The United States cannot be a moral or ethical country until it faces up to the realities of US empire and the destruction it causes around the world. The US undermines governments (including democracies), kills millions of people, causes mass migrations of people fleeing their homes, communities and countries and produces vast environmental damage.
America’s history is rife with discrimination. When Europeans came to America, the native people had large populations and well developed societies and agriculture. The Europeans did not understand their cultures, their religions or their languages. Nor did they want to. The Europeans had better technologies, so the natives were considered savages, something less than people, unpeople. Historians have used the term unpeople to describe the indifference developed societies have for the lives of their victims for many years.
The thesis of anthropologist David Vine’s latest book, Base Nation: How U.S. Military Bases Abroad Harm America and the World, is taboo in American political discourse. It is a radical notion to suggest that foreign bases don’t protect American interests but actively harm them. Candidates who fail to reflexively support U.S. militarism face a political land mine.
