of Pigs Invasion, 1961, revcom.us
1962
Cuban missile crisis
Cartoon depicting U.S. President Kennedy and Soviet Premier Khruschev with fingers on nuclear buttons.
When the Soviet Union placed 36 nuclear-armed missiles in Cuba at the Cuban government’s request, President Kennedy placed a naval blockade on Cuba and put U.S. nuclear forces on the highest level of alert short of actual nuclear war. For 13 days, the world hovered on the brink of nuclear holocaust.
Learn more: “Nuclear Close Calls: The Cuban Missile Crisis,” Atomic Heritage Foundation
1964
Backing for Brazil coup
Police brutalize protestor against the 1964 coup in Brazil.
A section of the Brazilian military carried out a coup that overthrew President João Goulart, giving rise to two decades of murderous military rule, disappearances and murders of some 1,000 political opponents, and torture of 30,000 more. The U.S. prepared the coup for two years or more and provided supplies and funding for it.
Learn more: American Crime Case #86: 1964 Brazil Coup and Rise of Brutal Military Dictatorship, revcom.us
1965
Invasion of the Dominican Republic
U.S. troops in the streets of Santo Domingo, 1965.
The U.S. invaded with over 22,000 troops to crush a mass uprising against the country’s pro-U.S. tyranny. Thousands of Dominicans were killed.
Learn more: American Crime Case #68: The 1965 U.S. Invasion of the Dominican Republic, revcom.us
1965-66
CIA-orchestrated bloodbath in Indonesia
Youth rounded up by military during coup, Jakarta, Indonesia, October 1965.
The Indonesian military, led by pro-U.S. General Suharto, slaughtered people in a massive bloodbath set in motion, backed, and orchestrated by the U.S., with the CIA providing a “hit list” of 5,000 to be killed. At least 500,000 and perhaps more than a million were massacred, including children and members of the Indonesian Communist Party, trade unionists, intellectuals, teachers, land reform advocates, ordinary peasants, and ethnic Chinese.
Learn more: American Crime Case #100: 1965 Massacre in Indonesia, revcom.us
1968
U.S. hand in massacre of Mexican students
Ten days before the start of the Olympic Games, 5,000 soldiers surrounded 10,000 students and other supporters of a months-long student upsurge gathered for a rally in the Tlatelolco section of Mexico City. Troops started raking the crowd with machine-gun fire, and at least 325 students were murdered while thousands were beaten and jailed and many disappeared. Three decades later, declassified documents revealed the bloody fingerprints of the CIA’s spy network, which oversaw the Olympics preparations, in the massacre.
Learn more: American Crime Case #27: October 2, 1968: The U.S. Hand in the Mexican Government’s Massacre of Hundreds of Students at Tlatelolco, revcom.us
1969-73
Bombing of Cambodia
Smoke rises from bombs dropped by U.S. planes near the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh, July 25, 1973. Photo: AP
The U.S. carpet-bombed Cambodia during the war in Vietnam, directly or indirectly killing 100,000 to 600,000 people—mostly civilians. Hundreds of thousands more likely died due to displacement, disease, and starvation, and over two million people were driven from their homes in the countryside.
Learn more: American Crime Case #47: The Bombing of Cambodia, revcom.us
1971
Massacre of Attica prisoners
On September 9, the most powerful prison rebellion in U.S. history erupted at Attica prison in upstate New York, with over half of the 2,200 inmates—mainly Black but also white and Puerto Rican—seizing control of large parts of the prison and taking 38 guards hostage. On the fourth day of the uprising, “liberal” NY Governor Rockefeller unleashed police, sheriffs, park police, and the National Guard in a murderous assault on Attica that killed 39 unarmed people: 29 prisoners, and 10 guards being held hostage.
Learn more: American Crime Case #81: September 13, 1971—Massacre of Heroic Attica Prisoners, revcom.us
1973
Military coup in Chile
Chilean troops round up protesters during the coup, 1973.
On September 11, the Chilean military, with political guidance and secret backing from the U.S., carried out a coup against the elected president Salvador Allende. More than 3,000 people were executed, thousands more were “disappeared,” and tens of thousands tortured. In the following years, as many as 1 million out of Chile’s population of 11 million were forced into exile.
Learn more: American Crime #57: The 1973 CIA Coup In Chile, revcom.us
1973-present
Mass incarceration
Photo: okayplayer.com
With nearly 2 million people behind bars, the U.S. has 4 percent of the world’s population but 25 percent of all those in prison. The U.S. prison population has grown 500 percent since 1973, disproportionately Black, Latino, and Native American, who account for 7 in 10 people incarcerated—the “New Jim Crow.” More than 460,000 people are held in city and county jails awaiting trial, largely because they cannot afford bail.
Learn more: Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2024, Prison Policy Initiative; The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (The New Press, 2010), Michelle Alexander; Abolition—Real and Illusory, by Bob Avakian, revcom.us
1975-1994
Fomenting civil war in Angola
Reagan welcomes Angolan butcher Savimbi at the White House, 1986
As Portugal was forced to end its colonial rule and the Angolan group MPLA was set to take power, the U.S. funded and gave military assistance to the reactionary butchers of UNITA, headed by Jonas Savimbi, and also backed military intervention in Angola by white apartheid South Africa. A savage civil war followed, in which some 500,000 were killed and over 4 million were driven from their homes.
Learn more: American Crime Case #28: U.S. Foments Bloody Civil War in Angola, revcom.us
1979-88
Proxy war in Afghanistan
Osama bin Laden and other jihadists in Afghanistan, 1989. Credit: SIPA
After the Soviet Union—then the main imperialist rival of the U.S.—invaded Afghanistan, the U.S. carried out a decade-long proxy war against them. Together with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, the U.S. organized, trained, and funded reactionary Islamic fundamentalists to carry out the war, including the then little-known Saudi jihadist Osama bin Laden.
Learn more: American Crime Case #24: U.S. Proxy War Against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, revcom.us
1980-1992
Backing El Salvador’s death squad government
Massacre in the village of El Mozote, El Salvador, December 11, 1981.
To crush a guerrilla struggle against its brutal client regime, the U.S. supported, funded, and armed death squads that carried out extra-judicial executions and massacres, killing as many as 75,000 Salvadorans.
Learn more: American Crime Case #38: The U.S. Backs El Salvador’s Death Squad Government, revcom.us
1980s-1990s
Backing genocide in Guatemala
Banner in Guatemala City shows some of the people disappeared by the U.S.-backed Guatemalan army in the 1980s. Photo: AP
The U.S. backed a 1982 military coup by the Christian fascist general José Efraín Ríos Montt, who launched a genocidal assault on the indigenous Mayan population that continued until 1996. Some 200,000 people were disappeared or killed.
Learn more: American Crime Case #95: Reagan’s Butcher Carries Out Genocide in Guatemala, revcom.us
1981-87
Condemning 180,000 gay men and others to death by AIDS
ACT UP protestors shut down Food and Drug Administration headquarters, Rockville, MD, October 11, 1988. Photo: AP
During the AIDS epidemic, President Reagan choked off all but minimal funding for research, treatment, and education related to the disease; refused to even utter the word AIDS, encouraging neglect, ridicule and marginalization of AIDS patients; and promoted Christian fascists like Jerry Falwell who condemned people with AIDS. As a result, thousands and thousands of people in this country suffered far more than they should have had to and died unnecessarily.
Learn more: American Crime Case #92: Ronald Reagan Condemns 180,000 Gay Men and Others to Demonization, and Death by AIDS, revcom.us
1985
Massacre of MOVE
The MOVE house and other homes in a Philadelphia neighborhood burned out by massive police assault. 1985.
On May 13, the Philadelphia police carried out a massive assault on a house occupied by MOVE, a Black radical organization that refused to respect present-day America and its prevailing values. Inside the house were seven adults and six children. The police fired over 8,000 rounds and dropped a bomb on the roof that ignited a fire that burned down the house and many nearby homes. Five children, ages 9 to 14, and six adults were killed in the massacre.
Learn more: American Crime Case #99: May 13, 1985: The MOVE Massacre, revcom.us
1990-2003
Deadly sanctions on Iraq
By 1998, 30 percent of Iraq’s children under five were malnourished because of the shortage of food and medicine, a result of the U.S./UN sanctions. Photo: al-Arabiya
The U.S. and UN enforced crippling economic sanctions on Iraq, with catastrophic results for millions of Iraqis, especially the young, the sick, and the elderly. By 1997, more than 1.2 million Iraqis had died as a result of medical shortages caused by the war and sanctions, including 750,000 children under the age of five. When Bill Clinton’s UN Ambassador Madeleine Albright, was asked by a journalist in 1996 about the deaths of half a million Iraqi children, Albright replied: “We think the price is worth it.”
Learn more: American Crime Case #76: U.S.-UN Sanctions on Iraq—“A Legitimized Act of Mass Slaughter,” revcom.us
1991
The Persian Gulf War
U.S.-led forces attacked a convoy of Iraqi troops retreating from Kuwait, slaughtering thousands, February 1991. Photo: AP
The U.S. led a massive war of aggression, based on lies, against Iraq. The war killed some 100,000 Iraqi soldiers, wounded another 300,000, and led to the deaths of 70,000 civilians by January 1992.
Learn more: American Crime Case #32: The 1991 Persian Gulf War—“Operation Desert Storm,” revcom.us
1994
“Crime Bill” ramps up mass incarceration
Bill Clinton signing the Crime Bill, with Joe Biden behind him. Photo: White House
Joe Biden, then a U.S. senator, drafted what became known as the “Crime Bill,” which was signed into law by President Bill Clinton. It expanded the death penalty; encouraged states to lengthen prison sentences, including with lifetime mandatory sentences (three strikes laws); eliminated federal funding for inmate education; and allocated $9.7 billion for building more prisons.
Learn more: The controversial 1994 crime law that Joe Biden helped write, explained, Vox; American Crime Case #66: The “War on Drugs,” 1970 to Today, revcom.us
2001-2021
Invasion and occupation of Afghanistan
The U.S. invaded and installed a widely hated pro-U.S. Islamic regime. The American air and ground war continued until 2021, by which time over 200,000 people (including more than 70,000 civilians) had been killed, and today Afghan people continue to die from the effects of this war.
Learn more: U.S. Imperialists Suffer Humiliating Defeat in Afghanistan as Oppressive Taliban Regime Return to Power, revcom.us
2003-present
Operation “Iraqi Freedom”
Fallujah, Iraq, November 2004.
The U.S. invaded Iraq and overthrew Saddam Hussein’s regime based on the lie that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. The U.S. war and occupation led to the rise of reactionary Islamic jihadism and the ethnic-sectarian conflict in Iraq that continues to this day. An estimated 1.2 to 1.4 million people (perhaps as many as 2.4 million) in Iraq have died from the war’s direct and indirect impacts; more than 4.2 million Iraqis had been injured; and at least 4.5 million had been driven from their homes by 2016.
Learn more: American Crime Case #70: “Operation Iraqi Freedom,” revcom.us
2003
Torture at Abu Ghraib
Whistleblowers inside the U.S. military revealed that American soldiers and CIA agents routinely tortured prisoners at Abu Ghraib, a U.S. Army detention center outside Baghdad, Iraq. Photos showed Iraqi men, naked with hoods over their heads, being brutalized and humiliated by military police, who posed in these trophy pictures with wide grins.
Learn more: The United States of Atrocity: When It Comes to War Crimes, USA Is “Number One,” revcom.us
2002-present
Guantánamo torture chamber
Prisoners at U.S. torture chamber at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. DOJ
A military prison within the Guantánamo Bay U.S. Naval Base in Cuba, the vast majority of those held there from its beginnings were picked up around the world without ever being charged. Prisoners have been subjected to waterboarding and other torture and indefinite detention without trial, violations of international law.
Learn more: American Crime Case #54: The Guantánamo Torture Chamber, revcom.us
2009
Military coup in Honduras
The Honduran military carried out a coup against the elected president, Manuel Zelaya, a liberal-leaning populist. The coup had backing from Barak Obama’s Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the U.S. State Department. The generals and politicians behind the coup brought to power an openly fascist and pro-U.S. regime that plunged the Honduran people even more deeply into the hell of U.S. domination, state-sponsored political assassinations and terrorism, and intensified violence, poverty, and oppression.
Learn more: American Crime Case #75: Obama, Clinton and the 2009 Military Coup in Honduras, revcom.us
2011
War on Libya
Tripoli, Libya; residential building damaged during seven months of U.S./NATO bombing of Libya in 2011. Photo: AP
Using then-Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi’s suppression of protests as justification, the U.S. and its NATO allies started a massive bombing campaign against Libya lasting seven months. The U.S.-NATO declared Libya’s “liberation” in 2011, after anti-government forces had captured and killed Qaddafi. Libya was plunged into chaos, and the lives of millions of people were shattered.
Learn more: American Crime Case #35: The 2011 U.S.-NATO War on Libya, revcom.us
2013-present
Disenfranchising millions of Black people
The U.S. Supreme Court gutted the 1965 Voting Rights Act, and this ruling opened the flood gates for laws aimed at disenfranchising millions of Black people. At least 25 states have instituted laws restricting voting, especially affecting Black and other oppressed people, such as stricter photo ID requirement, curtailing of early voting, and eliminating same day registration.
Learn more: 7 Years of Gutting Voting Rights, Brennan Center for Justice
2015-present
Saudi-led war in Yemen
With backing from its U.S. ally, Saudi Arabia launched a war against Yemen’s Houthi movement. The Saudi-led coalition forces have bombed Yemen’s food, water, and medical systems, causing massive hunger and disease and as many as 400,000 children have starved to death as a result.
Learn more: We Challenge You to Learn About Yemen, revcom.us
2022-present
Proxy war against Russia in Ukraine
HIMARS rocket launcher, part of billions of dollars in U.S. weapons sent to Ukraine. Photo: U.S. Army
Since the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, the U.S. has supplied massive amounts of arms ($16 billion so far) to the Ukrainian military—with the explicit aim to weaken Russia and its ability to challenge the U.S. Tens of thousands have died in this war. There is very real danger of this proxy war between the U.S. and Russian imperialists spiraling into direct war, including the use of nuclear weapons, between these two rivals.
Learn more: Escalations, Expansions, and F-16s: Ukraine and the Growing Danger of Nuclear War, revcom.us; The War in Ukraine and the Interests of Humanity: A Scientific Revolution Approach vs. Harmful Confusion and Chauvinist Delusion, Bob Avakian, revcom.us
2023-present
Genocide in Gaza
Palestinians search through rubble in Khan Younis after Israeli airstrikes, October 26, 2023. Photo: AP
Palestinians pull girl from rubble after Israeli airstrike on Jabaliya refugee camp, November 1, 2023. Photo: AP
After an attack inside Israel by the Islamic fundamentalist group Hamas on October 7, 2023, Israel launched a genocidal slaughter against the whole Palestinian population of over 2 million people in Gaza. What is going on in Gaza did not “start” on October 7, and it is not essentially a war between Israel and Hamas—it is a one-sided slaughter of essentially defenseless Palestinians. Using massive 2,000-pound bombs and other weapons supplied by the U.S., Israel has killed some 40,000 people in 10 months, including at least 15,000 children; destroyed most schools and many hospitals; and deliberately caused mass starvation. Through all this, every significant government figure in the U.S. has continued to support funding, arming, and backing Israel, from Trump and the Republi-fascists to Genocide Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
Learn more: Resource Page on the Genocidal Assault on Palestine—and Israel as an Enforcer of Imperialism, revcom.us