Picture this:

300,000 citizens in a densely populated city in a country at war have been cut off by invading forces. The residents are subjected to thousands of artillery rounds, hundreds of rockets, bombs, and missiles, and nearly 100,000 machine gun and cannon rounds.

Uncovered communications from a commander instructed: “We’ll unleash the dogs of hell, we’ll unleash ’em... They don’t even know what’s coming—hell is coming! If there are civilians in there, they’re in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Anti-personnel cluster bombs were dropped on the city. They explode in midair, scattering across areas as large as several football fields. The bombs maimed and killed combatants and civilians alike. The invaders fired white phosphorous into the city—chemical firebombs that can melt skin and burn right down to the bone. Because using white phosphorous constitutes a war crime under international law, government officials and state-subservient media at first denied the use of white phosphorous. Later they were forced to admit that it had been used.

Then came a ground assault by armored bulldozers that tore up all the main streets. This was followed by troops who shot at anything that moved. They went from house to house, room to room, terrorizing and killing. Ancient religious structures were blown up.

When the city fell to the invaders, reporters described a “wasteland” of “utter ruin.” Dogs and cats were feeding on corpses in the streets. As many as 2,000 people—labeled “insurgents” by the invaders—plus 800 or more civilians were dead. The once-crowded city lay empty and broken with 60 percent of its buildings damaged or destroyed. Some 36,000 homes, 9,000 shops, 65 religious buildings, and 60 schools were in ruins. Both train stations and one of the two bridges that connected the city to the world were destroyed.

Two power stations, three water treatment plants and the city’s entire sanitation and telephone systems were destroyed. Pause here. Imagine, but don’t just imagine, feel, what your life would be like without water. Without electricity for lifesaving heart monitors, respirators, oxygen tanks, boiled water, fans or lights. With sewage piling up untreated. And with no way to contact the outside world. That’s what the invaders left in their wake.

Two hundred thousand people were forced from the city—first by the blockade, then the cutting off of water and food, then the threats of invasion, and finally by the assault itself. They fled seeking food, shelter and safety. But the parts of the country they fled to were themselves bombed out, with few resources to help.

All this suffering and death inflicted on civilians was no accident. The mass-murdering ruler behind the invasion ordered his troops: “Kick ass! If somebody tries to stop [us], we will seek them out and kill them! We must be tougher than hell!.... Our will is being tested, but we are resolute. We have a better way. Stay strong! Stay the course! Kill them! Be confident! Prevail! We are going to wipe them out! We are not blinking!”

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This could—with some adjustments to account for logistical and technology differences—describe the criminal, terrorist, mass murder of civilians being perpetrated by the Russian military in its invasion of Ukraine.

But in this case, the account above describes exactly what the United States did to the Iraqi city of Fallujah in 2004.  At that time, the U.S. had illegally invaded Iraq, claiming that Iraq held “weapons of mass destruction”—a pretext which turned out to be a blatant lie. And the quoted mass-murdering ruler was not Vladimir “Just Like Hitler” Putin, but U.S. President George W. Bush. (See American Crime Case #94: November 2004—War Crime Fallujah).

Fallujah is only one example of the U.S. carrying out terrorist attacks on civilian infrastructure, aimed at murdering civilians including children in Iraq. From 1990 until 2003—the period between its first and second wars against that country—the U.S. mobilized the United Nations to impose murderous economic “sanctions.” The intended result was the destruction of much of Iraq’s infrastructure, including its electrical, water, and sewage treatment systems. The results were catastrophic for millions of Iraqis, especially for the young, the sick, and the elderly. (See American Crime Case #76: U.S.-UN Sanctions on Iraq—“A Legitimized Act of Mass Slaughter”).

The death and suffering the U.S. inflicted on civilians in Iraq to enforce its position as the top exploiter in the world was not an exception. It has been, and is, standard operating procedure for the United States military, starting with the genocidal wars against the Native Peoples of North America.

In the Korean War, the U.S. killed millions of civilians; carpet bombing an entire country into rubble; carrying out wholesale rape of women; and repeatedly threatening use of nuclear weapons. In Vietnam, the U.S. invaders systematically carried out mass rape, torture, mutilation and slaughter of Vietnamese civilians as a matter of policy (see Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam by Nick Turse).

Yes, what Russia is doing in Ukraine is horrific and inhumane. And it could be taken from the U.S. playbook on waging war.

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How an army fights tells you everything about what that army is fighting for. The armies of Russia and the United States are imperialist armies that enforce domination over “their” part of a world of merciless exploitation and environmental devastation. Their methods of fighting wars match their objectives and the nature of their system: terror, mass murder of civilians, gratuitous destruction of civilian infrastructure, the environment, and cultural treasures.  Just as they grind up billions of people (including 150 million children) in their machinery of exploitation every day, so too their doctrine of war rests on terrorizing the masses.

By contrast, at a time of an actual, all-out revolution, when millions would be fighting to dismantle the machinery of repression and oppression of this system, the revolutionary fighting forces would have entirely different ethics and means of fighting. HOW WE CAN WIN—How We Can Really Make Revolution emphasizes that at such a time the revolutionary fighting forces must, “Always conduct operations and act in ways that are in line with the emancipating outlook and goals of the revolution.”  And it is that very difference in how they fight that, in genuinely emancipating revolutions, becomes one crucially important “weapon” in the struggle: a different, emancipating morality.

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Caption for the first photo in the article: U.S. invaders terrorize and murder in Fallujah, Iraq, 2004