“Benjamin Madley has changed the conversation on genocide and American Indians. After An American Genocide, it will no longer be possible to debate whether or not genocide took place. Instead we will need to confront the questions of how and why genocide against American Indians took place and what the United States owes its indigenous communities.”—Karl Jacoby (Columbia University), author of Shadows at Dawn: A Borderlands Massacre and the Violence of History (Karl Jacoby)

 

What we read about in this article, based on meticulous research by Californian historian Benjamin Madley, in his book An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846-1873 is utterly tragic and far beyond reprehensible. There is a similar story to be told about Native Americans in many other places and times by actions of the various levels of government in the United States, not to mention similar stories throughout the world, in particular during the time of the United States Empire in the twentieth century to this present day. This is also what has characterized "American exceptionalism" at all times of its history.

A random example, from one of my Book Reviews, featuring in part John Kerry:

“ ‘For seven months, Tiger Force [one of countless American  units during the Vietnam War, fully authorized by superiors all the way up the chain] soldiers moved across the Central Highlands, killing scores of unarmed civilians – in some cases torturing and mutilating them – in a spate of violence never revealed to the American public,’ the newspaper said, at other points describing the killing of hundreds of unarmed civilians.

“ ‘Women and children were intentionally blown up in underground bunkers,’ The Blade said. ‘Elderly farmers were shot as they toiled in the fields. Prisoners were tortured and executed – their ears and scalps severed for souvenirs. One soldier kicked out the teeth of executed civilians for their gold fillings.”   The New York Times confirmed the claimed accuracy of the stories by contacting several of those interviewed.  It reported: “But they wanted to make another point: that Tiger Force had not been a ‘rogue’ unit. Its members had done only what they were told, and their superiors knew what they were doing. 

“Burning huts and villages, shooting civilians and throwing grenades into protective shelters were common tactics for American ground forces throughout Vietnam, they said. That contention is backed up by accounts of journalists, historians and disillusioned troops…

“ ‘Vietnam was an atrocity from the get-go,’ [one veteran] said in a recent telephone interview. ‘It was that kind of war, a frontless war of great frustration. There were hundreds of My Lais. You got your card punched by the numbers of bodies you counted.’ (Kifner, 2003).” 

Current [then] likely Democratic Presidential candidate John Kerry was also quoted giving evidence before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1971.  He reported that American soldiers in Vietnam had “raped, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country (quoted in Kifner, 2003).”

P.S. There is also a Canadian story. See for instance here.

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