March 25
GUEST: Alex Lubin, Penn State professor of African American studies and former Director of the Center for American Studies and Research at the American University of Beirut, talks about his latest book, The Never Ending War on Terror.
Penn State African American Studies
The more we learn, the more skeptical we become. That may be true for many belief system, but when it comes to US foreign policy, one's perceptions can change dramatically.
I had been drafted in 1967, at the height of the Vietnam War. Or was that during the "American War" as the conflict is referred to in Vietnam? All our our major media during that time were for the war, including The New York Times. Supposedly, we were being sent to stop the Communist expansion in Southeast Asia. But our government had lied about the Communist threat in the US during the McCarthy Era. I remember wondering if I was being lied to again.
My year at a military base in Korea changed my outlook. We used to call the 40 year old Korean man who washed our cloths "boy" rather than by his actual name. We treated the Korean women worse. Slowly, I learned what my place was in an occupied country. I was simply the replacement for the Japanese soldiers who had occupied Korea for decades. The whole town was set up that way. We called the prostitutes by the same name that the Japanese had called them. The contracts were the same too, whether is was a one nights stand or for the month.
The US occupation of the Third World is mostly all like this. We aren't there for anyone's freedom, and most of the countries don't even have a working democracy. In fact, democracy was mostly thwarted in South Korea by the CIA, backed up by the US military.
Professor Lubin can take us much further in understanding the role of the US military machine in the rest of the world. Reading the facts about colonialism frees one's mind to consider the full weight of our country's empire building. I was especially interested in the links between Black Lives Matter and Western colonization in Africa.
To understand our role in this oppression, we must open our minds to how the world really works. The truth will set us free from the propaganda of empire.
