The U.S. is a War Corporation

The US has essentially been at war the entirety of its existence.

There is extensive documentation and history about this. For instance, War History Online is proud that the U.S. has only had 17 years of peace since its “birth.” The Smithsonian Magazine gathered information to visualize that the U.S. has been at war for 93.5% of the years 1775 to 2018.

I would argue that it’s not 17 years or 93.5%, but 100% and every single year that the U.S. Empire has existed it has been at war. 

Remember how I often say that oppressors try to erase history so that they can repeat it.

When you examine Wikipedia’s “List of wars involving the United States” page, it shows a comprehensive list of wars the U.S. has been in and how they define war. Someone (Arthur Charpentier) took this information and visualized it through code.

[visualization from this article]

I want to bring it back to the fact that the United States Empire has actually been at war the entire time. For example, the American-Algerian war ended in 1795 and the Quasi-War began in 1798. There were supposedly 3 years of peace between those two wars. But we know for a fact that during those 3 years, the U.S. Empire was committing active genocide against Indigenous people back then and still are today. 

Another example. Korea is currently at war directly because of the U.S. dividing up Korea with a permanent ceasefire, which is technically still war, and I’m certain that the U.S. considers that peace. So even though the War on Korea supposedly ended in 1953 and the War on Vietnam began in 1955, the U.S. Empire was definitely still at war during those 2 years between as it is still involved in the War through the armistice. 

I could go through every instance in that Wikipedia list, and for every supposed gap of “peace” I could illustrate that was not the case. The U.S. has been at war against Black people within its borders since its inception and it is ongoing. That alone does not leave any years of “peace.”

Caitlin Johnstone put it well in the article, “The US Empire Isn’t A Government That Runs Nonstop Wars, It’s A Nonstop War That Runs A Government.” The U.S. exists by, for, and because of capitalist colonialism. And Empire has found that what is most “profitable” is war. The U.S. is a war corporation. 

The US’s idea of peace is everyone else’s war.  

And we are going to take Empire down.