by Eric Zuesse for the Saker blog
The U.S. Government certainly leads the world in invasions and coups.
In recent years, it has invaded and occupied — either by military assault or by coup, but in either case followed by installing (or trying to install) a new regime there — a number of countries, especially Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Ukraine, and Yemen.
U.S. propaganda says that its invasions and military occupations (and it denies its coups) are to benefit the people in the invaded and militarily occupied countries, or to bring them ‘democracy’, and are not done merely to benefit the people who control the U.S. Government (which itself is not a democracy, and even the neoconservative — pro-invasion or “imperialistic” — American magazine The Atlantic has finally acknowledged this fact, even though it contradicts their continuing neoconservatism).
Polling and other evidences within the invaded/occupied countries shows the opposite of the U.S. claim: America’s invasions/occupations (after World War II, and especially after 2000) destroy those countries, not help them.
The most authoritative such study that has yet been done on this matter was recently released, and its findings regarding this matter will here be presented, and then supplemented with other relevant data so as to provide a fuller picture.
The U.N./Gallup surveys of the happiness/misery of the residents in 155 countries, as reported in 2017, were physically in-person interviews in almost all countries, but there was at least one exception, as they explained: “In Libya, telephone survey methodology has been used since 2015 owing to the country’s high rate of mobile phone coverage and ongoing instability which has made it too dangerous to use face-to-face interviewers.” That’s a highly euphemistic way of saying, actually: Libya was too dangerous, and perhaps too miserable, for opinions to be sampled by the ordinary methodology, the scientifically sound methodology, which is in-person interviews. It’s a way of saying this without even mentioning the invasion and war there — as if those things don’t even count. Therefore, the finding that Gallup reported about Libya is presumably being included in Gallup’s otherwise excellent report purely for Western propaganda purposes — they know that it’s not an actual scientific finding about Libya, not a finding that can reasonably be compared to the survey-findings in the other countries. As a result, Libya, which might have been the most miserable of all countries after the U.S.-UK-France-Canada invasion, scored in the top half of all countries, #68, 5.525. But, all of the other countries that the U.S. has recently invaded (the nations that are boldfaced below) scored at or below #132, 4.096 — Ukraine’s score — as is shown here below from that U.N. report:
Following are the happiness-scores of the bottom 24 out of the 155 happiness/misery-rated countries. (Iraq, which the U.S. had destroyed in 2003, perhaps is now recovering, and it scored as #117, with a score of 4.497; but, here only the bottom 24, the most-miserable of all of the 155 countries, are shown.) Here they are:
——
132 Ukraine 4.096
133 Uganda 4.081
134 Burkina Faso 4.032
135 Niger 4.028
136 Malawi 3.970
137 Chad 3.936
138 Zimbabwe 3.875
139 Lesotho 3.808
140 Angola 3.795
141 Afghanistan 3.794
142 Botswana 3.766
143 Benin 3.657
144 Madagascar 3.644
145 Haiti 3.603
146 Yemen 3.593
147 South Sudan 3.591
148 Liberia 3.533
149 Guinea 3.507
150 Togo 3.495
151 Rwanda 3.471
152 Syria 3.462
153 Tanzania 3.349
154 Burundi 2.905
155 Central African Republic 2.693
——
Ukraine is (other than #117 Iraq) the least-miserable of the recently invaded countries, and perhaps the reason for this is that Ukraine was taken over by means of a coup, instead of by means of an outright and direct military invasion.
(You can see this coup happening, here. The way that U.S. President Barack Obama set it up is documented here. You can hear there his agent instructing the U.S. Ambassador in Ukraine whom to place in charge of Ukraine’s Government once the coup will have been culminated (which happened 22 days later, and that person did get the leadership-position). It’s the full conversation. And here, you will see the phone-conversation in which top EU officials were shocked to find that it had been a coup instead of what Obama pretended, a ‘revolution’.) (These evidences are some of the reasons why the head of the ‘private CIA’ firm Stratfor called it “the most blatant coup in history.”)
The U.N. happiness surveys have been taken in Ukraine not only after the coup, which occurred in February 2014, but before it, in 2013. At https://countryeconomy.com/ you can see the happiness/misery scores shown by Ukrainians during the years 2013, 2015, 2016, and 2017 (there was no survey in Ukraine during 2014, perhaps because of the rampant violence at that time.) In 2013, Ukraine’s happiness score was 5.057, but that steadily declined down to the 2017 score of 4.096, which placed Ukraine within the bottom 24 countries, all of which either were extremely poor, or at war, or both. You can also see there Ukraine’s resulting “World Happiness Index” rank for each one of those four years, 2013, before the coup, and then 2015-2017, after the coup. As you see there, Ukraine, which was #132 in 2017, had been #87 in 2013 before the coup. So: within just three years after the coup, it declined 45 places in the global rankings.
Some people might retort against this by saying that “happiness” is meaningless or unimportant and only physical welfare is ‘objective’,” but even on the most crudely physical measures, Ukraine has been enormously harmed by the U.S. coup. In 2013, Ukraine’s average annual household income was $2,601.40, and then it fell off a cliff and became $1,109.63 by 2015 and has stabilized at around that level since. Also, in 2013, Ukraine’s GDP was $183.31 billion, and by 2015 that had become $91.03 billion and stabilized at that level. Furthermore, some figures aren’t any longer even reported by the post-coup Ukrainian regime. For example, whereas the number of unemployed was shown in Ukrainian statistics in 2013, it disappeared in 2016 and subsequently. More information about the decline in Ukraine’s economic rankings can be seen here. The U.S. regime has been toxic to the Ukrainian people, no matter how one looks at it. But happiness/misery is the real bottom-line.
Two researchers, Tom Coupe and Maxym Obrizan, published together two separate studies, both in leading economics journals, one article titled “The impact of war on happiness: The case of Ukraine”, and the other titled “Violence and political outcomes in Ukraine — Evidence from Sloviansk and Kramatorsk”. They reported, in “The Impact of war on happiness”:
The average level of happiness declined substantially in zones that experience war directly. …
This decline is comparable to the loss of happiness a relatively well-off person would experience if he/she were to become a poor person. …
Regions that are not directly affected by the war are basically as happy as they were before the war.
In other words: all of the increase in misery occurred only in the regions that have been “directly affected by the war.” The Ukrainians who reside outside those regions are “as happy as they were before the war.” They’re not happier than before the war; they haven’t been helped by the war; but, the misery — so intense for them that it has already lowered the happiness-ranking of the entire nation, from 87 down to 132 — just hasn’t bothered them, at all.
In “Violence and political outcomes in Ukraine” they reported:
We also find that property damage is associated with greater support for pro-Western parties, lower support for keeping Donbas in Ukraine and lower support for compromise as a way to stop the conflict.
In other words: Ukrainians who live close to the Ukraine-Donbass border; that is, who live inside Ukraine but close to Donbass and so are in the Ukrainian portion of the conflict-zone (not in Donbass, where the vast majority of the “property damage” is actually occurring), have “greater support for pro-Western parties” (i.e., for the Obama-installed regime), but “lower support for keeping Donbas in Ukraine.” Although they endorse the overthrow that had been done of the pre-coup government (because they receive ‘news’media only from the post-coup regime, in the Ukrainian language), they want to get on with their lives without the war that’s since been causing them “property damage.” (U.S. propaganda notes that “the separatist-controlled parts of Lugansk and Donetsk oblasts ([the two Donbass] provinces) only have access to Russian TV channels” but avoids noting that the Ukrainian regime’s blocking of Russian-language media on the other side of that border — inside Ukraine — exists and is even more severe.) Apparently, Ukrainians near the border just want the war to end — no “compromise” — no negotiations, no Minsk process; they want their Government to simply quit trying to conquer Donbass, no negotiations about it, at all. And they’re ignored.
Right now in Ukraine, the central political controversy is between the U.S.-puppet President of Ukraine, who promises to conquer both of the two breakaway provinces, Donbass and also Crimea — but who hasn’t yet been able to do it — versus Ukraine’s political parties, in western and northern Ukraine, that derived from the organizations which had supported Hitler against Stalin in World War II and who still crave to kill Russian-speakers. Those passionately racist-fascist, anti-Russian, ideologically nazi, political organizations, are determined to actually carry out those additional invasions, no matter what the cost. However, according to this finding by Coupe and Obrizon, the Ukrainians who are suffering the “property damage” and whose personal scores on happiness have thus become so abysmally low as to have dragged the whole Ukrainian nation down to a 132nd ranking, are opposed to that nazi position, and they just want the war to end. And they’re ignored.
Where, then, is the support for the war to be found (except amongst the U.S. Congress and President and the U.S. arms-makers whose products have been selling so well to Ukraine’s government and which are now being used against the residents of Donbass)? That support is to be found as far away from the conflict-zone as possible: in Lvov and the rest of far-western and northern Ukraine, the areas that were cheering Hitler’s forces in WW II, and where the ‘news’ media today are owned by U.S.-supported oligarchs and their NGOs.
Ukraine was a severely divided nation even before the coup. In the last Ukrainian election in which the residents within the Ukraine that then included both Donbass and Crimea voted, which was the election in 2010, the candidate who won Ukraine’s Presidency and whom Obama ousted, had won 90% of the vote in Donbass, and 75% of the vote in Crimea. However, in far-western Ukraine, his opponent — whom Obama had been hoping that Ukrainians would elect as Ukraine’s President in 2014 after the coup — won 90% of the vote. That’s the candidate whose party (though not herself) now dominates (in conjunction with the two outright nazi parties) the Ukrainian Government. The man whom the residents in the rump Ukraine chose, was the more moderate candidate, and he is increasingly being challenged by the nazis. (Ukraine is the world’s only nation that has two nazi political parties. Both of them have been clients of the U.S. Government ever since the end of World War II, but only with Obama did they win control of the country — that is, of its non-breakaway regions.) For example, on 18 January 2018, the AP headlined “Ukraine passes bill to get occupied regions back from Russia” and reported that, “Ukraine’s parliament on Thursday passed a bill that aims to reintegrate the eastern territories currently controlled by Russia-backed separatists, and goes as far as to declare support for taking them back by military force if necessary.” Though that position is a minority position amongst the Ukrainian public, it authentically represents the position that Obama wanted. In fact, he even overrode his own Secretary of State, John Kerry, to push for it. That’s the position of Ukraine’s two nazi parties, which are trying to replace the existing President. (Trump hasn’t yet made clear whether he backs them, but he is expected to.)
So: that’s Ukraine — the happiest of the nations that the U.S. has recently invaded.
——
UPDATE: On March 15th, the “World Happiness Report 2018” was issued, and here are the bottom-scoring countries:
138. Ukraine (4.103)
139. Togo (3.999)
140. Guinea (3.964)
141. Lesotho (3.808)
142. Angola (3.795)
143. Madagascar (3.774)
144. Zimbabwe (3.692)
145. Afghanistan (3.632)
146. Botswana (3.590)
147. Malawi (3.587)
148. Haiti (3.582)
149. Liberia (3.495)
150. Syria (3.462)
151. Rwanda (3.408)
152. Yemen (3.355)
153. Tanzania (3.303)
154. South Sudan (3.254)
155. Central African Republic (3.083)
156. Burundi (2.905)
—————
Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.
You miss Haiti whose president was actually kidnapped by the US.
America has a very long history of invading Haiti. IIRC, the USMC General who wrote “War is a Racket” (https://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html) had campaigned in Haiti. (Confirmed as I found the link. Gen Butler is credited with the capture of a Ft. Riviere in Haiti in 1917) Also, the US has invaded and occupied at times the other half of the island known as the Dominican Republic.
The USA, under Woodrow Wilson, re-introduced slavery to Haiti, no doubt in revenge for the successful slave revolt of 1804. The do hate the n…..s forgeting their place.
Yakov Kedmi: Russia is time to answer, everything is already enough tolerating – English subtitles available
Excerpt from the program “Evening” of Vladimir Solovyov on March 15, 2018
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pI4_miOky0w
Azorka, you always add thee videos and state that English subtitles are available, when they are not.
For Everybody
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2. click on the symbol – a wheel – of taking on
3. click on the subtitle(1) – Russian automatically generated
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I lived in Ukraine in happier times before the coup. I mourn for what it has become.
When I hear anyone in the US trying to talk about it, all they do is parrot the latest blather from CNN. I correct them with the facts, but they never seem to change their minds. I just don’t think they have the capacity to understand how evil their (my) own government is.
But I remember when I myself used to believe all the lies, and it took a long time before I finally opened my eyes. Changing people’s minds isn’t a hopeless endeavor…but it is slow, and we’re up against entire industries full of clever people whose sole purpose is to lie for the empire…and time is running out.
Yet even if 90% of Americans were suddenly to “see the light”, would it reflect in any way on our national policy? History and bitter experience say no. In the years leading up to them, the average Joe in the USA was against WWI and WWII. Did it matter? No.
Most Americans I know today want out troops off of foreign soil. Most want us to focus on the many problems we have at home rather than what happens in Syria. Does that matter? No, it does not.
What matters is that the US is not a democracy at all. It’s an oligarchy, and until the oligarchs are removed from power, nothing else will matterl. So the question is, how can they be removed, if not through electoral power? Over time, I think the empire will implode all on its own for a variety of reasons, but controlling that demolition is a risky business and may take decades more time. An armed revolt, however unlikely as it may seem now, may indeed change the regime, but that doesn’t mean the replacement would be any better. A huge loss in a war might do it, but that is doubtful (see Vietnam). Only if such a war was prosecuted on US soil, then perhaps…but that is highly unlikely outside of a nuclear exchange.
No, the best way to reduce the danger for all concerned and have any hope at a reasonably satisfactory outcome is to reduce the size of the empire itself. It has become too large and too removed from the will of the people. It should be broken up, either via the war-tested (and failed) ,means of secession or via a Constitutional amendment, or via a coup. Only then can the Ukraines of the world be free to choose their own destinies.
American voters have elected the ‘anti-war candidate’ as the last two Presidents. Obama positioned himself as an antiwar candidate promising change and hope. Trump positioned himself as against the war in Iraq, against regime change wars in general, and against the USA in NATO.
This of course has not influenced policy, with the USA now seeming trying to start wars in Iran, Venezuela, Ukraine and Syria. The North Korean war has apparently been put on hold. But this week, it seems like the US/UK is desperately trying to escalate the conflict with Russia into WW3.
But that just shows that America is not a democracy and that the American people have no voice in decisions. It is illustrative that the political consultants have figured out that an antiwar message is a popular message to give to the American people and a way to win elections. If we actually make it to 2020, I wonder who the next ‘antiwar’ candidate will be?
What results when the US invades? Death, destruction, corruption, instability – plus enormous MIC profits.
My Lai,My Lai may the rice fields be free of blood shed 50 years to this day.
Childrens torn to bits by grenades,
wives ,daughters and mothers gang raped than their skin branded ‘C’ with bayonets than shot or disembowelled,
rice burned homes shattered even the fields poisoned to this day,
farmers tied with steel wires led away and disappeared,
where are the souls,
do they still scramble around looking for reasons to live,
the vietcong was’t there,
kelley served one day in prison before being pardoned by nixon.
why weren’t the souls of My lai served justice,
now the military court of CIA is in the hands of a lady torturer,
nothing new under the sun,
as the world turns,
genocide practiced in the rice fields of My lai is perfected in Syria,
dont cry for My lai.
One of my early political experiences in America was watching a Lt. Calley (who was the only officer prosecuted for the attrocity) being made into an American political hero by the pro-war right-wingers who thought it was just awful that he was actually prosecuted for this massacre.
BTW, when the reports of the massacre started to make their way up the chain of command, at division HQ there was a rising young officer named Colin Powell who did what the high command wanted and quashed any investigation. It wasn’t until a journalist named Seymour Hersh dug into the reports and published the truth that the attrocity became known.
The future career paths of Powell and Hersh say much about power in America and who succeeds in America. Colin Powell rose to the highest rank in the US military and became chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He was considered possible Presidential material for awhile. Seymour Hersh continues as a fine journalist, but he’s been progressively pushed off to smaller and smaller outlets. He certainly does not appear as a senior, experienced and respected journalist on outlets like CNN or the NY Times.
You forgot the IMF
The late Harold Pinter’s damning critique below captures the essence of the American Beast, especially how it is able to perpetrate its unending crimes through the greatest propaganda machine in history:
“The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It’s a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.”
Things that do not result from a USA invasion or coup.
— true Democracy
— Freedom
Dr. Paul Craig Roberts – Lies Can Lead To War
https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2018/03/15/lies-can-lead-war/
French Ruling Elite Brays For War in Syria Amid US-UK Threats Against Russia
https://www.globalresearch.ca/french-ruling-elite-brays-for-war-in-syria-amid-us-uk-threats-against-russia/5632403
In the USA/NATO Grip. War Games in the Mediterranean together with Israel
https://www.globalresearch.ca/in-the-usanato-grip-war-games-in-the-mediterranean-together-with-israel/5632391
France is perhaps even more controlled by its Zionazi elites than any other Western country. Of course it is outraged that Syria has escaped total destruction as required by the Oded Yinon Plan. Any other attitude would be unforgivably ‘antisemitic’.
I am still yet to see a satisfactory explanation from the U.S. on how it took Baghdad in 2003. How does 30,000 troops, who had trouble with small cities defended by 1,000 regular troops like Al Faw, move to the capital the size of Los Angeles and take it with almost zero losses?
Despite having been exhausted, and almost out of ammo? And the city itself defended by 50,000+ Republican Guard? This does not make sense. At all.
These analysis are all good and well but the Path towards a resolution of this problem remains elusive.
I look forward to a someone or a collective that will answer the following two questions:
1. How can one prevent the next “democratization”.
2. What is the cure for the effects of “liberation”.
Gorbachev screwed up…..Yeltsin screwed up….Poroshenko phucked up…He will enjoy a nice retirement in Canada with his buddy Christia (Chomiak) Freeland.
Unfortunately You forgot Germany. We were occupied After 1918 and now After 100 Years we are still occupied by the USA or what ist Stellung us is the uSA?!
We are trendeously happy and outraged of Joy for this- ou can imagine.
In Particular because we experience a flood of ‘refugees’ in-social economic pilfering crowds that Come and get 300% Preferences as well as privileges in Order that our Nation will beging Mixed with all These nations. Our girls get rapid but LIKE it because MERKEL tells us that they like it.
This Doing- the flooding of Germany with refugees in the Millions is the Most terrible war that can be… but the UN, UNHCR, UNICEF, EU, USA, SOROS, USAID, and all ist assisting institutions shooting HURRAY HURRAY HURRAY.
What is your Suggestion Mr.Zuesse?
The criminal, there, too, are the U.S. billionaires, not one of whom stands against the obsession to conquer Russia and any ally of Russia. So, the U.S. and its allies (in Europe, Israel, and a bit from elsewhere) invade and occupy Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, Ukraine, and other countries, whose refugees — through no real fault of their own — flow into the EU, and the U.S. refuses to take any. Merkel is just doing her job for her masters, to serve the U.S. regime instead of Germans. She gets away with it because of the whored German ‘news’media (owned or otherwise controlled by Germany’s billionaires), which likewise do the Empire’s bidding. There ought to be funded an auto-translated German version of this site, but perhaps no billionaire or centi-millionaire anywhere wants to do that. Why isn’t some Russian or Chinese billionaire doing it? The payoff toward peace and against The West’s billionaires, could be immense, and there needs to be a governmental decision to bring something like that into being, and to institute any needed legal changes so as to incentivize it to happen. The empirical studies show consistently that the richer people are, the more psychopathic they tend to be; so, patriotism, or a concern to establish a more peaceful and happier world, aren’t likely to be major goals for any extremely wealthy person; the incentive needs to be created, by imaginative and intelligent governmental policies, in the countries that the U.S. gang (which includes the Saudi gang and the Israeli gang) intend to take over. Why doesn’t this happen? I don’t know.
You should thank Obama and Clinton for it. Barry Obama was given the Nobel Pric/zen before entering office for a few cheap words. Europeans should not complain, when they bend for/backward to please the Uncle across the Atlantic. When they don’t respect themselves, why do they expect that other would respect them.
Uncle reached his goal, split Europe, flooded it with its defacto 5th column (not so secretly guided by the House of Saud’s Imams), created a barrier with Russia and forced them to buy their junk weapons. You will need paracomandos to quell ISIS on the Rhein not F-35s.
As always, these types of articles give the impression that the way that the zioUSSA imposes demoncracy over its victims is through military intervention.
The reality is that when the zios talk about FULL SPECTRUM CONTROL they really mean it. So the anglozionist empire uses a set of weapons to accomplish the tasks of invading + controlling + repressing + looting. And the main weapon in the arsenal is done through 2 types of infiltraitors: Khazarians in the target societies who had the chance to take over economic or political sectors, and “Freemasons” who are bribed or forced or brainwashed to work for the City of London. These local stooges will support all the zioagencies and the zioagents whose main job is to threaten and to execute (literally!) whatever their ziobosses tell them to do.
So the military component is applied when these infiltrations tasks fail: for example, when a banana Respublica has been taken over by a nationalistic governor, so the usual masonic and Khazarian collaborators have been contained. Sometimes the USSArmy intervention is carried out as a final phase: for example, to accomplish the theft of the so-called “Mexico”, they first infested the Spanish government with masonic stooges and then divided the government in every possible way. The military attack was done simply to consolidate the physical presence of the Anglos there.
By the way, we share the pain and the indignation to acknowledge that Germany is more a virtual Entity than a real one, because it is totally controlled, invaded and infiltrated. If my memory doesn’t betray me, there are like 250 zioUSSA bases there!!! And the “German” zioKnesset in control (epitomized by the Khazarian Merkel)…