To paraphrase the poet, ‘How do I exploit thee? Let me count the ways’.

Here’s how-

Coalition Wars (95.5% US soldiers, money, material):
Afghanistan- minerals, oil pipelines.
Iraq- Oil.

Proxy Wars:
Colombia- oil
Nigeria- oil
Philippines- oil
Somalia- control of oil shipping lanes.

Even at the height of its substantial empire, England never had so much on its plate at the same time.

Today’s catchphrase is, ‘fighting terrorism, bringing democracy’. Of course, on some people’s assessment, our ally Israel is itself a sponsor of state terrorism today- assassinations, invasions, the loss of human lives. Earlier, the catchphrase was ‘fighting communism, bringing freedom’ so a look back is essential, and on my take Vietnam is the best place to start.

The battle of Dien Bien Phu (1954) began Vietnam’s march toward freeing itself, first, from the colonial yoke of France, then, from American economic domination. According to President Eisenhower, the motives for us were that nation’s natural resources- tin, rubber, and of course, oil at the bottom of the South China Sea.

The Geneva Conference, also in 1954, was meant to end the war and bring peace. For some years prior to France’s defeat at Dien Bien Phu, our government, with the cover of the Marshall Plan, was already funding most of the French war effort. American pilots, flying American planes with their Air Force stars painted over, were bringing supplies and munitions to Dien Bien Phu and bombing Vietnamese positions. Over one half of the French garrison there consisted of Foreign Legionnaires, almost all of them German war veterans who had fought the Russians (our allies then) on the Eastern Front in WWII.

At the Conference, most of the nations participating- China, France, Great Britain, Russia, and the US, worked to establish a basis for a cease-fire and an end to the war. The US was the only exception. The then secretary of state –John Foster Dulles – according to all the non-American participants (Valley of Death, Ted Morgan) only contributed fierce anti-communist diatribes whenever a compromise seemed attainable. His recurring threat was to drop nuclear bombs on China, then providing Vietnam –its neighbor to the South- with arms and intelligence, just as we were doing for France. The nuclear threat was Dulles’ favorite form of ‘diplomacy’. President Eisenhower opposed and publicly rejected the use of nuclear weapons several times.

And so the Geneva Conference failed. Among other proposals, Dulles scuttled the possibility of a UN-supervised referendum –North and South- to establish a unified Vietnamese state which, of course, exists today. The direct result of Dulles’ fanaticism -Anthony Eden, the Foreign Secretary in England’s Churchill government, called Dulles ‘deranged’- soon led to our own Vietnam War, which, in fact, was welcomed by another staunch ‘cold warrior’, then vice-president, Richard Nixon.

That ‘victory over communism’ killed some 50,000 Americans, and almost a million Vietnamese. Our lavish use of napalm and spent-uranium ordnance during it turned the war into a chemical war against the Earth itself, destroying God’s green creation and poisoning human life for generations.

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