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People don't really understand the power of intellectuals and their ideas. And that is because radical, new ideas act slowly, usually over a generation or two. People begin to accept a new paradigm without understanding where it came from because it rises so slowly to the surface of political or cultural debate.

Americans scoff at the idea that Trotsky is the seminal influence over neoconservatism because they do not understand that all movements that appear spontaneous sprout from an intellectual seed.

There is a fascinating book on the political, philosophical, literary and artistic history of the western world from the Renaissance until today that proves this point over and over. It is well worth reading "From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life 1500 to the Present" by Jacques Barzun

These disclosures are incomplete, and leave out some gory details - such as when the CIA sponsored a riot, then got the chief of police to fire on the protesters, all to create the impression that Iran was falling into chaos. The CIA helped design the impression of imminent Communist takeover, in order to justify their actions. They manipulated Eisenhower and Truman, as much as they did the Iranians. All the Shah's Men is a great book on the subject.

What is really sad is, prior to the coup, the US was widely adored in Iran as a non-colonial western power. All that Mosaddegh was asking for was the same partnership that the US had created with Aramco in Saudi Arabia: a 50/50 split of profits between the state and its western concessionaires. If the US had been consistent in applying its values, Iran could easily be an ally today.

As it stands, the only winners to emerge from the CIA's machinations have been the national security apparatus, and the muslim fanatics - in the long term, even the oil industry would have been better off sharing with Iran, rather than pillaging and being thrown out.

Well, you could go back even farther to the Anglo-Soviet invasion during WWII. After that, there was the British oil interests and a daring Kermit Roosevelt who displaced Mossadeq. Check out "All the Shah's men," if really interested in the background to the current US-Iranian relations.

> China, despite existing as a unified country 4,000 years longer than the US, conspicuously does not have such a history of invading and subjugating the inhabitants of far-flung lands.

This is false. The country we now know as China is the product of millennia of aggressive war, sometimes among several mutually hostile Sinic states, sometimes between a dominant Sinic state and an outside, "barbarian" group.

Whether it's the early days of the Shang dynasty, when the territory of modern China was carved up among a large number of cultures whose remains are meaningful only to archaeologists; or the final dynasty, which expanded China's territory to boundaries never reached before or since; China has historically been an imperialist power.

I'm getting my information from:

China: A History: From Neolithic Cultures through the Great Qing Empire (10,000 BCE - 1799 CE) (Harold M. Tanner)

Amazon

books.google

China: Its History and Culture (W. Scott Morton)

Amazon

books.google

Of course, Wikipedia is helpful too. Maps tell a great deal.

> An empire is where the occupying force absorbs the country it has invaded,

Such a definition ignores over a century of real-life experience with and writing and theorizing about neo-colonialism.

For Americans, neo-colonialism is best illustrated by the Philippines. We supposedly gave the Philippines "independence" after WWII.

The reality is that we installed and supported a puppet dictator in the Philippines, giving him a cut of money for the trouble of ruling the country. Meanwhile, despite "independence" the US controlled the Filipino economy directly and indirectly pulled the strings in the country.

The US was a relative late-comer to neo-colonialism. The British Empire and others were using neo-colonial tactics long before WWII.

FWIW, the book Confessions of an Economic Hit Man may be an enlightened read for you...

>However, the list posted in the link claims that "the U.S. bears responsibility ... for those resulting from the activities of the Khmer Rouge – a total of about 2.5 million people." This is a wild reach. 

>There's no need to include second order effects from third parties, when the US itself has so much blood on its hands from direct action. Including those 2.5 million really threatens the credibility of the whole list. 

It's worth distinguishing which casualties were directly caused by US Military vs. other parties.

However, I think we should still count these casualties as US-inflicted when they would not have otherwise occurred if the US had not intervened in the first place.

This is even more true when the US enabled the perpetrator's violence via military, financial, or political support. 


Did US imperialists (i.e. those running the war) intend that the Khmer Rouge should kill approximately 25% of the Cambodian population?

Probably not.

But, would the Khmer Rouge even have emerged from obscurity to commit these crimes had the US not invaded Vietnam and bombed Cambodia?

I highly doubt it.


Did the US support the Khmer Rouge in anyway that enabled their atrocities?

I think there is a case to be made that it did.


The Long Secret Alliance: Uncle Sam and Pol Pot
https://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/pol/pilgerpolpotnus.pdf


Nixon and the Cambodian Genocide
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/04/khmer-rouge-cambodian-genocide-united-states/


Who Supported the Khmer Rouge?
https://www.counterpunch.org/2014/10/16/who-supported-the-khmer-rouge/


Michael Haas, Cambodia, Pol Pot, and the United States: the Faustian pact, New York: Praeger, 1991.
https://www.amazon.com/Cambodia-Pol-Pot-United-States/dp/0275940055


Michael Haas, Genocide by proxy: Cambodian pawn on a superpower chessboard, New York: Praeger, 1991.
https://www.amazon.com/Genocide-Proxy-Cambodian-Superpower-Chessboard/dp/0275938557/

It has nothing to do with Britain/"western imperialism". (And if it did, what kind of way is that to behave? We're not happy with the imperialists, so we're taking it out on our Jewish neighbors? That seems to be infantilizing Muslims.)

The Jews were relatively okay under Muslim rule but the tolerance varied from time to time. There have been pogroms all throughout the centuries, but, for the most part, they were better off under Muslim rule than in Europe, except for a brief time after the Enlightenment and after Napoleon. The Enlightenment didn't last too long, and then anti-semitism took a new turn: to the racial. It progressed from "You can't live among us as Jews" to "You can't live among us" to "You can't live."

Muslim anti-Semitism had nothing to do with the British or the west. It was always there, but it was based more on pity and contempt because of religion than on "race-hatred", which was a European thing.

A good book about this is In Ishmael's House: A History of Jews in Muslim Lands, by Martin Gilbert.

> Washington will never approve q coup like this not in a million years.

That's absurd. The US routinely supports coups and overthrows democratic gov'ts -- we've done it dozens of times since WWII. For a short/partial list, read the book Killing Hope by former US State Dept. historian William Blum.

The US gov't might prefer a democratic gov't, but that is only if that gov't does what the US wants it to. If not, the US destabilizes and replaces it -- it's that simple.

Do you want to know why we are in Afghanistan and are never planning on leaving? Here is the answer. Geopolitics.

http://www.amazon.com/Grand-Chessboard-American-Geostrategic-Imperatives/dp/0465027261

my sentiments precisely https://www.amazon.com/precinct-captains-guide-political-victory-ebook/dp/B01M4IG914/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1478469506&sr=1-1&keywords=precinct+captain%27s+guide+to+political+victory

Here is the mobile version of your link

Amazon link to the book he's referring to.

And might I suggest another book on the topic? This one is written by a former US State Dept. historian: Killing Hope: U.S. Military and C.I.A. Interventions Since World War II.

US economic warfare is well-documented. In another comment, I brought up the recent (1990s) US economic warfare on Iraq. Those brutal sanctions cost the lives of 1/2 million Iraqi children, with the US gov't diabolically saying that this was acceptable. And the entire basis for the sanctions were based on deliberate lies of the US gov't.

The article briefly mentions the US attack on Chile; that is surprisingly well documented now -- many books have been written on the topic.

As with many instances of US economic warfare and behind-the-scenes skulduggery, the facts do not come out until a couple of decades after the events.

But if you're wise, when you see these actions in country after country, decade after decade, any sane person is going to have a knee-jerk suspicion.

FWIW, on the general theme of US economic warfare and geo-political skulduggery, int'l banker and former NSA man John Perkins' famous book "Confessions of an Economic Hitman" is essential reading. (There are also copies of that book on audio and via BitTorrents.)