Martin Luther King called the U.S. government “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world.” No one can reasonably deny that he was right. U.S. invasions, occupations, wars of aggression, coups, regime-change operations, inciting and provoking wars and conflicts, sanctions, embargoes, and state-sponsored assassinations have all contributed to what amounts to a massive death toll among foreign citizens. We don’t know the exact number of people the U.S. government has killed in, say, the last 80 years but it certainly has to be in the millions. That’s nothing to scoff at. When it comes to killing, there is no doubt that the U.S. government has made America Number 1.
Dr. Danile Ganser. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.
The problem is that all too many U.S. mainstream newspapers and writers are loathe to confront this core feature of the U.S. government. In fact, when one reads the mainstream press or mainstream books on U.S. foreign policy, one oftentimes gets the distinct impression that they are nothing more than assets of Operation Mockingbird, the CIA’s program to enlist the support of American journalists, especially those in the mainstream press.
To get an excellent handle on the real nature of the U.S. military-intelligence empire and its killing machine, I highly recommend a book written by a foreigner entitled USA: The Ruthless Empire. The author, Daniele Ganser, is a Swiss historian who is the founder and director of the Swiss Institute for Peace and Energy Research in Basel, Switzerland.
Ganser’s book was originally published in German in 2020. It was published in English last year by Skyhorse Publishing. I cannot recommend this book too highly. It is an absolutely fantastic analysis of the U.S. killing machine that the U.S. government has become, especially after the federal government was converted to a national-security state consisting of the Pentagon, the vast military-industrial complex, an empire of domestic and foreign military bases, the CIA, and the NSA after World War II.
Ganser pulls no punches. He correctly points out that the U.S. government is the greatest threat to world peace. Yes, greater than Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, and other nations that have been converted into official enemies, adversaries, opponents, or rivals of the U.S. Empire. He’s not alone. He observes that 24 percent of worldwide respondents to a survey stated the same thing.
He reminds us of President Eisenhower’s famous warning in his Farewell Address of the extreme danger that the military-industrial complex poses to the American people. He also reminds us that that the U.S. government leads the world in military spending. He writes about the adverse consequences of U.S. military bases in foreign countries. He also writes about the CIA’s regime-change operations, such as the ones in Iran, Guatemala, Cuba, Vietnam, the Dominican Republic, and Chile. He details the U.S.-sponsored kidnapping and murder of Gen. Rene Schneider, the innocent commander of Chile’s armed forces. He points out that since 1945, the United States has bombed more countries than any other nation.
Ganser also has a chapter on the national-security’s state’s assassination of President Kennedy, something that the U.S. mainstream press and mainstream historians have long been loathe to acknowledge. He correctly points out, “Important files on the assassination of President Kennedy are still under lock and key today, which prevents a full investigation into this unscrupulous crime.”
Perhaps the best endorsement of Ganser’s book are the criticisms of him on his Wikipedia page, which refers to him by the CIA’s favorite term—“conspiracy theorist.” The Wikipedia entry states “In 2023, Ganser’s presentations are considered to contain anti-Americanism, historical negationism, Kremlin propaganda, alternative facts, and half-truths…. The content of Ganser’s presentations is popular with a target audience of ‘conspiracy theorists and democracy skeptics.’” Why, the U.S. national-security establishment and its loyal acolytes in the U.S. mainstream press could not come up with a better critique (and endorsement) than that!
Libertarians will notice that Ganser is a leftist, especially when it comes to economics. But that doesn’t detract from the excellent nature of his analysis of the U.S. Empire, the U.S. national-security state, the U.S. foreign policy of interventionism, and the killing machine the U.S. government has become. Martin Luther King would have loved this book. So do I.