austin-murphy-the-triumph-of-evil

40 THE TRIUMPH OF EVIL
actual military battles between opposing ground forces numbered far
less than 400,000, and given that the communists themselves delib­
erately killed only about 40,000 civilians (Lewy, 1978). Herman and
Chomsky ( 1988) report the total number of Vietnamese killed in the
USA's war against Vietnam to be about 3 million, but all these figures
may underestimate the true total, especially if one considers not only
the direct murdering of civilians via USA aerial bombings a,, ·. ia
traditional executions (by USA and puppet South Vietnamese ground
forces) but also those killed indirectly as a result of the USA's deliberate
attempts to murder millions by starvation through the destruction of
food supplies (Zinn, 1995).
Even in Iraq, where the USA might have seemed justified in fighting
the Iraqis who had seized Kuwait in an almost bloodless invasion, it
should be mentioned that Kuwait was an artificially created monarchy
(Salinger and Laurent, 1991 ), which continues to maintain a repressive
rule of that area of the world even after its "liberation" from Iraqi rule
(Associated Press, 2000b). In particular, Kuwait was carved out of a
larger Iraq shortly after World War I by the British (and made formally
"independent" in 1961 }, so that the vast oil resources there could continue
to be controlled by capitalist companies subsequent to Britain
giving up its Middle Eastern colonies (Blum, 1995). There is also some
evidence that the USA plotted to encourage/provoke Iraq into its invasion
in 1990 to retake the territory (Salinger and Laurent, 1991 ). Regardless,
for purpose of the body count, the USA's terrorist aerial bombardments
on Iraq attacked mostly civilian targets (including civilian air raid
shelters deliberately), directly resulting in the death of approximately
50,000 Iraqi civilians (Clark, 1992) and almost completely destroying
the civilian economy (Laffin, 1994). Moreover, the USA bombings
deliberately and systematically destroyed vital civilian targets (such as
irrigation systems, power plants, and sewage disposal systems), and this
destruction combined with the continuing embargo against Iraq have
resulted in extremely poor sanitary conditions, inadequate medical services,
hunger, and related disease that has killed over one million Iraqi
civilians, a very large number of whom are children according to a
United Nations (UN) study (Flounders, l998b). In addition, the USA's
use of depleted uranium weapons in the 1991 war continue to cause
tens of thousands of cases of terminal illnesses (such as leukemia and
INTRODUCTION
cancer) for those who live near to where such weapons were used (lAC,
1998b).
Although the USA was able to use the UN as a cover for its military
attacks on Iraq in 1991, the USA alone was responsible for its massive
bombing of civilian targets, and although the embargo of lraq was origi­
nally agreed to by the UN in 1990 after Iraq occupied Kuwait, it has
been the USA vetoes (with British support) of UN proposals to lift the
trade sanctions that have perpetuated the embargo long after the Iraqi
withdrawal (Flounders, 1998b ). While the USA has agreed to loosen
the trade sanctions in recent years to allow the import of some nutritional
items (including alcohol) and luxury goods (like cars), many
necessities (like parts to rebuild Iraq's power and transportation infra­
structure, agricultural and medical equipment or components, and even
medicines) are still held up by the USA, as the USA continues to try
to terrorize the Iraqi people into overthrowing their leader, whom the
USA government leaders just happen not to like (King, 2000). Even a
USA congressional representative has recently called the USA-led (and
USA-enforced) embargo against Iraq "a horrendous policy-it's infan­
ticide" (CNN, 2000a). USA Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's
statement that the mass killing of civilians in Iraq is "worth it" as a
means to achieve the desired political goal of removing Saddam Hus­
sein from power verifies the deliberate nature of the USA's extermina­
tion of innocent Iraqi civilians (lAC, 1998b ).
As for the crimes of the CIA and its controlled leaders, Indonesia is a
good example. There in 1965, the CIA had one of its allied Indonesian
military leaders (Suharto) overthrow the elected government in a coup
and then proceed to murder close to one million unarmed communists
and other civilians, who had been part of, or identified with, a previ­
ously elected coalition government (Griswold, 1979). While the CIA
gave the Indonesian government a great deal of latitude in slaughtering
virtually any people with left-wing opinions, the CIA also provided lists
of thousands of specific Indonesians to be exterminated (Blum, 1995).
The communists here, like the Jews under Hitler, offered virtually no
resistance as they were killed by combinations of army troops, police,
and gangs or paramilitary forces that were specifically armed by the
CIA for the task (Levene and Roberts, 1999). In addition, the same
CIA ally (Suharto) slaughtered hundreds of thousands of innocent
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