Slavery was a mistake that our Founding Fathers overlooked. We've tried to correct that but I don't think we've really done enough to repair the damage done. But theI don't know what else we could, except by way of an Act of Congress with a formal apology.
There were many Indian Nations here before the Europeans set foot on the shores of this great land. At first we treated them with respect, but then it was decided that they stood in the way of our expansion through this land. We made treaties with them, over 300, and turned around and broke them all. We tried to confine them to small areas but found out that they liked their freedom, which they had before we arrived, just as much as we did. So we tried to solve that problem with genocide by way of giving them blankets infected with smallpox. This is another big mistake we made that we have not completely corrected and probably never will.
The Spanish-American War was started because the battleship Maine was destroyed and sank in the harbour of Havana, Cuba. At that time Cuba was a colony of Spain as was the Philipines. Spain was blamed for the destruction of the Maine though there was never any proof they had anything to do with it. This gave us a reason and opportunity to invade Cuba and the Philipines, take them from Spain, and make them our territories, or colonies if you will. Control of Cuba would give us control of the Gulf region. Control of the Philipines would give us a place for military bases in the far east. Nice plan but colonization is not in, or allowed by the Constitution.
We entered WWI on false pretense. There were certain people here, and in England, who wanted us to enter that conflict for capital gain. To get us involved, passenger ships were transporting military hardware and equiptment to England. As a result one of these ships was sank with the loss of a great number of American citizens causing our entry into that war.
The Second World War was something completely different. We were physically attacked by Japan. Congress declared war on Japan within days of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Although we fought against Germany and Italy in Europe and North Africa, we never officially declared war on Germany or Italy. Even without declaring war on them we could not conceivably go to war with Japan only, because Germany, Italy, and Japan had formed an alliance. Our invasion of North Africa and then Europe was to stop the domination, or colonization, of the two by the governments of Germany and Italy. We went to war against Japan for two reasons. The first was because they attacked not only Pearl Harbor, which was a military base on the territory, or colony of Hawaii, but also the Philipines, Midway, and the Aleutian Islands which were territories, or colonies, too. The second was because Japan wanted to control East Asia for the oil reserves that it contained.
The Korean War was our attempt to prevent the advancement of Communism in Asia. China had already fallen to the Communists and we didn't want China to extend that past it's borders. That war never really ended, it just came to a stalemate with the country being split in two.
Vietnam was another attempt to stop Communism from spreading into Southeast Asia. There we set up a puppet government that didn't work. It was more concerned with it's own well-being and not that of the citizens. This, too, failed. Partly because the war was mishandled by our own government and partly because the Vietnamese did not want to be controled by a foreign entity. They had just thrown off the yoke of oppression the French had had on them. During WWII they had fought tenaciously to prevent the Japanese from dominating them.
Since Vietnam we have made several attempts at military intervention that were either wrong, handled poorly, or just plain stupid . Ganada, Kosovo, and Somalia just to name a few.
The first Gulf War was a bogus attempt to control Iraq and it's oil. Saddam invaded Kuwait because Kuwait's oil was drying up and had constructed slanted wells to reach the oil in Iraq by going under their border with Iraq. Therefore we invaded Iraq to "save" Kuwait. Here we have Bush the Elder's bullshit.
Today we are in Afganistan and Iraq. We went to Afganistan under the pretense of finding Osama bin Laden and destroying Al Qaeda. We set up another "puppet" government thinking we could control it, for the new empire building, but that has since backfired on Bush and his cronies. We still haven't found Osama but we crushed the Taliban, for a while anyway. Now they're back with a vengence and our troops are dying at an even greater rate. Could it be that just like Vietnam they don't want us there?
So Bush invades Iraq under fales pretense of WMD's, nonexistant threats of attack by Saddam, and the infamous 9/11 connection. We keep hearing about all the foreign fighters in Iraq causing problems, that they have no right to be there because it isn't their country. How about the 140,000 foreign fighters from our country, not to mention those from Britian and the rest of the coalition of the willing idiots, who are in Iraq as a part of Bush's empire building. Could it be that they don't want us in their country, that maybe they want to be free of the yoke Bush has placed on them?
The invasion of Iraq was illegal. We were not attacked by them, but they do have oil that we want and Iraq would be an ideal place for alot of military bases. Bush could have control over the entire Middle East from there. Build the empire! Make America bigger and stronger and even more powerful! Let's just get everybody to hate us. Bush and his cronies have done a good job of that so far. We're the only superpower, right now. Don't we deserve to be a great empire?
No, we don't. The following statement by John Quincy Adams, at the time Secretary of State, to the House of Representatives on Independence Day in 1821 should prove we don't.
And now, friends and countrymen, if the wise and learned philosophers of the elder world, the first observers of nutation and aberration, the discoverers of maddening ether and invisible planets, the inventors of Congreve rockets and Shrapnel shells, should find their hearts disposed to enquire what has America done for the benefit of mankind?
Let our answer be this: America, with the same voice which spoke herself into existence as a nation, proclaimed to mankind the inextinguishable rights of human nature, and the only lawful foundations of government. America, in the assembly of nations, since her admission among them, has invariably, though often fruitlessly, held forth to them the hand of honest friendship, of equal freedom, of generous reciprocity.
She has uniformly spoken among them, though often to heedless and often to disdainful ears, the language of equal liberty, of equal justice, and of equal rights.
She has, in the lapse of nearly half a century, without a single exception, respected the independence of other nations while asserting and maintaining her own.
She has abstained from interference in the concerns of others, even when conflict has been for principles to which she clings, as to the last vital drop that visits the heart.
She has seen that probably for centuries to come, all the contests of that Aceldama the European world, will be contests of inveterate power, and emerging right.
Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be.
But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy.
She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all.
She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.
She will commend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example.
She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom.
The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force....
She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit....
[America's] glory is not dominion, but liberty. Her march is the march of the mind. She has a spear and a shield: but the motto upon her shield is, Freedom, Independence, Peace. This has been her Declaration: this has been, as far as her necessary intercourse with the rest of mankind would permit, her practice.
Our Founding Fathers, the framers of our Constitution, never intended for this country to be an empire builder. To the contrary, they expected this country to stay out of the affairs of other countries. They knew firsthand what it was like to be dominated by a foreign power and did not want this country to abuse it's power to control another.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, AMERICA!
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