Happy New Year
As we nurse our national hangover, let’s put the tsunami into proper perspective. Current estimates have 150,000 dead, but God is a piker compared to America’s own personal savior George W. Bush, who has killed the following people for no good reason:
20,000 Afghan civilians as per CNN
20,000 Taliban government troops as per numerous European sources
30,000 Iraqi civilians (invasion phase, as per Tommy Franks)
30,000 Iraqi government troops (invasion phase, as per Tommy Franks)
100,000 Iraqi civilians as per Lancet medical journal
200,000 total murdered by George W. Bush
These are conservative figures, and they grow by the day. But who knows? Maybe the tsunami will catch up!
Allied Military Government of Occupied Territories
AMGOT was what they called it during World War II–harsh military occupation as it was applied to Germany, Italy and Japan and, for a few months after D-Day 1944, liberated France. One of the great untold stories of World War II was the attempt by the US Army’s Civil Affairs division to deny self-rule to France, setting the stage for postwar anti-Americanism. I wrote my college honors thesis on plans to occupy France after World War II and, every now and then, people email me to request a copy. Until now I was unable to rescue the 1991 Word file it was created in. But that’s changed, and I will soon be posting information here so that you can read the story of AMGOT for yourself.
The story is particularly relevant today, since Civil Affairs personnel are enacting most of the same exact policies and tactics in occupied Afghanistan and Iraq. It’s a messy tale of what happens when relatively well-meaning Americans intersect with societies with different ways of doing things and of looking at the world. Many of the mistakes we made while liberating France and other nations after World War II are being made today: cultural insensitivity, backing unpopular local politicians while snubbing those with widespread backing, dunning occupied countries for the cost of their own liberation, even denying them the trappings of true sovereignty.
Watch this space for my AMGOT thesis from 1991, and please be kind–I’ve had 14 years to learn to write better.
