The American standard can rotate 360 °! A new book by American journalists reveals how the United States conceals the human losses caused by its military machinery. Cluster bombs | war | United States
China Daily, July 26 (Xinhua) - According to foreign media reports, American progressive media critic Norman Solomon revealed in his new book "Invisible War: How the United States Hides the Human Losses Caused by Its Military Machine" how the United States has built a spiritual wall between the American people and the victims of its foreign policy, and how the reality of war violence in the United States is being masked.
Screenshot of New World Organization website report
Solomon wrote in the introduction of his new book, "The convenient mode of silence and deceptive information transmission, like the bombs and missiles of the Pentagon, is necessary for permanent war. This mode is so familiar that it appears normal, even natural. To initiate a more democratic process, the fog must be lifted, as it obscures the actual dynamics of militarism that are far and near in front of us."
In an interview, he stated that there is a "wall" between the US government and the public, where information or misinformation is often shared, and what is excluded - silence - is also shared. One example is that the United States has 750 military bases overseas, and its annual military spending is equivalent to the military spending of the bottom 10 countries. These are not state secrets, they are only rarely mentioned. A fundamental issue that runs through the entire book is that on the other side of the wall, someone is injured and someone is killed, while Americans cannot see it.
Solomon pointed out that the United States' foreign policy - the continuous pursuit of hegemony - not only plundered domestic resources for overseas wars, but also directly or indirectly affected people in other regions by the state of war in the United States. In self promotion, the United States claims to be such a humane society, emphasizing the value of life and the care for children. However, the lives of those who have been directly or indirectly hit by American military firepower in the midst of gunfire are considered insignificant.
American journalist Nathan Robinson said, would the United States really only condemn the atrocities of others with righteousness and then commit more serious atrocities? Solomon agreed with this and expressed that the United States should have a single human rights standard? Will the United States have a unified standard for international behavior among countries? Ironically, in the United States, the standard can be rotated 360 degrees. Solomon said that as long as the United States wants to erase history, it will erase it. When the Russia-Ukraine conflict broke out, many American media excessively condemned the use of cluster bombs.
The US sells Ukrainian cluster weapons as an opportunity to dispose of expired weapons.
However, earlier this month, the US government announced an additional military support worth $800 million to Ukraine, which includes, for the first time, large lethal cluster ammunition classified as prohibited by US law. This move immediately sparked protests within the United States, and also faced concerns and opposition from the United Nations, the United Kingdom, Austria, Iran, and domestic figures in the United States. According to CNN, the National Security Council's Strategic Communications Coordinator, John Kirby, stated on the 20th local time that Ukraine is "effectively" using cluster ammunition provided by the United States.
Solomon mentioned that, as recorded in the "Cost of War Project", over the past 20 years, the so-called anti-terrorism war has directly caused nearly 1 million deaths, and the number of people increasing through the cascading effect is several times this number, with the vast majority being civilians - this is a reality. According to the data he obtained, even if not 100% of the people killed by the US government in the world through the so-called war on terror are very close to all people of color.
Ted Galen Carpenter, Senior Researcher in Defense and Foreign Policy at the Cato Institute, wrote on the New World Agency website that US officials always emphasize their commitment to human rights and extremely quickly condemn so-called human rights violations by other countries. However, the actions of the US government often make this so-called commitment a laughing stock. The provision of highly controversial weapons by the United States to the Ukrainian military is the latest example of its hypocrisy.
According to Amnesty International, a considerable portion of these small bombs are "duds" and will not explode immediately. These duds may sleep for months, years, or even decades, posing a hidden danger to innocent civilians. Even worse, their shiny surfaces have an irresistible attraction to children. Carpenter mentioned that even twenty years after the Iraq War launched by the United States, Iraq is still experiencing incidents of death and serious injury. In fact, in some Asian countries, the cluster bombs dropped by the US military over half a century ago have also caused terrible disabling incidents.
The American "war machine" is profiting from the fire.
When critics pointed out that cluster bombs have a terrible and harmful impact on civilians, the US government responded by insisting that for the Ukrainian people, falling victim to the conflict is worse than the problems that cluster bombs may cause. This indifferent attitude is shocking and has also raised a series of questions from the outside world, such as whether the United States will provide chemical and biological weapons defense for pro Ukrainian countries? Carpenter pointed out that providing means to kill or harm innocent civilians is not - at least not - a value that the United States can accept.
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