from the book
Killing Hope
U.S. Military and CIA Interventions
since World War II
by William Blum
published by Common Courage Press
in 1995
"[American leaders] are
perhaps not so much immoral as they are amoral. It's not that
they take pleasure in causing so much death and suffering. It's
that they just don't care ... the same that could be said about
a sociopath. As long as the death and suffering advance the agenda
of the empire, as long as the right people and the right corporations
gain wealth and power and privilege and prestige, as long as the
death and suffering aren't happening to them or people close to
them ... then they just don't care about it happening to other
people, including the American soldiers whom they throw into wars
and who come home-the ones who make it back alive-with Agent Orange
or Gulf War Syndrome eating away at their bodies. American leaders
would not be in the positions they hold if they were bothered
by such things."
William Blum. Killing Hope
Edited versions
"It was in the early days
of the fighting in Vietnam that a Vietcong officer said to his
American prisoner: "You were our heroes after the War. We
read American books and saw American films, and a common phrase
in those days was 'to be as rich and as wise as an American'.
What happened?
An American might have been asked
something similar by a Guatemalan, an Indonesian or a Cuban during
the ten years previous, or by a Uruguayan, a Chilean or a Greek
in the decade subsequent. The remarkable international goodwill
and credibility enjoyed by the United States at the close of the
Second World War was dissipated country by country, intervention
by intervention."
William Blum
Unedited versions
www.killinghope.org/
bblum6@aol.com
William Blum page
Authors
and Books
Killing Hope - excerpts from
introduction to Original Edition