German Politician Oskar Lafontaine: “F**K US Imperialism”

…by Jonas E. Alexis

German politician Oskar Lafontaine created a storm of controversy in 2015 when he used the F-word to denounce US imperialism. As a politician, he seemed to have realized that “democracy” and “freedom” are buzz words the empire use to destabilize countries they do not like. In fact, 2015 was “the age” of people like Victoria Nuland, who herself said very explicitly, “Fuck the EU.”

Lafontaine responded by saying:

“The US ‘Defense’ secretary, i.e., war minister is in Berlin.  He called on Europe to counter Russian ‘aggression’.  But in fact, it is US aggression which Europeans should be opposing.

“The Grandmaster of US diplomacy, George Kennan described the eastward expansion of NATO as the biggest US foreign policy mistake since WW2, because it will lead to a new cold war.

“The US diplomat Victoria Nuland said we have spent $5 billion to destabilize the Ukraine. They stoke the flames ever higher, and Europe pays for it with lower trade and lost jobs.

“Nuland says ‘Fuck the EU’. We need an EU foreign policy that stops warmongering US imperialism. Fuck US imperialism!”

Lafontaine, of course, was not against the United States as a country. Nor was he against decent Americans, who can be good, bad and indifferent. He was against US imperialism, which we all know has given us perpetual wars in the Middle East and conflicts virtually across the globe. This is just plain history. And if you are not aware of some of the figures, consider this.

The estimate of lives lost in the war in Iraq alone is between 100,000 to 600,000, including thousands of civilians. In 2003, at least 12,000 civilians lost their lives.[1] The first three years of the war produced between 104,000 and 223,000 civilian deaths.

When it was over, 2.3 million Iraqis had been forced to flee their homes and towns; by 2008, another 2.7 million Iraqis were displaced, and nearly half a million civilians ended up losing their lives.[2] Thousands upon thousands of other people went missing by 2008.[3] This is out of a total Iraqi population of about 30 million people![4]

When the war was over, sectarian violence and car bombings were rampant—almost every day. When Mark Kukis went to Iraq to report on what happened, he said he heard two to five car bombs every day.[5] The Iraq war, says Kukis, shook the entire nation and created havoc even by 2006.[6] Factions of society that once coexisted were dismantled.

In a nutshell, Iraq was in exponential decay. Buildings and farmlands were destroyed.[7] And the fringe benefits of the war? Between 300,000 and 360,000 veterans returned home with brain injuries,[8] some of which went untreated.[9]

In 2005, more than 6,000 suicides took place among our soldiers serving in Iraq.[10] By 2012, more soldiers committed suicide than died in combat,[11] making it the year with the highest suicide rate since 2001.[12]

In addition, the war in Iraq has sent the American taxpayers a bill of $6 trillion,[13] combined with a debt ceiling keeps rising every six months or so.[14] The U.S. national debt had reached $16 trillion by the end of 2012.[15]

Because of this wrecked economy, suicides in America’s civilian population have increased at an alarming rate as well.[16] And if you are a student trying to get an education to get out of this economic sinkhole, the government is going to profit from your student loan. It was reported that the government made a profit of $51 billion in 2013 off student loans.[17]

Of course, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that this contributes to the economic growth. Shane Gill, a thirty-three-year-old high school teacher in New York, found himself in an economic matrix where escape is not an option.

Gill owes the federal government nearly $45,000, and his parents $40,000. Gill does not have a car, does not own a home, and is not married precisely because he cannot afford the luxury. He laments,

“There’s this anxiety: what if I decided I wanted to get married or have children? I don’t know how I would. And that adds to the sense of precariousness. There’s a persistent, buzzing kind of toothache around it.”[18]

Since apparently we need to police just about every country in the Middle East, we need to assign billions of dollars for defense. Therefore, by the end of 2012, the US government signed a defense spending bill for 2013 that will cost $633 billion.[19]

Homelessness among Iraq and Afghanistan veterans has more than doubled over the past two years, and by the fall of 2012, it was reported that at least “26,531 were living on the streets, at risk of losing their homes, staying in temporary housing or receiving federal vouchers to pay rent.”

In addition, about 307,000 soldiers want to leave the military.[20] About 360,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans are also dealing with injuries, many of them severe.[21]

In less than two years of the war in Syria, more than 60,000 people lost their lives.[22] At the end of December 2012, refugees in Afghanistan were the ones to suffer from the terrible cold weather with no place to go.[23] It is the same thing with the Syrian refugees.[24]

By January 2013, it was reported that around half-million Syrians were refugees.[25] By the middle of the same month, a bomb blasted the campus of Aleppo University, which was under the control of the government. It was estimated that eighty-two people were killed and one hundred and ninety-two wounded.[26]

Now, in “the Jewish Century,”[27] this is essentially called “The Better Angels of Our Nature”![28] You may not like the kind of language that Lafontaine used, but the US imperialism, which is essentially diabolical and inexorably Talmudic, is screwing countries around the world.

• [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War.
• [2] Mark Kukis, Voices from Iraq: A People’s History, 2003-2009 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), xvii.
• [3] Ibid.
• [4] Ibid.
• [5] Ibid., xiii.
• [6] Ibid., xiv.
• [7] Ibid.
• [8] Gregg Zoroya, “360,000 Veterans May Have Brain Injuries,” USA Today, March 5, 3009; Denise Grady, “Brain Injuries Are Seen in New Scans of Veterans,” NY Times, June 1, 2011; “Mental Health Injuries Scar 300,000 U.S. Troops,” MSNBC, April 17, 2008.
• [9] Lizette Alvarez, “War Veterans’ Concussions Are Often Overlooked,” NY Times, August 25, 2008.
• [10] Armen Keteyian, “VA Hid Suicide Risk, Internal Emails Show,” CBC News, July 30, 2010.
• [11] Allison Churchill, “The Military Is Losing More Troops to Suicide than Combat,” Business Insider, October 25, 2012; Helen Pow, “More U.S. Troops Committing Suicide Than Being Killed Fighting in Afghanistan in ‘Tough Year’ for Armed Services,” Daily Mail, October 24, 2012.
• [12] Kelley Vlahos, “Surviving War, Falling to Suicide,” American Conservative, January 1, 2012; for other similar stories, see also James Dao and Andrew W. Lehren, “Baffling Rise in Suicides Plagues the U.S. Military,” NY Times, May 15, 2013.
• [13] Ernesto Londono, “Study: Iraq, Afghan war costs to top $4 trillion,” Washington Post, March 28, 2013; Bob Dreyfuss, The $6 Trillion Wars,” The Nation, March 29, 2013; “Iraq War Cost U.S. More Than $2 Trillion, Could Grow to $6 Trillion, Says Watson Institute Study,” Huffington Post, May 14, 2013; Mark Thompson, “The $5 Trillion War on Terror,” Time, June 29, 2011; “Iraq war cost: $6 trillion. What else could have been done?,” LA Times, March 18, 2013.
• [14] See for example “A threat to Cost Taxpayers Money,” The Economist, April 12, 20111; Kathleen Hennessey, “Obama Tries to Shoot Down GOP Talk of Debt-Limit Threat,” L.A. Times, December 5, 2012; Mary Williams Walsh, “Debt Ceiling Rises Again as Threat for the U.S.,” NY Times, December 21, 2012; Moran Zhang, “U.S. Economy 2013: If ‘Fiscal Cliff’ is Avoided, What About the Debt Ceiling?,” International Business Times, December 21, 2012.
• [15] Simon Rogers, “U.S. Debt: How Big Is It and Who Owns It?,” Guardian, October 2, 2012.
• [16] Deborah Kotz, “Suicides Surge During Tough Economic Times,” Boston Globe, April 14, 2011.
• [17] “Obama Student Loan Policy Reaping $51 Billion Profit,” Huffington Post, May 14, 2013.
• [18] Annie Lowrey, “Student Debt Slows Growth as Young Spend Less,” NY Times, May 10, 2013.
• [19] See for example David Alexander, “House Approves Bill Authorizing $633 Billion in Defense Spending,” Chicago Tribune, December 20, 2012; Dave Boyer, “Obama Signs Defense Measure he Once Vowed to Veto,” Washington Time, January 3, 2013.
• [20] Gregg Zoroya, “Homeless, At-Risk Veterans Double,” USA Today, December 27, 2012.
• [21] Kelley Vlahos, “surviving War, Falling to Suicide,” American Conservative, January 1, 2013.
• [22] See for example Anne Barnard, “Syrians Killed in Gas Line; U.N. Raises War’s Casualty Figures,” NY Times, January 2, 2013; Matthew Weaver, “Syria Conflict: U.N. Says 60,000 Dead-Wednesday 2 January 2013,” Guardian, January 2, 2013.
• [23] Rod Nordland, “Winter’s Deadly Bite Returns to Refugee Camps of Kabul,” NY Times, December 29, 2012.
• [24] Rana F. Sweis, “Syrian Refugees Strain Resources in Jordan,” NY Times, January 2, 2013; Liam Stack, “Winter Brings Misery to Syria Refugees,” NY Times, January 10, 2013; Jodi Rudoren, “A Desert Cold and Wet Multiplies the Misery of Syrian Refugees,” NY Times, January 12, 2013.
• [25] “UN Body: Around Half-Million Syrians Now Refugees,” Seattle Times, January 2, 2013.
• [26] Hwaida Saad and Rick Gladstone, “Dozens Killed as Explosions Hit Syrian University,” NY Times, January 15, 2013.
• [27] Yuri Slezkine, The Jewish Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004).
• [28] Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (New York: Penguin Books, 2012).

Jonas E. Alexis, Senior Editor

Jonas E. Alexis has degrees in mathematics and philosophy. He studied education at the graduate level. His main interests include U.S. foreign policy, the history of the Israel/Palestine conflict, and the history of ideas. He is the author of the book, Kevin MacDonald’s Metaphysical Failure: A Philosophical, Historical, and Moral Critique of Evolutionary Psychology, Sociobiology, and Identity Politics. He teaches mathematics in South Korea.

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