General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: We are the "evil empire" we warned everybody about [View all]antigone382
(3,682 posts)...and given current statistics on a variety of indicators of health and well-being, we STILL are nowhere near making right our oppression of indigenous people in this country. It may vary a bit from the strict definitions of international law, but to my mind, the failure to meaningfully accept responsibility for prior genocide, and moreover to adequately redress its effect on present-day members of that population, is to perpetuate that genocide.
In all honesty, where I think this OP wanders into error is that it limits criticism to the U.S., rather than to the Western/Developed World at large. Granted at this point the most powerful actor is the United States, but European imperialism is the source of much of the ideology and practice of international economic policy, which effectively facilitates the destruction of many cultures and the ecosystems on which they depend, around the world. The fact is that global economic powerbrokers, almost all of them Western or having adopted Western practices, have complete economic and military hegemony over the rest of the world, with results that are increasingly only describable in genocidal terms.
I don't have time to get into the whole history of colonialism and the various forms of neocolonialism that have arisen over time, but if you are unfamiliar with it (and I don't assume that you are) I would suggest case studies of some former colonies. Either the film or the book "King Leopold's Ghost," which focuses on the Congo, is a good place to start. I would suggest a thorough study of the history and effects of the Bretton Woods institutions (the IMF, World Bank, and what became the WTO). I would suggest a review of structural adjustment programs, bilateral trade agreements, and the legacy of debt in the third world.
Lastly, in weighing whether the U.S. is guilty of genocide, consider the effects that climate change will undoubtedly have on billions of ethnic groups in the regions that will be hardest hit. You may argue that climate change doesn't count, since there is no direct intention to harm these people. At the same time, we are abundantly aware that populations are going to be displaced. We have abundant evidence that many of the poorest and most marginalized members of global society will suffer and die, and indeed many already are (the Arab Spring, the related conflict in Syria, and the conflict in Darfur all have strong links to ecological disruptions brought about by climate change).
Yet we choose to privilege our economic engines, our right to disproportionate resource use and waste generation to maintain our "standard of living" over the lives of these billions of people. To say that we are not choosing to murder them is analogous to saying that a drone operator does not do the killing when he or she pushes the button that drops bombs on strangers halfway around the world. Indirect violence is every bit as real as direct violence.