When America was great… When was that?
Let’s start with the man that is falsely credited with discovering America. This man, if you can call him that even, has a day that misguided, misinformed, or oblivious people of the US set aside to glorify him. Here is some of the history of this person who was credited for starting things here in the USA.
Columbus wasn’t a hero. When he set foot on that sandy beach in the Bahamas on October 12, 1492, Columbus discovered that the islands were inhabited by friendly, peaceful people called the Lucayans, Taínos and Arawaks. Writing in his diary, Columbus said they were a handsome, smart and kind people. He noted that the gentle Arawaks were remarkable for their hospitality. “They offered to share with anyone and when you ask for something, they never say no,” he said. The Arawaks had no weapons; their society had neither criminals, prisons nor prisoners. They were so kind-hearted that Columbus noted in his diary that on the day the Santa Maria was shipwrecked, the Arawaks labored for hours to save his crew and cargo. The native people were so honest that not one thing was missing. Columbus was so impressed with the hard work of these gentle islanders, that he immediately seized their land for Spain and enslaved them to work in his brutal gold mines. Within only two years, 125,000 (half of the population) of the original natives on the island were dead. If I were a Native American, I would mark October 12, 1492, as a black day on my calendar.
Shockingly, Columbus supervised the selling of native girls into sexual slavery. Young girls of the ages 9 to 10 were the most desired by his men. In 1500, Columbus casually wrote about it in his log. He said: “A hundred castellanoes are as easily obtained for a woman as for a farm, and it is very general and there are plenty of dealers who go about looking for girls; those from nine to ten are now in demand.” He forced these peaceful natives work in his gold mines until they died of exhaustion. If an “Indian” worker did not deliver his full quota of gold dust by Columbus’ deadline, soldiers would cut off the man’s hands and tie them around his neck to send a message. Slavery was so intolerable for these sweet, gentle island people that at one point, 100 of them committed mass suicide.
Catholic law forbade the enslavement of Christians, but Columbus solved this problem. He simply refused to baptize the native people of Hispaniola. On his second trip to the New World, Columbus brought cannons and attack dogs. If a native resisted slavery, he would cut off a nose or an ear. If slaves tried to escape, Columbus had them burned alive. Other times, he sent attack dogs to hunt them down, and the dogs would tear off the arms and legs of the screaming natives while they were still alive. If the Spaniards ran short of meat to feed the dogs, Arawak babies were killed for dog food.
Columbus’ acts of cruelty were so unspeakable and so legendary - even in his own day - that Governor Francisco De Bobadilla arrested Columbus and his two brothers, slapped them into chains, and shipped them off to Spain to answer for their crimes against the Arawaks. But the King and Queen of Spain, their treasury filling up with gold, pardoned Columbus and let him go free. One of Columbus’ men, Bartolome De Las Casas, was so mortified by Columbus’ brutal atrocities against the native peoples, that he quit working for Columbus and became a Catholic priest.
He described how the Spaniards under Columbus’ command cut off the legs of children who ran from them, to test the sharpness of their blades. According to De Las Casas, the men made bets as to who, with one sweep of his sword, could cut a person in half. He says that Columbus’ men poured people full of boiling soap. In a single day, De Las Casas was an eye witness as the Spanish soldiers dismembered, beheaded, or raped 3000 native people. “Such inhumanities and barbarisms were committed in my sight as no age can parallel,” De Las Casas wrote. “My eyes have seen these acts so foreign to human nature that now I tremble as I write.” De Las Casas spent the rest of his life trying to protect the helpless native people. But after a while, there were no more natives to protect.
Experts generally agree that before 1492, the population on the island of Hispaniola probably numbered above 3 million. Within 20 years of Spanish arrival, it was reduced to only 60,000. Within 50 years, not a single original native inhabitant could be found. In 1516, Spanish historian Peter Martyr wrote: “... a ship without compass, chart, or guide, but only following the trail of dead Indians who had been thrown from the ships could find its way from the Bahamas to Hispaniola.” Christopher Columbus derived most of his income from slavery, De Las Casas noted. In fact, Columbus was the first slave trader in the Americas. As the native slaves died off, they were replaced with black slaves. Columbus’ son became the first African slave trader in 1505.
Are you surprised you never learned about any of this in school? I am too. Why do we have this extraordinary gap in our American ethos? Columbus himself kept detailed diaries, as did some of his men including De Las Casas and Michele de Cuneo. (If you don’t believe me, just Google the words Columbus, sex slave, and gold mine.) What about the time of the American Revolution? Was that when America was great?
Was it in the 1700’s when the the country was full of fighting? The founding fathers who stated that all men are equal, were slave owners. They were all represented in a democracy (actually a republic) by voting, unless you were black, a slave, poor, or a woman. Sounds pretty equal to me. HMMM.
Maybe it was the 1800s when the nation was at war with itself in the bloody, so called, civil war. Family members killing family members, religions fighting among themselves with people claiming to be spiritual brothers killing each other. Though stating that they believed God was the most high, they showed they didn’t believe that, by killing their spiritual brothers because a man told them to. (Corrupt order followers) Baptist leaders and others stating that blacks didn’t have souls and weren’t worth being counted as those human equals that the hypocritical founding fathers spoke about.
Maybe it was in the 1830’s when the US Government after breaking treaty after treaty and proving themselves as untrustworthy under Andrew Jackson removed Indian nations from their lands by way of the trail of tears where hundreds died. Maybe when carpet baggers and corrupt share croppers took advantage of US citizens. Maybe when the US factory workers without unions were treated so inhumanely that hundreds died and most owed their souls to the company store. Sounds a bit like that slavery thing that all that killing was about. Just in the North this time.
Well, maybe the early 1900s where the US once again destroyed families through WW1. Entering that war on another lie about the Lusitania. 1914 was touted as the year the world went mad and the US became a big part of that.
Maybe it was World War II when the US president knowing there was a Japanese threat, set up hundreds of young men in Hawaii as sitting ducks and of course many of them lost their lives when Pearl Harbor was attacked.
Or maybe it was in 1942 when the US government took away it’s own citizens so called rights and sent 110,000 law biding Japanese Americans into interment camps simply because their parents were born in the wrong country.
Possibly it was in the 60’s when many American citizens didn’t agree with the war in Vietnam and were imprisoned. And riots broke out in many places across the US in protest. After the war was a proven failure and all the lives were lost and many were left crippled for life and nothing was corrected in that part of the world, the US government said, "OOPS, sorry bout that." It was just another few thousand soldiers that lost their lives for nothing, all because a man told them to go to war.
The above mentioned wars show that US military, Veterans, and active never fought for freedom of the general populace. They fought for the bankers and power brokers. That’s it. Smedly Butler was right. War is a racket.
Results of the Vietnam War, although the Americans left Vietnam in 1973, they continued to support the South Vietnamese army - the ARVN - with financial and military aid. In April 1975 the South Vietnamese regime collapsed and Vietnam was united.
Other wars
More than half of the 2.6 million Americans dispatched to fight the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan struggle with physical or mental health problems stemming from their service, feel disconnected from civilian life and believe the government is failing to meet the needs of this generation’s veterans, according to a poll conducted by The Washington Post and the Kaiser Family Foundation.
The long conflicts, which have required many troops to deploy multiple times and operate under an almost constant threat of attack, have exacted a far more widespread emotional toll than previously recognized by most government studies and independent assessments: One in two say they know a fellow service member who has attempted or committed suicide, and more than 1 million suffer from relationship problems and experience outbursts of anger — two key indicators of post-traumatic stress.
AFTER THE WARS: This story is the first in a multi-part series examining the effects of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars on the 2.6 million American troops who served and fought.
The veterans are often frustrated with the services provided to them by the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Pentagon and other government agencies. Almost 60 percent say the VA is doing an “only fair” or “poor” job in addressing the problems faced by veterans, and half say the military is lagging in its efforts to help them transition to civilian life, which has been difficult for 50 percent of those who have left active service. Overall, nearly 1.5 million of those who served in the wars believe the needs of their fellow vets are not being met by the government. “When I raised my right hand and said, ‘I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States of America,’ when I gave them everything I could, I expect the same in return,” said Christopher Steavens, a former Army staff sergeant who was among 819 vets polled. He served in Iraq in 2003 and in Kuwait two years ago, where he was injured in a construction accident. Upon leaving the Army last summer, he filed a claim with the VA, seeking medical care and financial compensation. He has not yet received a response. “It’s ridiculous that I’ve been waiting seven months just to be examined by a doctor — absolutely ridiculous,” he said.
Ten years ago this Tuesday, the U.S. invaded Iraq, and by any count — and there have been many — the toll has been devastating. So far, about 4,400 U.S. troops and more than 100,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed, and the combined costs of the war come to an astounding $2 trillion, including future commitments like veteran care.
So where do we stand today? Stephen Hadley was the national security adviser under President George W. Bush from 2005 to 2009, and part of the White House team that helped sell the war to the public. (Young men from the US have been brainwashed to think they are doing something great by blindly following another mans orders to fight and kill without calling on their own thinking abilities and looking at previous results from wars around the world. Makes the conscientious objector look much smarter than previously viewed.)
The cost of getting [Iraq] back under control ... was too high in terms of dollars, in terms of lives of Americans [and] in terms of lives of Iraqis. Stephen Hadley, former national security adviser. I thought the Iraq war was over. Why is there still fighting? Well, actually last year was the deadliest since 2008. The number of dead reached its worst levels since the height of the Iraq war, when sectarian fighting between the country's Shiite majority and its Sunni minority pushed it to the brink of civil war. Those tensions continue to be fueled by widespread discontent among the Sunnis, who say they are marginalized by the Shiite-led government and unfairly targeted by heavy-handed security tactics.
And today? UPDATE, Monday, June 16, 6:56 p.m EDT: President Obama sent a letter to Congress late Monday informing the body that, under the War Powers Resolution, he would be sending up to 275 US troops to Iraq to protect the US embassy in Baghdad. In a statement to the press, the White House said that the Iraqi government had consented to the troop deployment. "This force is deploying for the purpose of protecting US citizens and property, if necessary, and is equipped for combat," Obama's letter says. "This force will remain in Iraq until the security situation becomes such that it is no longer needed.
Maybe it’s actually in the time we live in where the US is involved in wars and skirmishes around the world that cost many lives and billions of tax payer dollars the US doesn’t have. At a time when most of the citizens of the US don’t agree with the policies of the president that they elected. Many Politicians have been proven corrupt with a cost many US lives and sent the US people into debt they will never get out of.
In short, I can’t seem to find an era when America was or is so great. Freedom and the so called American dream can also be had in many countries besides the US. But if you are looking for excessive spending on military and space probing or incarceration records, the US is your country.
Here are a few more stats:
Hard To Believe Facts About 'Wealthy America' And 'Poor America' delivering a series of ringing slaps to make the reality sink in:
Other facts about the US:
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