Hospitals & Asylums
US War History HA-26-11-09
By Tony J. Sanders
War is defined as a military conflict, either international or domestic, that takes the lives of more than 1,000 people. Not including hundreds of Indian wars fought during American westward expansion ending in 1888, and other smaller conflicts such as the Barbary Wars (1801-05 & 1815) and the Quasi-War (1798-1800) the United States has officially fought a total of thirteen wars, suffering an estimated 1.3 million casualties. Nearly half of US casualties were incurred by the Civil War when 625,000 US and Confederate soldiers lost their lives. Based on 1860 census figures, 8% of all white males aged 13 to 43 died in the Civil War, including 6% in the North and an extraordinary 18% in the South. Advances in military technology such as rapid fire rifles and explosives have made the 20th century the most violent in human history. Around the world nearly three times as many people were killed in conflict in the twentieth century as in the previous four, not very peaceful, centuries combined, with 109.7 million conflict related deaths, 4.35% of the general population, based upon mid century population. The United States has been lucky to keep modern warfare in foreign lands. Mega murder, the death of more than 1 million people, has become common in modern military conflicts. Beginning with the occupation of the Philippines, when civilian casualties may have reached a million, to WWI when 19 million died, to WWII when 55 million were killed to Korea and Vietnam where more than 2 million were killed in each conflict to the invasion of Iraq since when 1.3 million people have died so the United States and coalition forces could enjoy kill ratios of one hundred to one. Afghanistan fought the big war with the Soviets (1980-88) when 2 million people died and the 10,000 Taliban fighters, 101,000 coalition troops and 30,000-50,000 casualties of the current conflict are peaceful by comparison. Having paid $33 billion reparations to Iraq, the largest in history, and having agreed to get out, long after the occupation exhausted the “rent” and OPEC jacked up oil prices to compensate, the only thing remaining for the US to do is pay the corruption free National Opium Agency nation of Afghanistan no less than $20 billion that would be matched by NATO and former Soviet states and leave the country.
1. In the American Revolutionary War 1775-83 an estimated 25,000 US soldiers were killed and another 25,000 were wounded.
2. In the War of 1812-15 an estimated 20,000 US soldiers died and 4,505 were wounded.
3. In the Mexican war 1846-48 13,282 US soldiers died and 13,800 were wounded.
4. In the Civil War 1861-65 an estimated 625,000 US soldiers died, 364,511 from the Union and 260,000 from the Confederates, 281,881 Union soldiers were wounded.
5. In the Spanish-American War 345 US soldiers died, 1,645 were wounded and 2,565 diseased, at least 10,660 Cubans were killed and 3,560 Spaniard were killed and 13,500 wounded or diseased.
6. In the Philippine War 1898-1902 4,196 US soldiers died and 2,930 were wounded. An estimated 16,000 Philippine soldiers died and 250,000 – 1million civilians lost their lives.
7. In World War I 1917-18 116,516 US soldiers died and 204,002 were wounded. An estimated 19 million civilians were killed, including 9 million soldiers from both sides, and 21 million wounded.
8. In World War II 1941-45 405,399 US soldiers died and 670,846 were wounded. An estimated 55 million civilians were killed.
9. In the Korean War 1950-53 36,516 US soldiers died and 103,284 were wounded. More than 2 million Koreans died.
10. In the Vietnam War 1964-73 58,151 US soldiers died and 153,303 were wounded. More than 2 million Vietnamese were killed.
11. In the first Gulf War 1990-91 299 US soldiers died and 467 were wounded. An estimated 25,000 civilians were killed.
12.
In the War in Afghanistan 2001-present 923 US soldiers died and at least 4,565 were wounded. An estimated 30,000-50,000 civilians have been killed.
13. In the Iraq War 2003-present 4,369 US soldiers died and at least 31,572 were wounded. 1.3 million excess Iraqi deaths are estimated.
II. Indian Wars
The United States of America has a long history of conquering indigenous people. The land was taken from the Native Americans over the course of several centuries from 1607 to the 1890s when all the survivors were isolated in reservations. Whereas American Indians resisted slavery and forced labor, not to mention the census, an estimated 3 million African tribe people, whose population had reached 7 million by the time of the Civil War, were shipped to the United States during the Trans-Atlantic slave trade that killed an estimated 10 million in transit. Christopher Columbus discovered the Americas in 1492 but mistaking the continent for Asia called the natives, “Indians”, a misnomer that has struck over the centuries, long after his first village of cruel colonials was slaughtered to a man, at La Navidad, Hispaniola. As the white population grew the natives were pushed west. By 1838, when the highly civilized and peaceful Cherokees were forced to leave their communities in a forced relocation known as the Trail of Tears, a Permanent Frontier Line had been drawn along the Mississippi. In the 1850s the California Gold Rush inspired a lot of cross country migration and after the Civil War an organized military effort was made to subjugate the native tribes who were by the 1890s contained to reservations.
When the English established their first permanent colony in Jamestown, Virginia in 1607, they were greeted by the natives who taught them to sow corn and tobacco. Although the Indians were themselves fairly warlike with many rivalries and tribal feuds the settlers coexisted more or less peacefully with the natives until Good Friday March 22, 1622 when unarmed natives seized colonial weapons and massacred 347 people, a third of the entire colony. The colonists retaliated and there was continual conflict until 1632 after which time an uneasy peace was marred by numerous war parties from native tribes and Pilgrims alike. After the Indian King Phillip war 1676-77 the French and Indian Wars were fought between 1689 and 1763 under the shifting allegiance of the natives to either the English or the French, the Spanish to the South and West were of lesser military concern. After decades of retaliation against raids by French and Indian forces, war weary French King Louis XIV accepted the Treaty of Utrecht that ceded Hudson Bay and Acadia to the English but left the bounds of France’s Canadian empire in doubt. During the American Revolutionary War the influential Iroquois tribes sided with the British. With the French Revolution of 1789 French interests in the Americas waned and as a show of good faith in 1803 Napoleonic Franc sold the Louisiana territories, acquired from Spain in 1800, for $15 million. The War of 1812-15 ended border disputes with Canada and limited American expansionism westward to the Northwest Territory and Louisiana Purchase.
In 1814, during the War of 1812, Andrew Jackson forced the Treaty of Fort Jackson on the warring North and South Creek Indians ceding twenty million acres in Alabama and Georgia to the United States. In 1818, after Andrew Jackson retaliated against Seminole villages for harboring fugitive slaves and making raids into the United States, Spain ceded the State of Florida to the United States, that he was military governor of in 1821, before being nominated and elected 7th President of the United States 1829-37. For the first decades of the 19th century the Cherokees lived in peace on forty thousand square miles of rich land in the valley of the Tennessee. Their communities prospered: they had ten sawmills, sixty smithys, eight cotton-weaving machines, eighteen schools, miles of public roads, sturdy houses, a Constitution and their own newspaper, the Phoenix, that was published in both English and Cherokee. In 1822 state politicians pressed Congress to nullify Cherokee land titles in Georgia. The Cherokees resisted and were soon raided by radical Georgians. Rather than move toward war, the Cherokees took their case to the Supreme Court, which in 1832 ruled that the Indians had every right to their nation. President Jackson, an Indian fighter from Tennessee, thought differently and three years later the Georgians forced the Cherokee to sign a treaty selling their lands for $5 million. 16,000 Cherokee signed a petition but a removal deadline was set for May 23, 1838. 2,000 had already left, but 15,000 Cherokee were rounded up and put in concentration camps and many fell ill before the grueling 1,200 mile march to Oklahoma, in which 4,000 died. The trek is remembered as the Trail of Tears.
The Permanent Frontier Line along the Mississippi didn’t hold very long. In 1848, at the end of Mexican War, gold was found in California, and in the following 4 decades 8 million people would make the voyage west, in the process destroying the Indian way of life. The California Diggers went from 100,000 strong to 30,000, only 10% of life was lost as the result of violence. United States Indian Agents attempted to protect the natives from the pioneers and to control them by isolating them on reservations so there would be land enough for everyone. While many Indians acceded to these conditions and accepted handouts and pensions from the government others revolted and fought to maintain their way of life. Some tribes were massacred for no good reason, others massacred settlers, stagecoaches and fought US troops that entered the Wild West in full force after the Civil War. The most famous battle of the Indian Wars was Custer’s last stand at Little Big Horn where his 7th Cavalry stumbled across an enormous gathering of Sioux and was massacred. The most famous fighters were Sitting Bull of the Hunkpapa, Geronimo of the Apache, Crazy Horse of the Ogala and many others. While many “wars of extermination” were fought locally between settlers and Indians, it was the near extinction of the buffalo that drove the proud Plains Indians onto the reservations once and for all in 1890s, when the Indian wars are considered to have concluded.
Historical Native American population
estimates are very difficult to locate.
In Census 2000, 4.3 million people, or 1.5 percent of the total U.S.
population, reported that they were American Indian and Alaska Native. This number included 2.4 million people, or 1
percent, who reported only American Indian and Alaska Native as their
race. Although their land has been
reduced to 66 million acres, on reservations, it is probable that the Native
American population in the United States is larger than ever. Wars were far from the most devastating to
the population. White man’s alcohol and
disease are far more troubling to the crime of genocide. It can be estimated that 2/3 of the native
population were wiped out by diseases, most of it transmitted innocuously,
ostensibly by people who had gained immunity to the viruses by previous
exposure and heredity, although there are accounts of malevolent distributions
of smallpox tainted blankets. A great
deal of the misery can be attributed to bad decisions made by Natives under the
influence of whiskey, while the white man became addicted to tobacco. At the height of the Indian Wars between 1850
and 1890 official estimates of Indian battle deaths were around 24,000 and
unofficial estimates go as high 45,000 Indians and 24,000 whites. Native Americans today suffer high rates of
poverty and unhappiness although they do receive some extra government
assistance. Native Americans, like
indigenous peoples around the world, do not feel they have been adequately
compensated for the loss of their lands, and the genocide against their
people.
III. Revolutionary
War
The Revolutionary War (1775-1783) was the war of American independence from colonial Britain. Starting in the 1760s King George III of Britain had imposed a number of onerous and unpopular laws and taxes on the American colonies including the Sugar Act and Currency Act of 1764; Stamp Act and Quartering Act of 1765, Tea Act of 1773 and 4 Intolerable Acts of 1774. In response to this “taxation without representation” orators protested and many of the colonies wrote letters to Parliament and on December 17, 1773 a group of colonists dressed as Mohawk Indians threw three shiploads of tea into the Boston harbor and later Boston harbor was sealed off to punish the rebellious residents. In 1774 fifty-six delegates from twelve of the thirteen colonies met briefly in Philadelphia for the First Continental Congress and drafted a Declaration of Rights and Grievances ruling Parliament unconstitutional. The Second Continental Congress met on May 10, 1775 and stayed in session for the remainder of the war, the Declaration of Independence was ratified July 4, 1776 and the Articles of Confederation were ratified March 1781 until 1789 when the Constitution went into effect. Although moderates first sought conciliation, established the Continental Army in June of 1775, appointing General George Washington Commander-in-chief and later first President of the United States (1789-1797).
At the outset of the war the thirteen colonies lacked a professional army and navy. Each colony provided for its own defenses and militia. Militiamen were lightly armed, slightly trained and usually did not have uniforms. Units usually served for only a few weeks or months. At the beginning of 1776 Washington’s army had an estimated 20,000 troops, two third in the Continental Army and the other third from state militias. By the end of the eight year war 250,000 men had served as regulars or militiamen for the Revolutionary cause, but there were not more than 90,000 men under arms at any given time. An estimated 40-45% of the colonists actively supported the rebellion, 15-20% remained loyal to the British, while 35-45% attempted to remain neutral. At least 25,000 Loyalists served with the British. In 1776 Parliament voted to raise an army of 55,000 men to crush the rebellion but the King’s subjects did not rally to the cause and he was reliant upon press gangs, judges and tavern keepers as recruiters and eventually some 30,000 German mercenaries were hired to fight the American war and from a global strength of 30,000 men in 1775 by 1789 90,000 British troops were posted from Canada to Florida. Throughout the war the British were able to use their naval superiority to capture and occupy coastal towns but control of the countryside, where 90% of the population lived, was elusive. The Americans suffered shortages of gunpowder and by the end of 1776 90% of supplies for the Continental armies were imported, mostly from France.
The opening battles began in Massachusetts where 4,000 British regulars held Boston but the countryside was in the hands of the revolutionaries. On the night of April 18, 1775 the British sent 700 troops to seize colonial militia munitions at Concord. Riders, including Paul Revere warned of the coming British and the resistance defeated them and harried them back to Boston that was put under siege until March 1776 when Washington brought several large cannons to bear on the city and the British were forced to withdraw. Within weeks of the siege of Boston forces led by the famous traitor Benedict Arnold took Fort Ticonderoga and besieged the City of Quebec until spring of 1776 delaying a full scale British counter invasion until 1777. British troops withdrawing from Boston assaulted New York and Washington brought 20,000 troops there to defend it against 22,000 British who pushed the Americans back to Brooklyn Heights in the largest battled of the war, the British held New York for the remainder of the war. In 1777 the Saratoga campaign of the British retook Fort Ticonderoga in June but surrendered after the second battle of Saratoga, a turning point in the war. From New York the British moved to take Philadelphia, the seat of the Continental Congress, that abandoned the city to the British at the end of September. Washington camped 20 miles away that winter at Valley Forge where 4,000 of 10,000 American soldiers died from cold and disease. That year of 1777 the northern colonies abolished slavery.
On February 7, 1778 France signed a Treaty of Alliance with
the United States, Spain entered the war as an ally of
France in June 1779 and the Dutch in 1780.
King George III gave up hope of defeating the Americans was resolved to
hold the cities he had captured and to sack coastal towns indefinitely. The Royal Navy had over 100 ships of the line
and numerous frigates but they were in poor repair. The Americans had no ships of the line and
relied upon privateers to harass British shipping, nonetheless the Continental
Congress created a Continental Navy in October of 1775. Over the course of the war American
privateers had almost 1,700 ships and captured 2,283 enemy ships. Mostly untouched in the beginning of the war
late 1778 the British captured Savannah, Georgia and in 1780 Charleston. In 1781 the northern, southern and naval
campaigns converged at Yorktown, Virginia.
In early September the French defeated a British fleet at the Battle of
the Chesapeake and cut of its escape, after several days of bombardment the
British surrendered on October 19, 1781.
In April 1782 the Commons voted to end the war in America. Preliminary peace articles were signed in
Paris at the end of the November, the formal end to the war did not occur until
the Treaty of Paris of September
3, 1783 promising, “a firm and perpetual peace” that the United States
Congress of the Confederation ratified on January 14, 1784. The last British troops left New York City on November 25, 1783.
Approximately 25,000 American Revolutionaries died during active military service. About 8,000 of these deaths were in battle, the other 17,000 deaths were from disease, including 8,000-12,000 who died aboard prison ships in New York. The number of revolutionaries seriously wounded or disabled is estimated at 8,500-25,000. About 171,000 sailors served with the British, about 25-50% had been pressed into service. About 1,250 were killed in battled and 18,500 died from disease. About 42,000 British sailors deserted during the war. Approximately 1,200 Germans were killed in battled and 6,354 died from accident or disease. About 16,000 of the remaining Germans returned home but roughly 6,500 remained in the United States many becoming citizens. The British spent about £80 million and ended with a national debt of £250 million, which it easily financed at about £9.5 million a year in interest. The French spent 1.3 billion livres (about £56 million). Their total national debt was £187 million, which they could not easily finance; over half the French national revenue went to debt service in the 1780s. The debt crisis became a major enabling factor of the French Revolution as the government was unable to raise taxes without public approval. The United States spent $37 million at the national level plus $114 million by the states. This was mostly covered by loans from France and the Netherlands, loans from Americans, and issuance of an increasing amount of paper money (which became "not worth a continental.") The U.S. finally solved its debt and currency problems in the 1790s when Alexander Hamilton spearheaded the establishment of the First Bank of the United States.
IV. War of 1812
The War of 1812 (1812-15) was fought between the United States and the British Empire. It reaffirmed the independence of the American colonies and delineated the Canadian border that was never again contested by the United States. There were several causes for the war: first, a series of trade restriction intended to impede US trade with France, with whom Britain was at war; second, the impressments, forced recruitment, of US citizens into the Royal Navy; and third, the British military assistance to Native American tribes who were resisting American expansion into the territory claimed by the Northwest Ordinance of July 13, 1787. The United States declared war on Britain on June 18, 1812 by the smallest majority in Congress ever on a war vote. The war was fought in four theatres: first, on the oceans, where warships and privateers on both sides preyed upon merchant vessels; second along the Atlantic coast which was blockaded with increasing severity by the British who also launched large scale raids later on in the war; third, on the long frontier running along the Great Lakes and Saint Laurence River which separated the US from Upper and Lower Canada, Ontario and Quebec; and fourth, on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. Although both sides made raids on each others territories neither side was successful and at the end of the war Britain held some parts of Maine and some scattered outposts in the West and the US held some Canadian property north of Detroit, but these occupied territories were returned after hostilities ended.
The United States Merchant Marine had nearly doubled in size between 1802 and 1810 and was the largest neutral fleet in the world, the 20 year old Navy however had only 22 frigates. At the turn of the 19th century the United States fought several naval wars. The Quasi War (1798-1800) was fought with France when the Napoleonic French began seizing American ships in retaliation for the American cessation of paying their war debts and their neutrality with Great Britain with whom France was at war, at least 315 US ships were taken in this conflict. The Barbary Wars (1801-05 & 1815) occurred when the US refused to pay tribute to the North African Barbary states of the Ottoman empire resulting in the US attacking their capitals the first war, the second war was settled by the Dutch and British navies. Britain was the largest trading partner, receiving 80% of US cotton and 50% of all other US exports. During the Napoleonic wars the British fleet expanded to 175 ships of the line and 600 ships overall, requiring 140,000 sailors. To win the Peninsular War with Spain the British had blockaded most of the coast of Europe yet there were still 85 British ships in American waters. Unable to man its fleets Britain had to resort to impressments. As many as 11,000 sailors in US service were deserters. The Royal Navy went after them although the US felt they had a right to US citizenship, also impressed other formerly British sailors and with the prevalence of falsified documents also impressed American who had never been British. American anger grew when British ships stationed themselves outside of US harbors and searched ships for contraband and impressed sailors within sight of US shore. “Free trade and sailors rights” was a rallying cry throughout the conflict. The US fought the naval battle cautiously and was under orders to “engage the enemy only when victory was probable”. The blockade of American ports reduced exports from $130 million in 1807 to $7 million in 1814.
American expansion into the Northwest Territories, the modern states of Ohio, Indian, Michigan, Illinois and Wisconsin, was being obstructed by native leaders like Tecumseh, supplied and encouraged by the British. President Madison thought the conquest of Canada would be easy and at the beginning of the war the US had fewer than 12,000 regulars so Congress authorized the expansion of forces to 35,000 but enlistment was unpopular and the officers untrained, at least at the beginning of the war. State militias objected to serving outside of their states. Having disbanded their national bank the US was having difficulty financing the war. The total number of British troops in Canada, at the outbreak of war, was estimated to be 6,034 plus militia. For the first two years of the war the British strategy was defensive and they gave up Upper Canada to defend Lower Canada, in the final year of the war however, after the abdication of Napoleon, a large number of soldiers became available and 15,000 were sent to the Americas. In 1812 US forces captured Fort Detroit without a fight and burned Fort Dearborn, now Chicago, to the ground. In 1813 Fort Meigs was besieged by the British and Tecumseh but held out while the US took control of Lake Erie and sacked York, now Toronto, but lost Ogdenburg, New York.
In August 1814, in retaliation
for the sacking of York, now Toronto, a force of 2,500 British soldiers entered
the Chesapeake Bay and after routing the Americans marched into Washington DC
where they at the dinner that had been prepared for the President before
torching the White House. After a freak
storm sent several tornadoes into town and having burned all the public
buildings the British moved on to capture Baltimore. The British were repelled from Fort McHenry
where Francis Scott Key was inspired to write the “Star Bangled
Banner”. On December 24, 1814, diplomats from the two countries,
meeting in Ghent, United Kingdom of the Netherlands
(now in Belgium), signed
the Treaty of Ghent. This
was ratified by the Americans on February 16, 1815. Unaware of the peace, Andrew Jackson’s forces moved to
New Orleans, Louisiana in late 1814 to defend against a large-scale British
invasion. Jackson defeated the British at the Battle of New Orleans on January
8, 1815. The British gave up on New Orleans but moved to attack the Gulf Coast port of Mobile, Alabama. In one of the
last military actions of the war, 1,000 British troops won the Battle of Fort Bowyer on
February 12, 1815. When news of peace arrived the next day, they abandoned the
fort and sailed home. In May 1815, a band of British-allied Sauk, unaware that the war had
ended months ago, attacked a small band of U.S. soldiers northwest of St.
Louis. Intermittent fighting, primarily with the Sauk, continued in the
Missouri Territory well into 1817, although it is unknown if the Sauk were
acting on their own or on behalf of Great Britain. Several un-contacted warships
continued fighting well into 1815 and were the last American forces to take
offensive action against the British.
British losses in the war were about 1,600 killed in action and 3,679 wounded; 3,321 British died from disease. American losses were 2,260 killed in action and 4,505 wounded. While the number of Americans who died from disease is not known, it is estimated to have been about 17,000. These figures do not include deaths among American or Canadian militia forces or losses among native tribes. In addition, thousands of American slaves escaped to the British because of their offer of freedom, or they just fled in the chaos of war. The British settled a few thousand of the newly freed slaves in Nova Scotia. The Americans protested that the failure to return the slaves violated the Treaty of Ghent; after arbitration by the Czar of Russia the British paid $1,204,960, in damages to Washington, which reimbursed the slave-owners. A total of 1,554 vessels were claimed captured by all American naval and privateering vessels, 1300 of which were captured by privateers. However, insurer -Lloyd's of London reported that only 1,175 British ships were taken, 373 of which were recaptured, for a total loss of 802. The American war added some £25 million to the British national debt. In the U.S., the cost was $105 million, although because the British pound was worth considerably more than the dollar, the costs of the war to both sides were roughly equal. The national debt rose from $45 million in 1812 to $127 million by the end of 1815, although through discounts and paper money, the government received only $34 million worth of specie. By this time, the British blockade of U.S. ports was having a detrimental effect on the American economy. Licensed flour exports, which had been close to a million barrels in 1812 and 1813, fell to 5,000 in 1814. The terms of the Treaty of Ghent stated that fighting between the United States and Britain would cease, all conquered territory was to be returned to the prewar claimant.
V. Mexican War
The Mexican-American War was an armed conflict between the
United States and Mexico from 1846-48 in the wake of the 1845 US annexation of
Texas. In Mexico the war is referred to
as the American Invasion in Mexico. As
early as 1835 President Andrew Jackson developed a passion to acquire all of
Mexican territory north of the 37th parallel. At the end of 1835 Texans drove Mexican
forces across the Rio Grande but February 23- March 6 1835 General Santa Anna
besieged the Alamo Mission slaughtering all but two of the defenders but
several weeks later, reinforced by settlers and American adventurers the Texans
defeated the Mexican Army at Battle of San Jacinto of April 21, 1835. While General Santa Anna was held in
captivity the Texans forced him to sign several document later named the
Treaties of Velasco of May 14, 1836 that concluded hostilities and recognized
the independence of the breakaway Republic, but it was never signed by
Mexico. In the years after 1836, Texas consolidated its status as an independent
republic by establishing diplomatic ties with Britain, France, and the United States. Most Texans
were in favor of annexation by the United States, but U.S. President Martin Van Buren rejected
it. Under U.S. President John Tyler, Texas was offered admission to the
Union as a state via, controversially, a joint resolution of Congress rather
than a treaty. The bill was signed into
law on March 1, 1845 by President James K. Polk. It was ratified by Texas on
July 4. Texas became the 28th state on December 29. The Mexican government had long warned
the United States that annexation would mean war.
Because the
Mexican congress never recognized Texas' independence, it saw Texas as a
rebellious territory that would be retaken in the future. When Texas was
granted statehood in 1845, the Mexican government broke diplomatic relations
with the United States. On November 10, 1845, Polk sent a secret representative, to Mexico City
with an offer of $25 million ($613,653,846 today) for the Rio Grande border in
Texas and Mexico’s provinces of Alta California and Santa Fe de Nuevo México as
well as the forgiveness of the $3 million ($73,638,462 today) owed to U.S.
citizens for damages caused by the Mexican War of Independence (1810-21). Mexico was in no position to negotiate. In 1846 the Presidency had changed four
times, the war ministry six times and the finance ministry sixteen times. However public opinion was that selling
territories to the United States would tarnish Mexican honor, Mexicans who
opposed open conflict with the United States, including the President, were
accused of being traitors. Polk ordered
General Taylor to cross to the Rio Grande although Mexico claimed the border
was at the Nueces River. In the Thornton
affair a 63 man US patrol was routed by a 6,000 Mexican detachment. Polk believed this constituted casus belli
and on May 11, 1846, with the strong support of Southern Democrats passed a
declaration of war, opposed by anti-slavery Whigs. Congress declared war on Mexico on May 13,
1846 after only having a few hours to debate. Although President Paredes issued a manifesto on May 23 that is sometimes
considered the declaration of war, Mexico officially declared war by Congress
on July 7, 1846.
Having been
exiled, upon hearing that the US had declared war on Mexico, Santa Anna wrote
the Mexican President that he had given up aspirations to the Presidency and
would like to use his experience fighting off Americans. Santa Anna promised the Americans he would
negotiate for peace and cessation of the territories to the US, but once in
Mexico City he reneged and assumed the role of commanding general, and then
reneged again and seized the Presidency.
The opening hostilities began on May 8, 1846 when Mexican artillery
opened fire on Fort Texas but Americans using cavalry “flying artillery”
demoralized the opponent and after capturing their artillery the Mexicans
retreated. As soon as they heard of the
declaration of war, on June 15, 1886 American settlers instigated the Bear Flag
Revolt that overthrew the Mexican garrison in Sonoma that was reinforced by
American troops and by January 12, the last significant body of Californios
surrendered to U.S. forces. The Treaty of Cahuenga
was signed the next day, on January 13, 1847, ceding Alto California to the
United States. In Mexico, US General
Taylor, with 2,700 troops fighting disease, quickly seized the cities of
Monterrey and Saltillo. On February 22,
1847 Santa Anna marched north to engage the 4,600 US soldiers with 20,000 men,
less 5,000 who deserted on the way, but facing opposition and hearing news of
unrest in Mexico City withdrew leaving all of Northern Mexico in the hands of
the Americans. Polk was unhappy with Taylor and sent an amphibious assault of
12,000 US soldiers led by General Scott and such future heroes as Robert E.
Lee, Ulysses S. Grant and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson to the siege of
Veracruz. Veracruz fell swiftly,
although many troops came down with yellow fever, and Scott marched on Mexico
City with 8,500 healthy soldiers. Santa
Anna had deployed 12,000 troops on the road he expected the Americans to take
but was deceived and fired too soon. In
May the Americans pushed through to Puebla, the second largest city that
capitulated without a fight because of their hatred of Santa Anna on May 1,
after the Battle of Chapultepec, Mexico City was laid open and subsequently
occupied by the Americans.
Over the course of the war the US army swelled from just over 6,000 to more
than 115,000. Of this total, approximately 1,725 (1.5%) were killed in the
fighting, and nearly 11,500 (10%) died of disease; another 13,800 (12%) were
wounded or discharged because of disease, or both. For years afterward, Mexican–American War
veterans continued to suffer from the debilitating diseases contracted during
the campaigns. The casualty rate was thus easily over 25% (2,875) for the 17
months of the war; the total casualties may have reached 35–40% if later
injury- and disease-related deaths are added. In this respect, the war was
proportionately the most deadly in American military history. The desertion rate in the U.S. army was 8.3%
(9,200 out of 111,000), compared to 12.7% during the War of 1812 and usual
peacetime rates of about 14.8% per year.
The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, signed on February 2, 1848 ended the
war and gave the U.S. undisputed control of Texas, established the U.S.-Mexican
border of the Rio Grande River, and ceded to the United States the present-day
states of California, Nevada, Utah, and parts of Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico,
and Wyoming. In return, Mexico received US $18,250,000 ($447,967,308
today)—less than half the amount the U.S. had attempted to offer Mexico for the
land before the opening of hostilities—and the U.S. agreed to assume $3.25
million ($79,775,000 today) in debts that the Mexican government owed to U.S.
citizens. Mexico lost more than 500,000 square miles (about 1,300,000 km²)
of land, 55% of its national territory. This figure rises to over two thirds of
its territory if Texas is included. The annexed territories contained about
1,000 Mexican families in Alta California and 7,000 in Nuevo México. A few
relocated further south in Mexico; the great majority remained in the United
States. Zachary Taylor, after a 40 year
military career, was elected the 12th President of the United States
in his first bid for elective office, in 1848 but he died in office, on July 9,
1850, after contracting gastroenteritis at an Independence Day celebration,
while debating the Compromise of 1850 regarding slavery in the territories,
that he opposed, although he was a slave owner himself, angering Southerners.
VI. Civil War
The US Civil War (1861-1865) was the
deadliest military conflict in US history taking the lives of an estimated
620,000 soldiers from both sides. The United States Civil War is unique because it was fought
not because the slaves revolted but because the slavers did. Slavery “the
peculiar institution” had long been a controversial issue in the United
States. The states of Vermont in
1777, and then Massachusetts and New Hampshire inserted the prohibition of
slavery in their constitutions. Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Connecticut
expressed a preference for gradual emancipation. In the beginning of the 19th
Century many Parliaments abolished the slave trade civilly. Great Britain drafted an Abolition of the
Slave Trade in 1807 that passed Parliament in August 1833. The French decree was signed by the
Provisional Government in April 1848. In
the United States, where there were an estimated 5 million African slaves, the
issue of whether new territories would be free or slave was very
important. The South declared that the
Missouri Compromise prohibiting slavery in territories north of 36° 30’ and the
Compromise of 1850 were unconstitutional.
In 1854, the Republican Party included the
abolition of slavery in its founding manifesto, much to the consternation of
the southern states. When Abraham Lincoln, the Republican candidate was elected
President in 1860 seven southern states seceded from the Union before he even
took office on March 4, 1861. Lincoln
initially hoped to keep the peace with Confederacy by permitting the practice
of slavery but the rebels established the Confederate States of America on
February 4, 1861, and elected former Secretary of War Jefferson Davis
President.
Hostilities began on April 12, 1861 when Confederate forces attacked Fort Sumter in South Carolina. Lincoln responded by calling for a volunteer army from each state, for a total of 70,000 90 day volunteers, leading four more states to secede from the Union. In the 19 Northern States lived nearly 22 million people, compared to 9 million in 11 Confederate States, 3.5 million of whom were slaves. In the North were nine-tenths of the nation’s industrial power, two-thirds of its rails with most of its rail manufacturing capacity, most of its mineral resources and a growing surplus of foodstuffs which, through Northern sea power, could be exported to Europe just as surely as the Southern exportation of cotton could be cut off. In the South the first states to secede were the deep Southern states where 43% of whites had slaves, then the upper South where 36% of white families had slaves and only 22% of white families had slaves in the border slave territories that usually fought with the Union. In his inauguration speech President Lincoln said he had no intent to invade Southern states, nor did he intend to end slavery where it existed, but that he would use force to maintain possession of federal property. The North voted an army of 500,000 men and the South one of 400,000. During the course of the war some 900,000 would wear Confederate gray, while 1,500,000 would wear the Union blue. It was not until the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863 that the liberation of the slaves was made into a war goal. Although the proclamation allowed some 200,000 blacks to serve in the Union Army and Navy it only freed those held in rebellious slave States and not in the five territories that tolerated slavery but were allied with the Union that were not emancipated until the passage of the 13th Amendment in 1865.
In May 1681 Lincoln enacted a Union blockade of all Southern ports, including those along the Mississippi, shut off imports to the South, which compounded with foraging Northern troops and the impressments of crops by Southern troops, caused hyperinflation and bread riots in the South. In July 1861 Union advances on the South were repulsed all the way to Washington DC in the First Battle of Bull Run. In 1962 the Union was again repulsed in the Second Battle of Bull Run. Emboldened by these victories Confederate General Robert E. Lee invaded the North with a force of 45,000 but was repelled in the bloodiest single day in United States history at the Battle of Antietam near Sharpsburg, Maryland on September 17, 1682. The Union offensive was unable to prevail against Confederate troops. While the Confederates did well in the East, in the West they were quickly defeated, Missouri quickly fell and the invasion of Kentucky turned the State against the Confederacy. Nashville and central Tennessee fell to the Union in early 1862, followed shortly thereafter by Mississippi, with the exception of the fortress city of Vicksburg, and then Memphis, Tennessee. In May 1862 the Union captured New Orleans without a major fight. Led by Ulysses S. Grant Union forces seized control of the, Tennessee, Cumberland and Mississippi Rivers, driving Confederates out of Tennessee, and opening a route to Atlanta, and the heart of the Confederacy.
At the beginning of 1864 Lincoln made Grant commander of all Union armies, he put General William Tecumseh Sherman in charge of most of the western armies. They resolved to a concept of total war whereby only the utter defeat Confederate forces and the destruction of their economic base would bring an end to war, not in terms of killing civilians but destroying homes, farms and railroads. Although a number of generals became enmeshed in battles that pushed back Confederate forces, Grant lost 65,000 troops in only seven weeks, Eventually General Sherman took Atlanta, Georgia, on September 2, 1864, a significant factor in the reelection of Lincoln. Leaving Atlanta and his base of supplies Sharman began his “March to the Sea” laying waste to 20% of the farms in Georgia reaching Savannah, Georgia in December 1864, followed by thousands of blacks, without a major battle, whereupon they turned north to attack Confederates from the South. The Union won a decisive victory at the Battle of Five Forks on April 1, 1865 forcing the evacuation of Petersburg and Richmond. The Confederate capital fell to the Union XXV Corps composed of black troops. Confederate General Lee surrendered his forces on April 9, 1865 at Appomattox Courthouse. On April 14, 1865, President Lincoln was shot. Lincoln died early the next morning, and Andrew Johnson became President. The Confederate President was captured on May 10 and the last Confederate ship to surrender was on November 6, 1865. In violation of international law pertaining to the abolition of slavery the Confederacy was never recognized as an independent nation by any other nation. The Civil War freed approximately 4 million African-American slaves.
The approximately 10,455
military engagements resulted in total casualties of 1,094,453 during the Civil
War. The Federals lost 110,100 killed in action and mortally wounded, and
another 224,580 to disease. The Confederates lost approximately 94,000 as a
result of battle and another 164,000 to disease. Even if one survived a wound,
any projectile that hit bone in either an arm or a leg almost invariably
necessitated amputation. The best estimate of Federal army personnel wounded is
275,175; naval personnel wounded, 2,226. Surviving
Confederate records indicate 194,026 wounded. Based on 1860 census figures, 8% of all white males aged 13 to 43 died in
the war, including 6% in the North and an extraordinary 18% in the South. The advent of more accurate rifled barrels,
and repeating firearms gave birth to trench warfare, a tactic heavily used
during World War I. In dollars
and cents, the U.S. government estimated Jan. 1863 that the war was costing
$2.5 million daily. A final official estimate in 1879 totaled $6,190,000,000.
The Confederacy spent perhaps $2,099,808,707. By 1906 another $3.3 billion
already had been spent by the U.S. government on Northerners' pensions and
other veterans' benefits for former Federal soldiers. Southern states and
private philanthropy provided benefits to the Confederate veterans. The amount
spent on benefits eventually well exceeded the war's original cost. The
physical devastation, almost all of it in the South, was enormous: burned or
plundered homes, pillaged countryside, untold losses in crops and farm animals,
ruined buildings and bridges, devastated college campuses, and neglected roads
all left the South in ruins. Reconstruction
began early in the war and ended in 1877.
The long-term result came in the three Reconstruction Amendments to the
Constitution: the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery; the Fourteenth
Amendment, which extended federal legal protections equally to citizens
regardless of race; and the Fifteenth Amendment, which abolished racial
restrictions on voting.
VII. Spanish-American War
The Spanish-American War was a military conflict between Spain and the United States that took place between April and August 1898 over the issue of the liberation of Cuba. Strong expansionist sentiment in the United States, after the conclusion of the Indian Wars in the 1890s normally competing ideals from both the Monroe Doctrine and Manifest Destiny motivated the government to develop a plan for the annexation of Spain’s remaining overseas territories including Cuba, the Philippines, Puerto Rico and Guam. The war began after American demands for Cuban independence were rejected by Spain. To express their interest the US sent USS Maine which sank mysteriously in Havana’s harbor precipitating a war in which the Spain conceded after defeats in Cuba and the Philippines. The Treaty of Paris of December 10, 1898 gave the United States control of Cuba, the Philippines, Guam and Puerto Rico. The Philippine War, sometimes known as the war for Philippine Independence, officially began on June 2, 1899 and ended on July 4, 1902 when the US military government was disbanded in favor of civilian self-government. The Spanish American War was fought between 30,000 Cuban irregulars, 300,000 American regulars and volunteers against 250,000 Spanish regulars and militia in Cuba, 10,005 in Puerto Rico and 51,131 in the Philippines.
Cubans had been fighting on and off for self-determination since the Grito de Yara of 1868. In 1895 organization within the United States helped to finance a small armed uprising against the Spanish authority. In 1986 the Spanish Captain General Weyler pledge to suppress the insurgency and by 1867 more than 300,000 Cubans were had been relocated to guarded concentration camps and more than 100,000 died from hunger and disease. Inspired by propaganda waged by Cuban émigrés the United States and a riot by Cuban volunteers that destroyed three presses critical of the Captain General the United States sent a Marine force to the island. On January 25, 1898 the USS Maine arrived in Havana, then on February 15, 1898 mysteriously sank as the result of an explosion in Havana Harbor taking with her 266 men. The size of the US Army was rapidly expanded from 28,138 men to 250,000. On April 11, 1898 President McKinley asked Congress for permission to send US troops to Cuba for the purpose of ending the civil war there. After the Teller Amendment clarified that the US would not establish permanent control over Cuba and demanded Spanish withdrawal was ratified in a joint resolution and signed by the President on April 20, 1898. Spain broke of relations with the Untied States and responded by declaring war on April 25, 1898.
During the course of the war the United States had theatres of operation in the Pacific in the Philippines and Guam and in the Caribbean in Cuba and Puerto Rico. The Spanish had first landed in the Philippines on March 17, 1521 but did begin colonizing until 1565. After three centuries the Philippines was a semi-autonomous country. Educated in liberal ideas the Philippine Revolution (1892-1902) was originally supported by the United States and did not end until the United States ceded authority to the civilian government. The first battle between the United States and Spanish forces was at Manila Bay on May 1, 1898 where after only a few hours and only nine Americans wounded the US was victorious. By June US and Filipino forces had taken most of the island. On June 20, 1898 US forces sailed into Guam’s Apra Harbor unopposed took 57 Spaniards prisoner of war, left the one US citizen on the island in charge and sailed away. As assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt advocated for the assault of Cuba and prepared the Rough Riders for battle. Between June 22 and 24th US forces set up base in Santiago, Cuba. The Spanish were wily enemies with smokeless powder and hard to spot defense. Americans had to advance using a “fireteam attack” whereby a group would advance under cover of another groups fire and were ground to a halt by the siege of Santiago. Cuba had to be won by the amphibious Invasion of Guantanamo Bay on June 6-10 and the Battle of Santiago de Cuba of July 3, 1898 when the Spanish fleet was destroyed after a two month stand-off.
On August 7, 1898 US troops began
to leave Cuba with more than 75% of their force unfit for service as the result
of yellow fever. During May 1898 a
reconnaissance mission was sent to Puerto Rico and did not encounter any
resistance until August 12 when after a short battle the fighting was called
off as the result of the signing of the Peace Treaty. With defeats in Cuba and the Philippines and
both its fleets destroyed the Spanish sued for peace, hostilities were halted
on August 12, 1898 and the Treaty of Paris was signed on December 10,
1898. The United
States gained almost all of Spain's colonies, including the Philippines, Guam,
and Puerto Rico. Cuba, having been occupied as of July 17, 1898, and thus under
the jurisdiction of the United States Military Government (USMG), formed its
own civil government and attained independence on May 20, 1902, with the
announced end of USMG jurisdiction over the island. However, the United States
imposed various restrictions on the new government, including prohibiting
alliances with other countries, and reserved for itself the right of
intervention. On August 14, 1898, 11,000 ground troops were sent to
occupy the Philippines. When U.S. troops began to take the place of the Spanish
in control of the country, warfare broke out between U.S. forces and the
Filipinos resulting in the
Philippine-American War.
The war lasted
only four months but ended the Spanish Empire and began a period of American
prosperity and involvement in international affairs. The United States annexed the former Spanish
colonies of Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and Guam and a permanent naval base
was granted to the US in Guantanamo Bay after the signing of the 1903
treaties. The total number of casualties
is estimated at 10,665 dead Cubans; 345 dead, 1,645 wounded and 2,565 diseased
Americans; and 560 dead and 300-400 wounded from the Spanish Navy and 3,000
dead or wounded, 6,700 captured in the Philippines and 13,000 diseased in Cuba
from the Spanish Army. In an effort to
pay the costs of the war, Congress passed an excise tax on long-distance phone
service/ At the
time, it affected only wealthy Americans who owned telephones. However, the
Congress neglected to repeal the tax after the war ended four months later, and
the tax remained in place for over 100 years until, on August 1, 2006, it was
announced that the US would no longer collect the tax. With the exception of the genocide that
occurred later during the War of Philippine Independence, the Spanish-American
war was a low cost conflict that ended three centuries of Spanish empire and
began controversy regarding US imperialism that was aggravated by the communist
revolution Cuba against which the US has enacted sanctions while maintaining
their Permanent Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay.
VIII. Philippine War
The
Philippine-American War (1899-1902) sometimes known as the War of Philippine
Independence was an armed military conflict between the Philippines and the
United States in continuation of the Philippine struggle for independence
following the Spanish-American War. The
struggle officially began on June 2, 1899 when the Philippines declared war on
the United States and it officially ended on July 4, 1902 but remnants of the Katipunan and other resistance groups such as Muslims and Pulajanes continued hostilities until June 15, 1913. The revolution for independence actually
began a few years before the intervention of the Americans. Andres Bonificio
founded a revolutionary organization called the Katipunan
on July 7, 1892 that spread throughout the colony and led the Revolution of
1896. One of the most influential
leaders was Emilio Aguinaldo, the mayor of Cavite el Viejo, who gained control
of the surrounding area. Aguinaldo was
elected President of the insurgent government in 1897 and executed Bonificio for treason.
Aguinaldo is officially known as the first President of the
Philippines. The Revolution however went
into stalemate in 1897 and for $800,000 (Mexican) Aguinaldo agreed to go into
exile in Hong Kong. When the US invasion
began in 1899 the US convinced Aguinaldo to take up the mantle of leadership of
the revolution again, falsely assured the US would recognize Filipino
independence. Aguilando
return to Cavite on May 19, 1898 and within a few months the Philippine Army
had conquered nearly all of Spanish held ground with the exception of
Manila. On August 13, 1989 with American commanders
unaware that a peace protocol had been signed between Spain and the United
States on the previous day, American forces captured the city of Manila from
the Spanish.
Governor-General Fermin Jaudenes had made a secret agreement with the Americans
requesting to surrender only to the Americans, not to the Filipino rebels. In
order to save face, he proposed a mock battle with the Americans preceding the
Spanish surrender; the Filipinos would not be allowed to enter the city. At the beginning of the war between Spain and
America, Americans and Filipinos had been allies against Spain in all but name;
now Spanish and Americans were in a partnership that excluded the Filipino
insurgents. Fighting between American and Filipino troops almost broke out as
the former moved in to dislodge the latter from strategic positions around
Manila on the eve of the attack. Aguinaldo had been told bluntly by the
Americans that his army could not participate and would be fired upon if it
crossed into the city. The insurgents were infuriated at being denied
triumphant entry into their own capital, but Aguinaldo bided his time.
Relations continued to deteriorate, however, as it became clear to Filipinos
that the Americans were in the islands to stay. The June 12, 1898 declaration
of Philippine independence had not been recognized by either the United States
or Spain, and the Spanish government ceded the Philippines to the United States
in the 1898 Treaty of Paris,
which was signed on December 10, 1898, in consideration for an indemnity for
Spanish expenses and assets lost. On January
1, 1899 Aguinaldo was declared President of the Philippines — the only
president of what would be later called the First Philippine Republic. He later
organized a Congress at Malolos, Bulacan
to draft a constitution.
On January
20, 1899 President McKinley appointed the First Philippine Commission (the Schurman Commission), to investigate conditions in the
islands and make recommendations. On November 2,
1900 Dr. Schurman signed the following statement, "Should
our power by any fatality be withdrawn, the commission believe that the
government of the Philippines would speedily lapse into anarchy, which would
excuse, if it did not necessitate, the intervention of other powers and the
eventual division of the islands among them. Only through American occupation,
therefore, is the idea of a free, self-governing, and united Philippine
commonwealth at all conceivable”. The
conflict began on the night of February 4, 1899 when a Filipino soldier was
shot by an American soldier. The Second
Philippine Commission (the Taft Commission), appointed by McKinley on March 16,
1900, and headed by William Howard Taft, was granted legislative as well as
limited executive powers. Between September 1900 and August 1902 it issued 499
laws. A judicial system was established, including a Supreme Court, and a legal
code was drawn up to replace antiquated Spanish ordinances. A civil service was
organized. The 1901 municipal code provided for popularly elected presidents,
vice presidents, and councilors to serve on municipal boards. The municipal
board members were responsible for collecting taxes, maintaining municipal
properties, and undertaking necessary construction projects; they also elected
provincial governors.
The
Philippine Organic Act of July 1902 approved, ratified, and confirmed
McKinley's Executive Order establishing the Philippine Commission and
stipulated that a legislature would be established composed of a lower house,
the Philippine Assembly, which would be popularly elected, and an upper house
consisting of the Philippine Commission. The act also provided for extending
the United States Bill of Rights to Filipinos. On July 2 the Secretary of War
telegraphed that the insurrection against the sovereign authority of the U.S.
having come to an end, and provincial civil governments having been
established, the office of Military governor was terminated. On July 4 Theodore
Roosevelt, who had succeeded to the U.S. Presidency after the assassination of
President McKinley on September 5, 1901, proclaimed a full and complete pardon
and amnesty to all people in the Philippine archipelago who had participated in
the conflict. The war unofficially
continued for nearly a decade. The Jones Act, passed by the U.S.
Congress in 1916 to serve as the new organic law in the Philippines, promised
eventual independence and instituted an elected Philippine senate. The Tydings-McDuffie Act (officially the Philippine
Independence Act; Public Law 73-127) approved on March 24, 1934 provided for
self-government of the Philippines and for Filipino independence (from the
United States) after a period of ten years. World War II intervened, bringing
the Japanese occupation between 1941 and 1945. In 1946, the Treaty of Manila
(1946) between the governments of the U.S. and the Republic of the Philippines
provided for the recognition of the independence of the Republic of the
Philippines and the relinquishment of American sovereignty over the Philippine
Islands.
U.S. troop
strength averaged 40,000 and peaked at 74,000. Typically only 60 percent of
American troops were combat troops, with a field strength ranging from 24,000
to 44,000. A total of 126,468 US
soldiers served there. After the official end to the war, U.S. forces were
regularly engaged against Filipino guerrilla forces for another decade. Twenty-six of the 30 American generals who
served in the Philippines from 1898 to 1902 had fought in the Indian Wars. Estimates of
the Filipino forces vary between 80,000 and 100,000 with tens of thousands of
auxiliaries. Lack of weapons and ammunition
was a significant impediment to the Filipinos who were reported by the press
and Red Cross to treat their prisoners of war very well to the consternation of
the American general who arrested members of the press. In the official war years, there were 4,196
American soldiers dead, 1,020 of which were from actual combat; the remainder
died of disease, and 2,930 were wounded.
There were also 2,000 casualties that the Philippine Constabulary
suffered during the war, over one thousand of which were fatalities. It should
be noted that total Filipino casualties was at the time and still is a
highly-debated, argued, and politicized number. It is estimated that some
34,000 Filipino soldiers lost their lives and as many as 200,000 civilians may
have died directly or indirectly as a result of the war, most due to a major
cholera epidemic that broke out near its end.
Philippine military deaths are estimated at 20,000 with 16,000 actually
counted, while civilian deaths numbered between 250,000 and 1,000,000 Filipinos,
many in concentration camps.
IX. World War I
The First World War, known as the Great War, the War to End all Wars and as
World War I (abbreviated WWI) after 1939, was a world conflict lasting from August
1914 to the final Armistice on November 11, 1918. The Allied Powers (led by
Britain, France, Russia until 1917, and the United States after 1917), defeated
the Central Powers (led by the German Empire, Austro-Hungarian Empire and the
Ottoman Empire). The war caused the
disintegration of four empires (Austro-Hungarian, German, Ottoman, and
Russian), radical change in the European and Middle Eastern maps and the Hohenzollerns, the Habsburg, Romanovs
and the Ottomans together with all their ancillary aristocracies, all fell
after the war. The assassination
on June 28, 1914 of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir to the throne of
Austria-Hungary, by Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip is seen as the immediate trigger of the war. The July Crisis after the assassination
occurred when Austria-Hungary issued a ten point ultimatum to Serbia with the
intention of being unacceptable.
Austria-Hungary declared war on July 28, 1914 after Serbia only agreed
to eight of the demands. The Russian
Empire ordered a partial mobilization the next day in support of their Serbian
allies. When the German Empire began to
mobilize on July 30, 1914 France, sporting animosity from the German conquest
of Alsace-Lorraine in the Franco-Prussian War ordered French mobilization on
August 1, 1914, the same day Germany declared war on Russia. New technology such as barbed wire, improved
artillery and machine guns made moving over open ground difficult, forcing the
Western front into trenches, tanks, submarines and airplanes saw extensive
combat.
Fighting began in the African colonies where on August 7, 1914 French and
British forces invaded the German protectorate of Togoland, on August 10, 1914
German forces in South-West Africa attacked South Africa, German
colonial forces in East Africa did not surrender their guerilla warfare
campaign until several weeks after the armistice took effect in Europe. Britain successfully blockaded German ports
and Allied forces seized all German colonies in the Pacific but the German navy
terrorized the high seas. Beginning on
August 12, 1914 the Serbian Army fought the Battle of Cer
against the Austria-Hungarian invaders, successfully halting the invaders who
also had to fight the Russians and Italians.
The Eastern front of Germany was defended by only one Field Army so when
Russia attacked East Prussia it diverted forces from the Western front. The Italians did not join the war until they
had been tempted with French Tunisia by Austria-Hungary and later with the
promise of the Alpine province of South Tyrol and Dalmatian coastline by the
Allies which prompted them to declare war on Austria-Hungary on May 23, 1915
and fifteen months later on Germany. In
1915 Austria-Hungary convinced Bulgaria to help attack Serbia and beginning in
October 1915 and Serbian forces were pushed backed, losing Kosovo and
Montenegro before being evacuated to Greece.
Serbia was divided between Austria-Hungary and Bulgaria instigating an
uprising was crushed by the end of March 1917.
The Ottoman Empire was allied with the Germans and although they
defended their empire against Allied assaults they were thwarted by the
Russians in their advances into the Caucuses and they lost Mesopotamia to the
Arab Revolt.
On the Western front the German invasion plan was halted east of Paris on
September 12, 1914. Neither side proved
able to deliver a decisive blow for the next two years, although the French and
British generally suffered more casualties than the Germans. The British Army
endured the bloodiest day in its history, suffering 57,470 casualties including
19,240 dead on July 1, 1916, the first day of the Battle of the Somme. The
entire Somme offensive cost the British Army almost half a million men. In December 1916, after ten brutal months of
the Battle of Verdun, the Germans attempted to negotiate peace with the Allies,
declaring themselves the victors. U.S. President Wilson attempted to intervene,
asking both sides to state their demands. The Allies, knowing they were in a
weak bargaining position, rebuffed the offer.
After German submarines sank seven U.S. merchant ships the U.S. Congress
declared war on 6 April 1917. The 1917 Espionage Act
and the Sedition
Act of 1918 made any statements deemed "disloyal" a federal
crime. The German leadership hoped to
strike a decisive blow before significant U.S. forces arrived. The front moved to within 120 kilometers
(75 mi) of Paris. Meanwhile, Germany was falling apart at home. Anti-war marches become
frequent and morale in the army fell. Industrial output was 53% of 1913 levels.
The United States had a small army, but it drafted four million men and by
summer 1918 was sending 10,000 fresh soldiers to France every day. American
Expeditionary Force (AEF) doctrine called for the use of frontal assaults,
which had long since been discarded by British Empire and French commanders
because of the large loss of life. The
Allied counteroffensive, known as the Hundred Days Offensive, began on 8 August
1918.
The collapse of the Central Powers came swiftly. Bulgaria was the first to
sign an armistice on 29 September 1918 at Saloniki. On 30 October the Ottoman Empire
capitulated at Mudros. Austria and Hungary signed separate
armistices following the overthrow of the Habsburg monarchy. Following the
outbreak of the German Revolution, a republic was proclaimed on 9 November. The
Kaiser fled to the Netherlands. On 11 November an armistice with Germany was
signed in a railroad carriage at Compiègne. At 11
a.m. on 11 November 1918 a ceasefire came into effect. Opposing armies on the
Western Front began to withdraw from their positions. A formal state of war
between the two sides persisted for another seven months, until signing of the
Treaty of Versailles on 28
June 1919. Austria–Hungary was partitioned, largely along ethnic lines,
into several successor states including Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and
Yugoslavia, as well as adding Transylvania to the Greater Romania who was
allied with the victors. The details were contained in the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye of 10
September 1919 and the Treaty of Trianon of 4 June 1920. The Bulgarian borders were defined in the
Treaty of Neuilly of 27 November 1919. The Russian Empire, which had withdrawn from
the war in 1917 after the October Revolution, having lost much of its western
frontier to the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk of 3
March 1918 whereby the newly
independent nations of Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland were
carved from it; Bessarabia was also re-attached to the Greater Romania as it
had been a Romanian territory for more than a thousand years. The Ottoman
Empire disintegrated, and much of its non-Anatolian territory was awarded as
protectorates of various Allied powers, while the remaining Turkish core was
re-organized as the Republic of Turkey. The Ottoman Empire was to be
partitioned by the Treaty of Sèvres of 10 August
1920. This treaty was never ratified by the Sultan and was rejected by the
Turkish republican movement, leading to the Turkish Independence War and,
ultimately, to the Treaty of Lausanne of 24 July 1923.
More than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans,
were mobilized in one of the largest wars in history. Total casualties in World War I, both military and civilian, were
about 37 million: 16 million deaths and 21 million wounded. The total number of
deaths includes 9.7 million military personnel and about 6.8 million civilians.
The Entente Powers (also known as the Allies) lost 5.7 million soldiers and the
Central Powers about 4 million. 116,516
US soldiers died and 204,002 were wounded (1917-18). Germany lost 15.1% of its active male population,
Austria–Hungary lost 17.1%, and France lost 10.5%. About 750,000 German
civilians died from starvation caused by the British blockade during the
war. By the end of the war, famine had
killed approximately 100,000 people in Lebanon. The war had profound
economic consequences. In addition, a major influenza epidemic spread around
the world. Overall, the Spanish flu killed at least 50 million people. In 1914
alone, louse-borne epidemic typhus killed 200,000 in Serbia. About 8 million men surrendered and were
held in POW camps during the war, their survival rates were much better than on
the front, if they were not killed surrendering. Prisoners from the Allied armies totaled
about 1.4 million (not including Russia, which lost 2.5–3.5 million
men as prisoners.) From the Central Powers about 3.3 million men became
prisoners. Germany held 2.5 million
prisoners; Russia held 2.9 million; while Britain and France held about
720,000. Most were captured just prior to the Armistice. The U.S. held 48,000. About 15–20% of the prisoners in Russia died.
In Germany food was scarce, but only 5% died.
Despite the success of the June 1916 Brusilov
offensive in eastern Galicia, dissatisfaction with the Russian government's
conduct of the war grew. Empress
Alexandra's increasingly incompetent rule drew protests and resulted in
the murder of her favorite, Rasputin,
at the end of 1916. In March 1917, the
February Revolution led to the abdication and imprisonment of Tsar Nicholas II
and the appointment of a weak Provisional Government. On the night of 16/17 July 1918 the Tsar and
his family were killed. The new
government acceded to the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk on 3
March 1918 taking Russia out of the war and ceding vast territories,
including Finland, the Baltic provinces, parts of Poland and Ukraine to the
Central Powers. Approximately 200,000 Germans living in Volhynia and about 600,000 Jews were deported by the
Russian authorities. In 1916, an order was issued to deport around
650,000 Volga Germans to the east as well, but the Russian Revolution
prevented this from being carried out. Many pogroms accompanied the Revolution
of 1917 and the ensuing Russian Civil War, 60,000–200,000 civilian Jews
were killed in the atrocities throughout the former Russian Empire. The best
estimates of the death toll from the Russian famine of 1921 run from
5 million to 10 million people. There were about 25 million
infections and 3 million deaths from epidemic typhus in Russia from 1918 to
1922. By 1922 there were 4.5–7 million homeless children in Russia as a
result of nearly a decade of devastation from World War I, the Russian Civil
War, and the subsequent famine of 1920–22. Considerable numbers of anti-Soviet
Russians fled the country after the Revolution; by the 1930s the northern
Chinese city of Harbin had 100,000 Russians.
New taxes were levied and laws enacted, all designed to
bolster the war effort; many of which have lasted to this day. Gross Domestic
Product (GDP) increased for three Allies (Britain, Italy, and U.S.), but
decreased in France and Russia, in neutral Netherlands, and in the main three
Central Powers. The shrinkage in GDP in Austria, Russia, France, and the
Ottoman Empire reached 30 to 40%. In Austria, for example, most of the pigs
were slaughtered and, at war's end, there was no meat. All nations had increases in the government's
share of GDP, surpassing fifty percent in both Germany and France and nearly
reaching fifty percent in Britain. To pay for purchases in the United States,
Britain cashed in its extensive investments in American railroads and then
began borrowing heavily on Wall Street. President Wilson was on the verge of
cutting off the loans in late 1916, but allowed a great increase in U.S.
government lending to the Allies. The 1919 Treaty of Versailles officially ended the war
and brought into being the League of Nations on 28 June 1919. In signing the treaty, Germany acknowledged
responsibility for the war, agreeing to pay enormous war reparations and award
territory to the victory. Although US
President Woodrow Wilson drafted the Covenant of the League of Nations on 14 February 1919
US Congress refused to ratify it and the U.S., Germany and Russia were not
party to the final document of December 1924.
After 1919, the U.S.
demanded repayment of these loans, which, in part, were funded by German
reparations, which, in turn, were supported by American loans to Germany. Unable to pay the reparations with
exports (a result of territorial losses and postwar recession), Germany did so by borrowing from the United States, until
runaway inflation in the 1920s, contributed to the economic collapse of the Weimar Republic. This circular system collapsed in 1931 and the
loans were never repaid.
World War II, also known as WWII, or the Second World War, was a global military conflict that took place between 1939 and 1945. It involved nearly all the world’s nations including all of the major powers. Out of German discontent with the still controversial Treaty of Versailles, Adolf Hitler was able to
gain popularity and power. World War II was in part a continuation of the power struggle that was never fully resolved by the First World War; in fact, it
was common for Germans in the 1930s and 1940s to justify acts of international aggression because of perceived injustices imposed by the victors of the
First World War. After an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the German government in 1923, Adolf Hitler became the Chancellor of Germany in 1933.
He abolished democracy, espousing a radical, racially-motivated revision of the world order, and began a massive rearmament campaign in 1936. Ethiopia
and Italy were engaged in the Second Italo-Abyssinian War and Nationalist China and Japan were fighting the Second Sino-Japanese War. In October 1936
Germany and Italy formed the Rome-Berlin Axis and a month later Germany and Japan, each believing communism and the Soviet Union to be a threat, signed the Anti-Comintern Pact, which Italy would join in the following year. Although Germany was forbidden to acquire territory under the Versailles
Treaty Saarland was illegally reunited with Germany in early 1935 and Austria in March 1938. Distracted by the Great Depression the Allies and League of Nations did little to halt German expansion and France and Britain in fact conceded the Czech province of Sudentland to Germany against the wishes of
Czechoslovakia, in return for no more territorial demands; however Germany soon invaded all of Czechoslovakia splitting it into Bohemia, Moravia and the pro-German client state the Slovak Republic. Alarmed France and Britain guaranteed their support for Polish independence and when Italy conquered
Albania in April 1939 extended the same guarantee to Romania and Greece. In August 1939 Germany and the Soviet Union signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop non-aggression pact that secretly divided Eastern Europe between German and Soviet spheres of influence.
The start of the war is generally held to be September 1,
1939, with the German invasion of Poland and subsequent declarations of war on
Germany by most of the countries in the British Empire and Commonwealth, and by
France. On September 17, 1939, after
signing an armistice with Japan, the Soviets launched their own invasion of
eastern Poland. By early October Poland
was divided between the Germany, the Soviets, Lithuanian and Slovakia, although
Poland never surrendered. The Soviet
Union forced Baltic States to submit to the stationing of Soviet troops on
their territory under mutual assistance pacts, and on June 1940 invaded and
occupied the Baltic States. The Soviet Union and Germany entered a trade pact
in February of 1940, to help circumvent a British blockade. In April, Germany
invaded Denmark and Norway to secure shipments of iron ore from Sweden. In
Western Europe, British troops deployed to the Continent, but nether side
launched major operations against the other until April 1940. British
discontent over the Norwegian campaign led to the replacement of Prime Minister
Neville Chamberlain by Winston Churchill on May 10, 1940. On that same day, Germany invaded
France and the Low Countries overrunning the Netherlands and Belgium in a few
weeks, forcing British troops to evacuate the continent by the end of the month
and on June 10, Italy invaded, declaring war on both France and the United
Kingdom; twelve days later France surrendered. With France neutralized, Germany
began an air superiority campaign over Britain (the Battle of Britain) to
prepare for an invasion, but was thwarted and by May 11, 1941 Hitler called off
the bombing campaign. Frightened of
direct confrontation with Germany on July 14, 1940 the British attacked the
French fleet in Algeria and focused on fighting Italian troops in North
Africa. By early 1941 Hitler sent
German forces to Libya in pushing Commonwealth forces into Egypt. Using
newly captured French ports the German Navy enjoyed success against an
over-extended Royal Navy, using U-boats against British shipping in the
Atlantic while Italy began operations in the Mediterranean, initiating and
Japan increased its blockade of China, seizing several bases in the northern
part of French Indochina.
At the end of September 1940, the Tripartite Pact united
Japan, Italy, and Germany to formalize the Axis Powers. The pact stipulated
that any country, with the exception of the Soviet Union, not in the war which
attacked any Axis Power would be forced to go to war against all three and in
November 1940 Hungary, Slovakia, and Romania joined the Tripartite Pact. On June 22, 1941, Germany, along with other
European Axis members and Finland, made the fatal mistake of invading the
Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa.
The diversion of three quarters of the Axis troops and the majority of
their air forces from France and the central Mediterranean to the Eastern Front
prompted the United Kingdom to reconsider its grand strategy, forming a
military alliance with the Soviet Union against Germany and signing the
Atlantic Charter of August
14, 1941 with the United States. By
October exhausted German troops were halted outside of Moscow, ending the
blitzkrieg phase of the war. In
November 1939, the American Neutrality Act was amended to allow purchases by
the Allies and China. In 1940, the United States embargoed shipment of iron,
steel, oil and mechanical parts against Japan for their incursion into
Indo-China. On December 7 (December 8 in Asian time zones), 1941,
Japan attacked British and American holdings with near simultaneous offensives
against Southeast Asia and the Central Pacific including an attack on the
American fleet at Pearl Harbor, sinking five battleships and killing 2,400
American sailors and landings in Thailand and Malaya. These attacks prompted
the United States to formally declare war on Japan. Germany and the other
members of the Tripartite Pact responded by declaring war on the United States.
In January, the United States, United Kingdom, Soviet Union, China, and
twenty-two smaller or exiled governments issued the Declaration by United
Nations of January
1, 1942 which affirmed the Atlantic Charter. The Soviet Union maintained
their neutrality agreement with Japan
In early May 1942, the Allies, intercepted and turned
back Japanese naval forces, Japan's next plan, was to seize Midway Atoll and
lure American carriers into battle to be eliminated; but the Americans, having
broken Japanese naval codes in late May, were fully aware of the plans and
force dispositions and used this knowledge to achieve a decisive victory over
the Imperial Japanese Navy in the Midway battle. The Battle for Guadalcanal soon became a
focal point for both sides with heavy commitments of troops and ships, by the
start of 1943, the Japanese withdrew their troops. On Germany's eastern front,
in July 1943, Hitler canceled
the operation before it had achieved tactical or operational success. This decision was partially affected by the
Western Allies' invasion of Sicily launched on July 9 which, combined with
previous Italian failures, resulted in the ousting and arrest of Mussolini
later that month. In early
September 1943, the Western Allies invaded the Italian mainland, following an
Italian armistice with the Allies. Germany responded by disarming Italian
forces, seizing military control of Italian areas, and creating a series of
defensive lines. German Special Forces rescued Mussolini, who then established
a new client state in German occupied Italy named the Italian Social Republic.
The Western Allies fought through several lines until reaching the main German
defensive line in mid-November. German operations in the Atlantic also
suffered. By May 1943, as Allied counter-measures became increasingly
effective, the resulting sizable German submarine losses forced a temporary
halt of the German Atlantic naval campaign
In November 1943, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston
Churchill met with Chiang Kai-shek in Cairo and then with Joseph Stalin in
Tehran. The former conference determined the post-war return of Japanese
territory while the latter included agreement that the Western Allies would
invade Europe in 1944 and that the Soviet Union would declare war on Japan
within three months of Germany's defeat.
On June 6, 1944 (known as D-Day), the Western Allies invaded northern
France and Paris was liberated on 25 August.
The Soviets attacked through Hungary.
In mid-January 1945, the Soviets attacked in Poland, and overran East
Prussia. U.S., British, and Soviet leaders met in Yalta Conference of February 4-11, 1945
where they agreed to establish a United Nations and to occupy post-war Germany,
and that the Soviet Union would join the war against Japan three months after
victory in Europe. In February, the
Soviets invaded Silesia and Pomerania, while Western Allied forces entered
western Germany and closed to the Rhine River, the two forces linked up on Elbe
River on April 25. On April 12, U.S. President Roosevelt died; he was
succeeded by Harry Truman. Benito Mussolini was killed by Italian partisans on
April 28. Two days later, Hitler committed suicide, and was succeeded by Grand
Admiral Karl Donitz. German forces surrendered in Italy on
April 29 and in Western Europe on May 7. On the Eastern Front, Germany
surrendered to the Soviets on May 8. A German Army Group resisted in Prague
until May 11. In the Pacific theater, American forces
captured the Philippines by March and moved toward Japan, taking Iwo Jima by March, 1945
and Okinawa by June. On July 11, the Allied leaders met in Potsdam, Germany and
in the Protocol of Proceedings of August 1, 1945
reiterated that "the alternative for the unconditional surrender of Japan
is prompt and utter destruction" When Japan rejected the Potsdam terms,
the United States sent B-29 Super fortress Enola Gay to drop atomic bombs on
the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 & 9. Between the
two bombs, the Soviets invaded Japanese-held Manchuria, as agreed at Yalta. On
August 15, 1945 Japan surrendered, with the official signing aboard the deck of
the American battleship USS Missouri on September 2, 1945, ending the war.
The
war involved the mobilization of over 100 million men. Over seventy million
people, the majority civilians, were killed, making it the deadliest conflict
in human history. Estimates for the total casualties of
the war vary, but most suggest that some 62 million people died in the war,
including about 25 million soldiers and 37 million civilians Many civilians died because of disease, starvation,
massacres, bombing and deliberate genocide. The Soviet Union lost around 27
million people during the war, about half of all World War II casualties and
China 10 million. Poland suffered the most deaths in proportion to its
population of any country, losing approximately 5.6 million out of a pre-war
population of 34.8 million (16%). Of
the total deaths in World War II, approximately 80 percent were on the Allied
side (mostly Soviet and Chinese) and 20 percent on the Axis side. It is
estimated that 9-12 million civilians died in Nazi concentration camps, 1.5
million by bombs, 7 million in Europe from other causes, and 7.5 million in
China from other causes. The Holocaust
was the systematic genocide of 6 million Jews and other groups in death camps,
called the Final Solution (Endlosung) including 2
million ethnic Poles, the Roma, Slavs, and 2 million others deemed unworthy of
life such as the mentally ill, Soviet POWs, and gay men. The Japanese military
murdered from 3 million to over 10 million civilians, mostly Chinese. The death rate of Western prisoners
was 27.1 percent (for American POWs, 37 percent), seven times that of POWs
under the Germans and Italians; 37,583 prisoners from the UK, 28,500 from the
Netherlands and 14,473 from United States were released after the surrender of
Japan, the number for the Chinese was only 56.
10-20 million Chinese and
Javanese were mobilized by the Japanese army for slave labor and few returned.
The U.S. and Canadian governments interned 150,000 Japanese-Americans, as well
as nearly 11,000 German and Italian residents of the U.S. A total of 16.1 million US citizens served an
average of 33 months in World War II, 73% abroad. An estimated 292,000 American men and women were killed in action and another
114,000 died of other causes and 671,000 were wounded.
In 1938, the Western Allies (United Kingdom, France,
Poland and British Dominions) had a 30% larger population and a 30% higher
gross domestic product than the European Axis (Germany and Italy); if colonies
are included, giving the Allies a more than a 5:1 advantage in population and
nearly 2:1 advantage in GDP. In Asia at the same time, China had roughly six
times the population of Japan, but only an 89% higher GDP. To win the war the US economy was dedicated
to the war effort and government expenditures and debts dramatically
increased. In an effort to maintain international peace, the Allies
formed the United Nations, which officially came into existence on October 24,
1945, and adopted The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, as a
common standard of achievement for all member nations. The alliance between the
Western Allies and the Soviet Union had begun to deteriorate even before the
war was over, and the two powers quickly established their own spheres of
influence that materialized into the formation of the American-led NATO and the
Soviet-led Warsaw Pact military alliances and the start of the Cold War that
would last 46 years.. Responding
to Europe's calls for help, the international community established the
International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the International Bank for Reconstruction
and Development (the World Bank) on December 27, 1945. On April 2, 1948,
through the enactment of the Economic Cooperation Act, the United States
responded by creating the Marshall Plan (1948-52). In 1947 after hostilities
had ceased the United States offered $20 billion for reconstruction efforts in
Europe aimed at reducing the hunger, homelessness, sickness, unemployment, and
political restlessness of the 270 million people in sixteen nations in West
Europe. At the beginning of the Korean War (June 25, 1950); after June 30,
1951, the remaining aid was folded into the Mutual Defense Assistance Program.
On December 10, 1953, George C. Marshall, the US Secretary of State who drafted
the plan, received the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway.
The Korean War
lasted from June 25, 1950 to cease-fire on July 27, 1953 it was the first proxy
war in the Cold War (1945–91). Colonized
by Japan after the First Sino-Japanese War (1894-96) as a protectorate under Eulsa Treaty of 1905 and then annexed under the Japan-Korea
Annexation Treaty of 1910 by January 1945 Koreans were 32% of Japan’s labor
force and 25% of the people killed by the atomic bomb dropped on
Hiroshima. Promised a free and independent
nation by Churchill, Chiang Kai-shek and Franklin D. Roosevelt in the Cairo
Conference of November 1943 the Allies reneged at the Potsdam Conference of
July – August 1945 unilaterally deciding to divide Korea, without consulting
the Koreans. On August 10, 1945 the Korean peninsula was divided at the 38th
parallel. The US–USSR Joint Commission,
agreed at the Moscow Conference of Foreign Ministers (October 1945), again
excluding the Koreans, that the country would become independent after a five-year
trusteeship. The resultant
anti-communist South Korean government,
controlled via the United States Army Military Government in Korea
(USAMGIK 1945–48), promulgated a national political constitution (17 July 1948)
elected a president, the American-educated strongman Syngman
Rhee (20 July 1948), and established the Republic of South Korea on 15 August
1948. Likewise, in the Russian Korean Zone of Occupation, the USSR established
a Communist North Korean government led by Kim Il-sung. President Rhee's régime expelled communists
and leftists from southern national politics. The post-war Truth and
Reconciliation Commission estimated that the anti–communist “Bodo League”, abetted by
the USAMGIK, was responsible for the régime’s assassination of 10,000 to 100,000,
some estimate as high as 1.2 million, leftist “enemies of the state”, whom they
imprisoned and dumped in trenches, mines, and the sea; before and after the 25
June 1950 North Korean invasion.
U.S. troops
withdrew from Korea in 1949 leaving the South Korean army relatively
ill-equipped. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union sent large amounts of military aid to
North Korea to facilitate the invasion planned by Kim Il-Sung. Under
the guise of counter-attacking a South Korean provocation raid, the North
Korean Army (KPA) crossed the 38th parallel, behind artillery fire, at Sunday
dawn of 25 June 1950. The KPA said that Republic of Korea Army (ROK Army)
troops, under command of the régime of the "bandit traitor Syngman Rhee", had crossed the border first and that they would arrest and
execute Rhee. In the past year, both Korean armies had continually harassed each other with skirmishes and each
continually raided the other country across the 38th-parallel border, as in a
civil war. Hours after the invasino, the United Nations Security Council unanimously
condemned the North Korean aggression against the Republic of South Korea
(ROK), with UNSC Resolution 82, specifically authorized military assistance to
the ROK in Resolutions 83-85 beginning on June 27, 1950. The resolutions had been adopted whereas the
USSR, a veto-wielding power, had been boycotting the Council meetings since
January of that year, protesting that the (Taiwan) Republic of China, and not the (mainland) People's Republic of China held a permanent seat
in the UN Security Council. The USSR challenged the legitimacy of the
UN-approved war, because (i) the ROK Army
intelligence upon which Resolution 83 is based came from US Intelligence; (ii)
North Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) was not invited as a
sitting temporary member of the UN, which violated UN Charter Article 32; and
(iii) the Korean warfare was beyond UN Charter scope, because the initial
North–South border fighting was classed as civil war.
The North Korean
Army launched the "Fatherland Liberation War" with a comprehensive
air–land invasion using 231,000 soldiers, who captured scheduled objectives and
territory which they achieved with 274 T-34-85 tanks, some 150 Yak fighters, 110 attack bombers, 200
artillery pieces, 78 Yak trainers, and 35 reconnaissance aircraft. Additional
to the invasion force, the KPA had 114 fighters, 78 bombers, 105 T-34-85 tanks,
and some 30,000 soldiers stationed in North Korea. At sea, although comprising
only several small warships, the North Korean and South Korean navies fought in
the war as sea-borne artillery for their in-country armies. In contrast, the
ROK Army defenders had 98,000 soldiers (65,000 combat, 33,000 support), no tanks, and a twenty-two piece air force
comprising 12 liaison-type and 10 AT6 advanced-trainer airplanes. There were no
large foreign military garrisons in Korea at invasion time—but there were large
US garrisons and air forces in Japan. On 27 June 1950, President Truman ordered US air and sea forces to help
the South Korean régime. On 5 July 1950,
Task Force Smith attacked the North Koreans at Osan
but without weapons capable of destroying the North Korean's tanks and the KPA
progressed southwards, by August, the KPA had pushed back the ROK Army and the
US Eighth Army to the Pusan city vicinity, in southeast Korea. In their southward
advance, the KPA killed civil servants and intellectuals. On 20 August, Gen.
MacArthur warned North Korean Leader Kim Il-Sung that he was responsible for
the KPA’s atrocities.
By September, the UN Command controlled only the Pusan
city perimeter, about 10% of Korea. The US attacked KPA supplies and was
steadily reinforced from Japan and San Francisco. By early September 1950, ROK Army and UN Command
forces were prepared—they out-numbered the KPA 180,000 to 100,000 soldiers, and
then counterattacked. On September 15,
1950 an amphibious assault was launched on Incheon
and 70,000 US and 8.700 ROK soldiers quickly captured the city. US cavalry recaptured Seoul and on October 1,
1950 UN Command repelled the KPA across the 38th parallel, followed
by ROK forces and six day later, UN command followed ROK forces northward
capturing Pyongyang on October 19, 1950.
After two minor skirmishes on October 25th, the first major
Chinese–American battles occurred on 1 November 1950; deep in North Korea,
thousands of PVA soldiers encircled and attacked scattered UN Command units
with three-prong assaults—from the north, northwest, and west—and overran the
defensive-position flanks in the Battle of Unsan. The Chinese Winter Offensive overwhelmed the
UN Command forces and the PVA and KPA conquered Seoul on 4 January 1951. On 7 March 1951, the PVA and the KPA were
expelled from the South Korean capital city on 14 March 1951. This was the
city's fourth conquest in a years’ time, leaving it a ruin; the 1.5 million
pre-war populations was down to 200,000, and the people were suffering from
severe food shortages. The Chinese
counterattacked in April 1951, with the Chinese Spring Offensive with about
700,000 men. The UN counterattacked and
regained “Line Kansas”, just north of the 38th parallel beginning a stalemate
that lasted until the armistice of 1953.
Protracted armistice negotiations began 10 July 1951 at Kaesong but
hostilities continued until the cease fire of July 27, 1953.
In the
three-year Korean War (1950–53), the US Air Force (USAF) and the UN Command air
forces extensively bombed the cities and villages of North Korea and parts of
South Korea. Eighteen of North Korea’s
cities were more than 50% destroyed. An
estimated 36,940 US troops were killed: 33,686 battle deaths, 2,830 non-battle
deaths, and 17,730 deaths of Defense Department personnel outside the Korean
theatre. There were also 8,142 US personnel listed as Missing In Action (MIA) during the war. 600,000 Korean soldiers died in the conflict
according to US estimates. According to
figures published in the Soviet Union, 11.1% of the total population of North
Korea perished: 100,000–1,500,000 Chinese People’s Volunteer Army (PVA)
soldiers were killed, most estimate some 400,000 killed; 214,000–520,000 Korean
People’s Army (KPA) were killed; most estimate some 500,000; and ROK Civilians some 245,000 soldiers
and 415,000 civilians killed; Total civilians killed some 1,500,000–3,000,000;
most estimate some 2,000,000 killed. A
major, problematic negotiation was prisoner of war (POW) repatriation. Many PVA
and KPA soldiers refused to be repatriated back to the north. The United
States Senate Subcommittee on Korean War Atrocities reported that “...
two-thirds of all American prisoners of war in Korea died as a result of war
crimes”. The North Korean Government reported that of 70,000 ROK Army POWs only
8,000 were repatriated. South Korea repatriated 76,000 KPA POWs. Besides the
12,000 US–UN Command forces POWs dead in captivity, the KPA might have
press-ganged some 50,000 ROK POWs into the North Korean military. UN Command ceased fire on 27 July 1953, with
the battle line approximately at the 38th parallel. Upon agreeing to the
armistice, the belligerents established the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ),
running along the 38th parallel. Rhee’s
ROK government never signed the armistice and North Korea unilaterally withdrew
from the armistice on 27 May 2009.
XII. Vietnam War
The Vietnam War,
also known as the Second Indochina War,
was a Cold War military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia
from September 26, 1959 to April 30, 1975.
France had began its conquest of Indo-China in
1859 and by 1888 Vietnam and Cambodia were made colonies of France who was
conquered by Germany in 1940 and the French authorities were interned by the
Japanese on March 9, 1945. After the
Japanese surrender, Ho Chi Minh, leader of the Viet Minh communist
revolutionaries, declared the independent Democratic Republic of Vietnam before
a crowd of 500,000 in Hanoi on September 2, 1945 and the Viet Minh won
elections in north and central Vietnam.
However allied victors determined the territory belonged to the French
triggering the First Indochina War (1946-53) that spread to Laos and Cambodia. Chinese military advisors began assisting the
Viet Minh in July 1950. The US responded
by supporting the French and by 1954, the U.S. had supplied 300,000 small arms
and spent US$1 billion, 80 percent of the cost of the war. The Geneva Conference of July 21, 1954
negotiated a ceasefire agreement between the French and the Viet Minh granting
independence to Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam.
Vietnam was to be temporarily partitioned along the 17th
parallel pending national elections to be held by July 20, 1956.
In the north, the Viet Minh established a socialist
state, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, and engaged in a drastic land reform
program in which an estimated eight thousand perceived "class
enemies" were executed. In 1956 the Communist Party leaders of Hanoi
admitted to "excesses" in implementing this program and restored a
large amount of the land to the original owners. In the south a non-communist state was
established under the Emperor Bao Dai, a former
puppet of the French and the Japanese, Ngô Đình Diệm became his
prime minister. In June 1955, Prime Minister Ngo Dinh
Diem of the State of Vietnam (South Vietnam) announced that elections would not
be held. Beginning in the summer of
1955, Diem launched the "Denounce the Communists" campaign, during
which communists and other anti-government elements were arrested, imprisoned,
tortured, or executed and about 12,000 suspected opponents of Diem were killed
in the years 1955–1957 and by the end of 1958 an estimated 40,000 political
prisoners had been jailed. In a referendum on the future of the monarchy, Diem
rigged the poll supervised by his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu and was accredited with 98.2 percent of the vote,
including 133% in Saigon. His American advisers had recommended a more modest
winning margin of "60 to 70 percent." Diem, however, viewed the
election as a test of authority. On 26 October 1955, Diem declared the new
Republic of Vietnam, with himself as president. Ho Chi Minh responded, with
"armed propaganda" and our hundred Diem appointed village chiefs were
assassinated, 20 percent, by 1958.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower wrote that, in 1954,
"80 per cent of the population would have voted for the Communist Ho Chi
Minh". The Domino Theory, which
argued that if one country fell to communist forces, then all of the
surrounding countries would follow, was echoed by John F. Kennedy, then a U.S.
senator, who said in a speech to the American Friends of Vietnam: "Burma,
Thailand, India, Japan, the Philippines and obviously Laos and Cambodia are
among those whose security would be threatened if the Red Tide of Communism
overflowed into Vietnam”. Under the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 that created
the subversive USAID Bureau for Asia and the Near East (ANE) President Kennedy
initiated the Strategic Hamlet Program in 1961 with the South Vietnamese
attempting to resettle the rural population into fortified camps. Around 52,000 Vietnamese civilians moved from
south to north and 800,000 people fled north. By 1963, there were 16,000
American military personnel in South Vietnam, up from Eisenhower's 900
advisors, U.S military advisers were embedded at every level of the South
Vietnamese armed forces. The CIA
supported generals planning to remove Diem and on November 2, 1963 President
Diem was overthrown and executed, shortly thereafter on November 22, 1963
Kennedy was assassinated. In response to
several naval confrontations President Johnson signed the Gulf of Tonkin
Resolution, officially the Southeast Asia Resolution, Public Law 88-408 on August 7, 1964 giving the president power to
conduct military operations in Southeast Asia without declaring war. Escalation of the Vietnam War officially
started on the morning of 31 January 1965 and "Rolling Thunder"
deluged the north with a million tons of missiles, rockets and bombs, on 8
March 1965, 3,500 United States Marines were dispatched to South Vietnam to
protect US Air Force bases and by December that number had increased to 200,000.
The political situation in South Vietnam began to stabilize
somewhat with the coming to power of Vice President Nguyen Cao Ky and President Nguyen Van Thieu in 1967 who remained president until 1975.
In January 1968, the North Vietnamese launched the
surprise Tet Offensive sacking over 100 cities. Suffering losses at the polls Johnson
declined to run for a second term.
Severe communist losses during the Tet
Offensive allowed U.S. President Richard M. Nixon to begin troop withdrawals.
His plan, called the Nixon Doctrine or Vietnamization,
was to build South Vietnam defenses.
Nixon also began to pursue détente with the Soviet Union and
rapprochement with the People's Republic of China. This policy helped to
decrease global tensions. Détente led to nuclear arms reduction on the part of
both superpowers. In September 1969, Ho Chi Minh died at age seventy-nine. In
1970, Prince Sihanouk of Cambodia was deposed by his pro-American Prime
Minister Lon Nol, the country's borders were closed,
and the U.S. and South Vietnamese launched incursions into Cambodia to attack
communist bases and buy time for South Vietnam.
Vietnamization was tested by the Easter
Offensive of 1972, a massive conventional invasion of South Vietnam that
quickly overran the northern provinces in coordination
with other forces attacking from Cambodia.
U.S. troop withdrawals continued but American airpower came to the
rescue with Operation Linebacker, and the offensive was halted. However, it
became clear that without American airpower South Vietnam could not survive.
The last remaining American ground troops were withdrawn in August of 1972. The Paris Peace Accords Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring
Peace in Vietnam of January 17,
1973 officially ending direct U.S. involvement in Vietnam. A
cease-fire was declared across North and South Vietnam. U.S. POWs were
released. The agreement guaranteed the territorial integrity of Vietnam and
called for national elections in the North and South, stipulating a sixty-day
period for the total withdrawal of U.S. forces and on June 4, 1973, the U.S.
Senate passed the Case-Church Amendment to prohibit further intervention in
Vietnam.
At the start of 1975 the South Vietnamese had
three times the artillery and twice the tanks and armored cars as the
opposition; they also had 1,400 aircraft and a two-to-one numerical superiority
in combat troops over their Communist enemies. Nevertheless, they faced a
well-organized, highly determined and well-funded North Vietnam and by the end
of April, the Army of the Republic of South Vietnam had collapsed on all
fronts. In 1976 North and South Vietnam were unified. The Pathet Lao
overthrew the royalist government of Laos in December 1975. Phnom
Penh, the capital of Cambodia, fell to the Khmer Rouge
on 17 April 1975 and over the next four years the Khmer Rouge would enact a
genocidal policy that would kill over one-fifth of all Cambodians, or more than
a million people. After repeated border clashes in 1978, Vietnam invaded
Democratic Kampuchea (Cambodia) and ousted the Khmer Rouge in the
Cambodian–Vietnamese War (1975-79) ending the Cambodian genocide. In response, China invaded Vietnam in 1979.
The two countries fought a brief border war, known as the Third Indochina War or the Sino-Vietnamese War. From 1978 to 1979, when
some 450,000 ethnic Chinese
left Vietnam by boat as refugees or were expelled across the land border with
China. They established the Lao People's
Democratic Republic. More than 3 million people fled from Vietnam, Laos, and
Cambodia, many as "boat people". Most Asian countries were unwilling
to accept refugees. Since 1975, an estimated 1.4 million refugees from Vietnam
and other Southeast Asian countries have been resettled to the United States.
The war exacted a
huge human cost in terms of fatalities, including 3 to 4 million Vietnamese
from both sides, 1.5 to 2 million Laotians and Cambodians, and 58,193 U.S.
soldiers. In 1995, the Vietnamese government reported that its military forces,
including irregulas suffered 1.1 million dead and
600,000 wounded during Hanoi's conflict with the United States. The U.S.
military has estimated that between 200,000 and 250,000 South Vietnamese
soldiers died in the war. Civilian
deaths were put at two million in the North and South, where 17% of the
population perished. Estimates of
civilian deaths caused by American bombing in Operation Rolling Thunder range
from 52,000 to 182,000. More than 3 million Americans served in Vietnam, by
war's end, 58,193 US
soldiers were killed, including 2,000 Missing in Action (MIA),
more than 150,000 were wounded, and at least 21,000 were permanently disabled.
Approximately 830,000 Vietnam veterans suffered symptoms of posttraumatic
stress disorder. Approximately 320,000 South Korean soldiers were sent to
Vietnam, each serving a one year tour of duty. Maximum troop levels peaked at
50,000 in 1968 however all were withdrawn by 1973, more than 5,000 South
Koreans were killed and 11,000 were injured during the war. Australia’s peak commitment was 7,672 combat
troops, New Zealand's 552. Some 10,450 Filipino troops were dispatched to South
Vietnam. In 1991, Russian officials acknowledged that the Soviet Union had
stationed up to 3,000 troops in Vietnam during the war. An estimated 125,000
Americans fled to Canada to avoid the Vietnam draft, and approximately 50,000
American servicemen deserted. In 1977, United States President Jimmy Carter granted
a full, complete and unconditional pardon to all Vietnam-era draft evaders. In
1961 and 1962, the Kennedy administration authorized the use of chemicals to
destroy rice crops. Between 1961 and 1967, the U.S. Air Force sprayed 20
million U.S. gallons (75,700,000 L) of concentrated herbicides over 6
million acres (24,000 km2) of crops and trees, affecting an
estimated 13% of South Vietnam's land. In 1965, 42% of all herbicide was
sprayed over food crops. As of 2006, the Vietnamese government estimates that
there are over 4,000,000 victims of dioxin poisoning in Vietnam. In some areas
of southern Vietnam dioxin levels remain at over 100 times the accepted
international standard. Between 1965 and 1975, the United States spent $111
billion on the war ($686 billion in FY2008 dollars).
The Persian
Gulf War from 2 August 1990 to 28 February 1991, was also known as the
Gulf War, the First Gulf War, Operation Desert Shield (defending Saudi
territory), Operation Desert Storm (the liberation of Kuwait, by U.S. Forces,
Operation Granby by the British, Operation Friction by the French and by Saddam
Hussein as the Mother of all Battles was a conflict between Iraq and a
coalition force of approximately 30 nations led by the United States and
mandated by the United Nations in order to liberate Kuwait. U.S.-Iraq relations had always been rocky as
the result of Soviet support after a period of neutrality after the invasion of
Iran the US became a supporter of Iraq in the Iran-Iraq War (1980-88). By the time of the ceasefire Iraq was
bankrupt and heavily indebted to Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Iraq pressured
both nations to forgive the debts, but they refused. Kuwait was also accused by
Iraq of exceeding its OPEC quotas and driving down the price of oil, thus
further hurting the Iraqi economy, which
it claimed was aggravated by Kuwait slant-drilling across the border into Iraq's
Ramallah oil field. The British had
artificially divided the borders of Iraq and Kuwait in 1899 limiting Iraq
access to the coast, and Iraq refused to recognize Kuwait until 1963. In early July 1990 Iraq openly threatened to
take military action. On the 23rd, the CIA reported that Iraq had moved 30,000
troops to the Iraq-Kuwait border, and the U.S. naval fleet in the Persian Gulf
was placed on alert. On the 31st,
negotiations between Iraq and Kuwait in Jeddah failed violently. On August 2,
1990 Iraq launched an invasion with its warplanes, bombing Kuwait City, the
Kuwaiti capital. The main thrust was conducted by commandos deployed by
helicopters and boats to attack the city, while other divisions seized the
airports and two airbases. Kuwait did not have its forces on alert, and was caught
unaware. After two days of intense combat, most of the Kuwaiti Armed Forces
were either overrun by the Iraqi Republican Guard, or had escaped to
neighboring Saudi Arabia.
The military hypocrisy that goaded Saddam Hussein to invade Kuwait was
precipitated by Operation Just Cause, an illegal U.S. military invasion of
Panama that deposed Manuel Noriega in December 1989. The operation involved 27,684 U.S. troops and
over 300 aircraft against the 3,000 members of the Panama Defense Force (PDF)
Bush. The US lost 23 soldiers and the
Panamanian soldiers 50, at least 300 civilians died from the invasion and
15,000 were displaced of whom only 3,000 were compensated. On December 22 the
Organization of American States passed a resolution deploring the invasion and
calling for withdrawal of U.S. troops. A similar resolution was passed on
December 29 by the United Nations General Assembly. Earlier, a Security Council
resolution condemning the invasion had been vetoed by the United States, United
Kingdom and France. Under the Torrijos-Carter treaties, the United States was scheduled
to hand over the administration of the canal to Panama on January 1, 1990. Executive
Order 12710 Termination of emergency with respect to Panama was
signed: April 5, 1990. The false arrest
of Former Panamanian President Manuel Antonio Noriega was a grave breech of
Art. XI (2,4) Panama Canal Treaty of 1977 that
specifically grants all jurisdiction of criminal justice functions regarding Panamanians
to Panama. After his release Noriega was
sent to serve equally false charges in France.
George H.
Bush signed Executive Order 12722 Blocking Iraqi
government property and prohibiting transactions with Iraq on August 2,
1990. Within hours of the invasion,
Kuwaiti and US delegations requested a meeting of the UN Security Council,
which passed Resolution 660, condemning the invasion and demanding a withdrawal
of Iraqi troops. On 3 August the Arab League passed its own resolution, which
called for a solution to the conflict from within the League, and warned
against outside intervention. On 6 August UN Resolution 661 placed economic
sanctions on Iraq. United Nations Security Council Resolution 665 followed
soon after, which authorized a naval blockade to enforce the economic sanctions
against Iraq. It said the “use of measures commensurate to the specific
circumstances as may be necessary … to halt all inward and outward maritime
shipping in order to inspect and verify their cargoes and destinations and to
ensure strict implementation of resolution 661”. Out of fear the Iraqi army
could launch an invasion of Saudi Arabia, U.S.
President George H. W. Bush quickly announced that the U.S. would launch a
"wholly defensive" mission to prevent Iraq from invading Saudi Arabia
under the codename Operation Desert
Shield beginning on August 7, 1990 at the request of its monarch, King
Fahd. Military buildup reached 543,000
troops, twice the number used in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. A series of UN Security Council resolutions
and Arab League resolutions were passed regarding the invasion of Kuwait by
Saddam Hussein's Iraq. One of the most important was Resolution 678, passed on
29 November 1990, which gave Iraq a withdrawal deadline until 15 January 1991,
and authorized “all necessary means to uphold and implement Resolution 660,”
and a diplomatic formulation authorizing the use of force if Iraq fail to
comply.
The United States assembled a coalition of forces to join
it in opposing Iraq's aggression, consisting of forces from 34 countries: Members of the Coalition included Argentina, Australia,
Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belgium, Canada, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Egypt, France,
Greece, Honduras, Hungary, Italy, Kuwait, Morocco, Netherlands, New Zealand,
Niger, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Romania,
Saudi Arabia, Senegal, South Korea, Spain, Syria, Turkey, United Arab Emirates,
United Kingdom, and the United States of America. Although they did not contribute any forces,
Japan and Germany made financial contributions totaling $10 billion and $6.6
billion respectively. US troops represented 73% of the coalition’s 956,600
troops in Iraq. On 12 January
1991 the United States Congress authorized the use of military force to drive
Iraq out of Kuwait. The votes were 52-47 in the US Senate, and 250-183 in the
US House of Representatives. These were the closest margins in authorizing
force by the Congress since the War of 1812. Soon after, the other states in
the coalition followed suit. On January
17, 1991, a day after
the deadline set in Resolution 678 the coalition launched a massive air
campaign, beginning Operation Desert
Storm with more than 1,000 sorties launching per day beginning on
January 17, 1991 the coalition flew over 100,000 sorties, dropping 88,500 tons
of bombs. On January 21, 1991 President
George Bush Sr. Signed Executive Order 12744 Designation of
Arabian Peninsula areas, airspace, and adjacent waters as a combat zone. On January 23, Iraq dumped 400
million gallons of crude oil into the Persian Gulf, causing the largest oil
spill in history. On January 29, Iraq
attacked and occupied the lightly defended Saudi city of Khafji
with tanks and infantry. The Battle of Khafji ended
two days later when the Iraqis were driven back by Saudi and Qatari forces,
supported by the United States Marine Corps with close air support and
extensive artillery fire. Casualties were heavy on both sides.
The ground phase of the war was given the official
designation Operation Desert Sabre, beginning in late
January. On February 22, 1991, Iraq
agreed to a Soviet-proposed cease-fire agreement. The agreement called for Iraq
to withdraw troops to pre-invasion positions within six weeks following a total
cease-fire, and called for monitoring of the cease-fire and withdrawal to be
overseen by the UN Security Council. The Coalition rejected the proposal, but
said that retreating Iraqi forces would not be attacked], and gave
twenty-four hours for Iraq to begin withdrawing forces. On February 24, British
and American armored forces crossed the Iraq/Kuwait border and entered Iraq in
large numbers. On February 26, Iraqi
troops began retreating from Kuwait, after they had
set its oil fields on fire (737 oil wells were set on fire). A long convoy of
retreating Iraqi troops formed along the main Iraq-Kuwait highway. Although
they were retreating, this convoy was bombed so extensively by Coalition air
forces that it came to be known as the Highway of Death. Hundreds of Iraqi
troops were killed. Forces from the United States, the United Kingdom, and
France continued to pursue retreating Iraqi forces over the border and back
into Iraq, fighting frequent battles which resulted in massive losses for the
Iraqi side and light losses on the coalition side, eventually moving to within
150 miles (240 km) of Baghdad before withdrawing from the Iraqi border. One hundred hours after the ground campaign
started, on February 28, President Bush declared a cease-fire, and he also
declared that Kuwait had been liberated.
On March 10, 1991, 540,000 American troops began to move out of the
Persian Gulf and on July 25, 1991 the U.S. war was concluded in Executive Order 12771 Revoking
earlier orders with respect to Kuwait. Only a few entrenched
commandoes remained in US military bases in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia where US
and British air forces and Marines enforced a trade embargo against Iraq and
made regular covert bombing incursions into the Iraqi no fly zone, north of the
36th parallel and south of the 32nd parallel, killing at least 100 people every
year.
Iraqi troops numbered
approximately 545,000 to 600,000 however many of the Iraqi troops were young,
under-resourced, and poorly trained conscripts. The Coalition committed
540,000 troops, and a further 100,000 Turkish troops were deployed along the Turkish-Iraqi
border. This caused a significant force dilution of the Iraqi military by
forcing it to deploy its forces along all its borders. An estimated 1,000 Kuwaiti civilians killed during the
Iraqi occupation in addition to 300,000 refugees. The final number of Iraqi civilians killed was
2,278, while 5,965 were reported wounded and between 20,000 and 26,000 military
personnel, were killed in the conflict, while 75,000 Iraqi soldiers were
wounded. U.S. forces suffered 148 battle-related deaths (35 to
friendly fire), with one pilot listed as MIA (his
remains were found and identified in August 2009). A further 145 Americans died
in non-combat accidents. The UK suffered 47 deaths (9 to friendly fire), France
two, and the Arab countries, not including Kuwait, suffered 37 deaths (18
Saudis, 10 Egyptians, 6 UAE, and 3 Syrians). At least 605 Kuwaiti soldiers were
still missing 10 years after their capture. In all, 190 coalition
troops were killed by Iraqi fire during the war, 113 of whom were American, out
of a total of 358 coalition deaths. Another 44 soldiers were killed, and 57
wounded, by friendly fire. 145 soldiers died of exploding munitions, or
non-combat accidents. The number of
coalition wounded in combat seems to have been 776, including 458 Americans.
However, as of the year 2000, 183,000 U.S. veterans of the Gulf War, more than
a quarter of the U.S. troops who participated in War, have been declared
permanently disabled by the Department of Veterans Affairs for reason of
serious neurological symptoms theoretically caused by exposure to depleted
uranium, chemical weapons, anthrax vaccines given to deploying soldiers, and/or
infectious diseases. The cost of the war to
the United States was calculated by the United States Congress to be $61.1
billion. About $52 billion of that amount was paid by different countries
around the world: $36 billion by Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf
States; $16 billion by Germany and Japan (which sent no combat forces due to
their constitutions). About 25% of Saudi Arabia's contribution was paid in the
form of in-kind services to the troops, such as food
and transportation. U.S. troops represented about 74% of the combined force,
and the global cost was therefore higher.
XIV. Cambodia, Rwanda
and Yugoslavia
In the 1990s there was renewed enthusiasm for
war crime tribunals to combat impunity and punish the perpetrators of torture,
genocide and grave breaches of international humanitarian law. Military tribunals have been constituted
during wars, in their aftermath and during colonial occupations and military
dictatorships, for the military to try enemy combatants and civilians. Generally, courts-martial are reserved for
the discipline of uniformed soldiers of the military service holding the
trial. The International Military
Tribunal for Germany in Nuremburg (1945-47) and the International Military
Tribunal for the Far East in Tokyo (1946-48) were constituted after World War
II to try major war criminal from the defeated Axis Powers in Germany and
Japan. At the time the trials were
conducted, they were enormously controversial among Germans who initially
dismissed the proceedings as political show trials. The Nuremberg trials did
not significantly enable Germans to come to grips with the horrific crimes that
were committed by the Nazi government. This reckoning only occurred decades
later when a new generation began to ask questions about individual
responsibility during the Third Reich.
In the Far East, after the war, the Allies were very reliant upon Japanese
administrators for their colonial protectorates and only the highest ranking
officers were tried. Although the trials
leave an interesting record documenting the war crime of leadership in
subsequent military conflicts the military tribunal fell out of use until the
1990s.
The Security Council created two ad-hoc
international criminal tribunals, the International Criminal Tribunal for the
former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in UN Security Council resolution 808 (1993) and the International Criminal Tribunal for
Rwanda (ICTR) in Security Council resolution 955 (1994) to try alleged perpetrators of genocide, war
crimes, crimes against humanity, and other serious violations of international
humanitarian law in those particular conflicts.
On April 30, 1994 the U.S. passed the Cambodian Genocide Justice Act to
provide funding for the trial of crimes against humanity committed by the Khmer
Rouge regime in the 1975-79 and the Cambodian Tribunal was constituted in the
Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia. In 1998, more than 150 countries completed
negotiations to establish the International Criminal Court (ICC), a permanent
international court charged with prosecuting war crimes, crimes against
humanity, and genocide. In August 2001,
an Ad Hoc Human Rights Court on East Timor was established in Indonesia. In 2002, taking a different
"hybrid" approach, the United Nations signed an agreement with the
government of Sierra Leone to create the Special Court for Sierra Leone. In 2004 the Iraqi Governing Council drafted a
law to establish a domestic war crimes tribunal to prosecute the former Iraqi
leadership for crimes including genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes,
torture, "disappearances," and summary and arbitrary executions
committed during Ba`th Party rule executing Saddam
Hussein and other high level officials from the former regime against the
protests of the international community.
Pursuant to Security Council resolution 1664 (2006), the
United Nations and the Lebanese Republic negotiated an agreement on the
establishment of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon to try all those who are
alleged responsible for the attack of 14 February 2005 in Beirut that killed
the former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri and
22 others.
By 2001, steps to enhance international justice
began to encounter broadening political opposition. Electoral changes on both
sides of the Atlantic brought in political leaders less supportive of these
courts. The Bush administration's unilateralist policies were hostile to
international institutions. The election of several new governments in Europe
reduced the willingness of the European Union to stand up to such hostility.
The attacks of September 11, 2001 further contributed to a shift away from
support for international justice. With
Security Council members increasingly sceptical of the utility of the tribunals
and concerned with rising costs, political and financial support waned. Having
consumed roughly two billion US dollars in funding from the international
community since the mid Nineties, the UN's ad-hoc tribunals for the former
Yugoslavia and Rwanda were pressured to adopt a "completion strategy"
with a 2010 deadline in (S/2002/678) ordering them to take all possible measures
to complete investigations by the end of 2004, to complete all trial activities
at first instance by the end of 2008, and to complete all work in 2010. Struggling with appeals the International
Criminal for the Former Yugoslavia most recently petitioned for an extension of
time until 2013. Besides the cost of the
trials, that open the window of opportunity for bribery, graft, conflict of
interest, corruption and coup, there are serious doubts as to whether the
international tribunals and court actually expedite international justice and
security or if they undermine it.
The International
Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda has tried only 13 prisoners regarding the Rwandan
Genocide while the Gannaca Courts have tried
200,000. The Rwandan genocide began on
April 6, 1994 when a plane carrying President Juvénal
Habyarimana of Rwanda and President Cyprien Ntaryamira of Burundi
crashed at Kigali airport, killing all on board. Following the deaths of the
two Presidents, widespread killings, having both political and ethnic
dimensions, began in Kigali and spread to other parts of Rwanda. All told the
genocide in Rwanda claimed nearly 500,000 victims and as the result of the
punishment of this crime of genocide the Rwandan prison concentration has
become the second densest in the world after the United States. The Khmer rouge genocide that took the lives
of an estimated 2 million Cambodians was a particularly repressive communist
revolution that relocated city people to the countryside to create a rural
society, abolished money, prohibited freedom of association of more than two
people and turned government buildings into prisons where millions were
tortured and killed. In 1975 Indonesia invaded East Timor (then a Portugese
Colony). The UN never recognised Indonesian sovereignty in East Timor and in
1999 the UN finally organized a referendum in which the East Timorese voted for
independence. In response, the Indonesian National Army and pro-Indonesian
Timorese militias began a campaign of violence and arson, murdering an
estimated 2,000 people and forcing 500,000 to flee their homes. Giving in to international pressure the Indonesian
government allowed the creation of an ad-hoc Court for East Timor. The
Special Court for Sierra Leone was set up jointly by the Government
of Sierra Leone and the United Nations. It is mandated to try those who bear
the greatest responsibility for serious violations of international humanitarian
law and Sierra Leonean law committed in the territory of Sierra Leone since 30
November 1996.
ICTY is particularly
controversial because they located their criminal proceedings in the Hague,
were in contempt of reparations to Yugoslavia, a once wealthy Eastern European
nation that became extremely impoverished as the result of the military
occupation and can be construed as having overthrown the International Court of
Justice and maybe entire United Nations with the International Criminal Court
in the spirit of the assassination of unpopular Austrian Archduke Ferdinand by
Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip,
that triggered WWI. In 1989, Milosevic became president of Serbia in an
election widely considered rigged and extended his term beyond its limits from
1997 to 2001. His decade of conflict ended with 250,000 dead and the Yugoslav
federation torn asunder. Reparations
were first demanded by the International Court of Justice in 1993. A U.S.-brokered peace agreement was reached
at Dayton Peace Accords in Dayton, Ohio that were signed 1 December 1995. In
February 1998, Milosevic sent troops to crush a foreign financed uprising and
in 1999, NATO conducted 78 days of air strikes on Yugoslavia for which the ICJ ordered
reparations that were held in contempt by NATO nations. Milosevic was arrested
on 2 April 2001 and brought to The Hague to be tried. Milosevic was killed in prison on March 11,
2006 as was (innocent) Milan Babic on March 5, 2006 then when WHO Director General Lee Jong-wook was probably going to condemn the conditions in
the prison he was killed by a brain aneurism the day before the World Health
Assembly 2006. The subsequent
international economic depression can be attributed to the impunity with which
the ICC launched a bloody coup, appointing a Korean estate lawyer
Secretary-General, ruthlessly dominating international civil and political
affairs with a very toxic slave trade authorized to assassinate since the
establishment of the Special Tribunal in Lebanon in 2005. These international criminal tribunals and
courts need to be removed from the H(Pl)ague for the
security, independence and supremacy of the ICJ, to prevent the military
dictatorship of the UN from devolving into a genocidal secret police
force, and the temporary, archival,
nature of international military tribunals must be stressed, criminal
responsibility for prisoners transferred to national judicial systems and at
least of the ICC case load devoted to judicial misconduct. The United States must make these reasonable
demands of the previous sentence regarding their reluctance to accede to the
ICC.
XV. War in Afghanistan
The War in Afghanistan
(2001-present) is an is an ongoing coalition conflict which began on October
7, 2001, in response to the September 11 attacks, called Operation Enduring
Freedom by the Americans and Operation . The
International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), was
established by the UN Security Council at the end of December 2001 to secure
Kabul and the surrounding areas. NATO assumed control of ISAF in 2003. After a long period of peace under King Zahir Shah (1933-1973) when Afghanistan was neutral,
enjoying development benefits from both the U.S. and U.S.S.R., the usurper
persecuted the communists who killed him and his family and overthrew the
government in 1978. Citing the 1978
Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Good Neighborliness over 100,000 Soviet
troops intervened on December 24, 1979. The Soviet
occupation sparked a civil war and resulted in the killings of between six
hundred thousand and 2 million Afghan civilians. Over 5 million
Afghans fled their country to Pakistan, Iran and other parts of the world. The US
alone supplied approximately $3 billion in economic and covert military assistance
to mujahadeen groups between 1980 and 1989. Faced with mounting international
pressure and great number of casualties on both sides, the Soviets withdrew in
1989 under the
Geneva Accords of May 15, 1988.
Americans abandoned Afghanistan after the war and the Soviets in 1992
whereupon a period of warlords and civil war and opium cultivation led to a
Taliban victory in 1996 and repressive fundamentalist rule that gave asylum to
Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda. In 2000 the
Taliban prohibited opium and production was reduced 90%.
Osama Bin
Laden had been living in Afghanistan along with other members of Al-Qaeda,
operating militant training camps having a loose alliance with the Taliban.
Sanctions to encourage them to turn over Bin Laden for trial in the deadly
bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa in August 1998 failed. According to a
2004 report by the bipartisan commission of inquiry into 9/11, one day before
the September 11, 2001 attacks, the Bush administration agreed on a plan to
oust the Taliban regime in Afghanistan by force if it refused to hand over
Osama bin Laden and as early as mid-July 2001 it had been rumored that military
action against Afghanistan would proceed by the middle of October Thirty days after the events of September 11,
2001, U.S. President George W. Bush identified Osama Bin Laden as the 'prime
suspect' in the attacks and demanded the Taliban turn over all Al Qaeda
leaders, shut down the bases and allow the U.S. to verify the closures. The Taliban government responded
through their embassy in Pakistan, asserting that there was no evidence in
their possession linking bin Laden to the September 11 attacks, stressing that
bin Laden was a guest in their country and Pashtun
and Taliban codes of behavior require that guests be granted hospitality and
asylum. The United Arab Emirates, and
Saudi Arabia withdrew their recognition of the Taliban, leaving neighboring
Pakistan as the only country with diplomatic ties. On October 7, 2001, before the onset of
military hostilities, the Taliban did offer to try bin Laden in Afghanistan in
an Islamic court. This offer was rejected by the U.S., and the bombing of
targets within Afghanistan by U.S. and British forces commenced the same
day. On October 14, 2001, seven days
into the U.S./British bombing campaign, the Taliban offered to surrender Osama
bin Laden to a third country for trial, if the bombing halted and they were
shown evidence of his involvement in the September 11 terrorist attacks. This
offer was also rejected by U.S. President Bush, who declared "There's no
need to discuss innocence or guilt. We know he's guilty."
The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) did not specifically authorize the U.S.-led military campaign in Afghanistan (Operation Enduring Freedom) but UN Security Council Resolution 1368 (2001) authorized action against those responsible for the 9-11 suicide attacks. The coalition strategy was primarily a aerial bombing campaign with some ground support for the Northern Alliance forces. On the night of November 12, 2001 Taliban forces fled the city of Kabul, leaving under cover of darkness. By the time Northern Alliance forces arrived in the afternoon of November 13, 2001. The UN invited major Afghan factions, excluding the Taliban, to a conference in Bonn, Germany on November 2001. The Bonn Agreement of December 5, 2001 was signed, forming an interim administration headed by Hamid Karzai and authorizing an international peacekeeping force to maintain security in Kabul. Unlike most peace agreements, Bonn did not force the warring factions to lay down their arms; nor did it institute a process for establishing truth or accountability for past crimes. Bonn legitimized these warlords by granting them prominent positions and power within the interim government. On December 20, 2001, the UNSC did authorize the creation of an International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) with authority to take all measures necessary to fulfill its mandate of assisting the Afghan Interim Authority in maintaining security. By the end of 2002 3,000 to 5,000 civilians had been killed by U.S. bombings exceeding the casualties of 9-11. After managing to evade U.S. forces throughout mid-2002, the remnants of the Taliban gradually began to regain their confidence. Command of the ISAF passed to NATO on August 11, 2003.
The Afghanistan Compact was drafted at the
London Conference on Afghanistan of January 31 –
February 1, 2006 to provide
the framework for international community engagement in Afghanistan for the
next five years. It sets outcomes, benchmarks and mutual obligations that aim
to ensure greater coherence of effort between the Afghan government and the
international community. The Afghanistan
Compact succeeded in leveraging a $10 billion loan for reconstruction from the
Paul Wolfowitz led World Bank. However instead of improving the security
situation immediately deteriorated.
Taliban attacks increased and their popularity surged while coalition
counterattacks became increasingly severe and civilian casualties of air
support drone bombings were frequently reported. By November 2006, the
U.N. Security Council warned that Afghanistan may become a failed state due to
increased Taliban violence, growing illegal drug production, and fragile State
institutions. Although
many Afghan refugees returned between 2002 and 2008, more than two million
registered refugees remain in Pakistan and 900,000 in Iran. Civilian deaths resulting from international
military actions remain high, with more than 750 Afghans killed by airstrikes
between January 2008 and June 2009.
Though two-thirds of the identified mines in Afghanistan have been
successfully cleared, 15% of the population is estimated to be living in mine fields. Only about 1% of individuals reported
receiving any apology or compensation for harmful experiences related to the
conflict, mostly from neutral parties. To counter endemic corruption it is
critical that Afghanistan conduct an investigation of human rights abuses by
public officials, including those at the highest levels of government and bar
those found guilty of serious crimes or abuses from government office. To cease fighting and tax 25-55% of their
economy and 8% of their population, not including seasonal harvesters and
consumers, Afghanistan must legalize opium cultivation under international
quotas and use within the national borders, it is the only way to make peace,
until after the economic addiction to the cultivation of opium goes down after
the stress from the war economy has subsided.
To set opium quotas for Afghanistan the US must insert at 21CFR§1312.13(f)
(8) Afghanistan and (g) place Afghanistan with India and Turkey as a supplier
of 80% of the quota.
The strength of Taliban forces was estimated by
Western officials and analysts at about 10,000 fighters fielded at any given
time. The Afghan National Army has an
estimated 90,000 troops and the National Police Force 70,000 officers. Not including estimated troop surges, that
threaten to increase casualties, as of July 23, 2009 the ISAF had an estimated
101,000 troops – 68,000 USA, 9,500 UK, 4,245 Germany, 3,070 France, 2,830
Canada, 2,795 Italy, 2,160 Netherlands, 2,035 Poland, 1,550 Australia, 1,000
Spain, 990 Romania, 820 Turkey, 750 Denmark, 510 Belgium, 500 Sweden, 460
Sweden, 340 Czech Republic, 325 Croatia, 310 Hungary. There have
been 1,520 coalition deaths -- 923 Americans, 11 Australians, one Belgian, 235
Britons, 133 Canadians, three Czech, 28 Danes, 21 Dutch, six Estonians, one
Finn, 36 French, 31 Germans, two Hungarians, 22 Italians, three Latvian, one
Lithuanian, four Norwegians, 15 Poles, two Portuguese, 11 Romanians, one South
Korean, 26 Spaniards, two Swedes and two Turks -- in Afghanistan as of November
27, 2009, Since May 11, 2009 the new commander has announced
sharp restrictions in airstrikes in an effort to reduce civilian
casualties. Although the war was
supported by most Americans, most people in the world oppose the war. In a
47-nation June 2007 survey only 4 had a majority that favored keeping foreign
troops: the U.S. (50%), Israel (59%), Ghana (50%), and Kenya (60%). In 41 of the 47 countries, pluralities want
U.S. and NATO troops out of Afghanistan as soon as possible. In 32 out of 47 countries, clear majorities
want this war over as soon as possible. Majorities in 7 out of 12 NATO member
countries say troops should be withdrawn as soon as possible. The Afghanistan Freedom Act of 6 October, 2001 HR3049
and 11 October, 2001 HR 3088 that waged Operation Enduring Freedom SJ 23 passed
in the House and Senate to become PL-107-40 September
13, 2001 Authorizing the United States Armed Forces for Use in Afghanistan,
§2. Hostilities have officially ceased
since Executive Order 13268 Termination
of Emergency With Respect to the Taliban and Amendment
of September 23, 200 and Executive Order 13224 of July 2, 2002. As of January 2009, the U.S. had begun work
on $1.6 billion of new, permanent military installations at Kandahar. Reaching $43 billion in 2009, the troop surge
in Afghanistan could become the new Iraq, justifying the laundering of up to
$75 billion of twice spent U.S. tax payer dollars, hypocritically more than
twice the GDP of the nation being protected.
Afghanistan needs to be forgiven the $10 billion loan from 2006, granted
$25 billion to a corruption free National Opium Agency government and foreign
occupying forces must leave.
XVI. Iraq
War
The Iraq War, also known as the Occupation of Iraq, The Second Gulf War or Operation Iraqi Freedom, is an ongoing
military campaign which began on March 20, 2003, with the invasion of Iraq by a
multinational force led by troops from the United States and the United Kingdom. The Bush Administration had been looking for
ways to overthrow the Iraq regime within ten days of taking office in January
2001. According to the Center for Public
Integrity President Bush’s administration made a total of 935 false statements
between 2001 and 2003 about the threat Iraq posed to the United States. In 2002, the
U.N. Security Council passed Resolution 1441 which called for Iraq to
completely cooperate with U.N. weapon inspectors to verify that Iraq was not in
possession of weapons of mass destruction and long-range missiles. Weapons
inspectors found no evidence of WMD, and the US-led Iraq
Survey Group later concluded that Iraq had ended its nuclear, chemical, and
biological programs in 1991 and had no active programs at the time of the
invasion. Not waiting for the inspection
results HJRes.114 §3
to Authorize the Use of Force Against Iraq with 296 in favor -133 against was
signed by the President On October 16, 2002.
On February 5, 2003, Secretary of State Colin Powell claimed Iraq
had unmanned drone airplanes capable of delivering chemical and biological
weapon to the UN Security Council. On
January 31, 2003 in the White House Bush and Blair made a secret deal to attack
Iraq regardless of whether weapons of mass destruction were found by UN
inspectors. NATO members France,
Germany, Canada, and even Russia (not a member of NATO) were opposed to
military intervention in Iraq. Between January 3 and April 12, 2003, 36 million
people across the globe took part in almost 3,000 protests against war in
Iraq. Powell later admitted he presented
inaccurate information and as President Bush was leaving office in 2008 he
stated, “"my biggest regret of all the presidency has to have been the
intelligence failure in Iraq." On September 16, 2004 Kofi Annan, the
Secretary General of the United Nations, said of the invasion, "I have
indicated it was not in conformity with the UN Charter. From our point of view,
from the Charter point of view, it was illegal."
On March 20, 2003 the military invasion of
Iraq began, without UN authorization. By
April 9 Baghdad fell, ending President Hussein's 24-year rule. In the invasion phase of the war (March
19-April 30), 9,200 Iraqi combatants were killed along with 7,299 civilians,
primarily by US air and ground forces. Coalition forces reported the death in
combat of 139 U.S. military personnel and 33 UK military personnel. This worked
out at almost 100 dead Iraqis for every dead coalition soldier. In September 2003 the Madrid Conference
collected $33 billion in contributions for the Iraq Reconstruction Fund, the
largest reparation in history. Hostilities have officially ceased since Executive Order
13350 Termination of Emergency Declared in E.O. 12722 With Respect to Iraq on July 29, 2004. According to the
Pentagon, 250,000 short tons (230,000 t) of ordnance were looted,
providing a significant source of ammunition for the Iraqi insurgency. Initially,
Iraqi resistance (described by the coalition as "Anti-Iraqi Forces")
largely stemmed from fedayeen and Hussein/Ba'ath
Party loyalists, but soon religious radicals and Iraqis angered by the
occupation contributed to the insurgency. The three provinces with the highest
number of attacks were Baghdad, Al Anbar, and Salah Ad Din. Those three provinces account for 35% of the
population, but are responsible for 73% of U.S. military deaths (as of December
5, 2006), and an even higher percentage of recent U.S. military deaths (about 80%.). On July 22,
2003 Hussein's sons (Uday and Qusay)
were killed along with one of his grandsons. In all, over 300 top leaders of
the former regime were killed or captured, as well as numerous lesser
functionaries and military personnel. Saddam
Hussein himself was captured on December 13, 2003 on a farm near Tikrit.. Saddam Hussein was hanged on December 30, 2006 after
being found guilty of crimes against humanity by an Iraqi court after a
year-long trial. A March 7, 2007 survey found
that 78% of the population opposed the presence of Coalition forces in Iraq,
that 69% believed the presence of U.S. forces is making things worse, and that
51% of the population considered attacks on coalition forces acceptable, up
from 17% in 2004 and 35% in 2006.
Shortly after the invasion, the multinational coalition
created the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) سلطة
الائتلاف
الموحدة, as
a transitional government of Iraq until the establishment of a democratic
government in accordance with United Nations Security Council Resolution 1483
(May 22, 2003) from the period of the CPA's inception on April 21, 2003, until
its dissolution on June 28, 2004. The Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) was the
provisional government of Iraq from July 13, 2003 to June 1, 2004.The Iraqi Interim Government itself took
the place of the Coalition Provisional Authority (and the Iraq Interim
Governing Council) on June 28, 2004,
and was replaced by the Iraqi Transitional Government on May 3, 2005. On
January 31, Iraqis elected the Iraqi Transitional Government in order to draft
a permanent constitution. A referendum
was held in October 15 in which the new Iraqi constitution was ratified. An
Iraqi national assembly was elected in December. Security
Council Resolution 1637 (2005)
distributed on 11 November 2005, Armistice Day, that welcomes the
beginning of a new phase in Iraq’s transition and looking forward to the
completion of the political transition process as well as to the day Iraqi
forces assume full responsibility for the maintenance of security and stability
in their country, thus allowing the completion of the multinational force
mandate. On May 10,
2007, 144 Iraqi Parliamentary lawmakers signed onto a legislative petition
calling on the United States to set a timetable for withdrawal. On June 3,
2007, the Iraqi Parliament voted 85 to 59 to require the Iraqi government to
consult with Parliament before requesting additional extensions of the UN
Security Council Mandate for Coalition operations in Iraq. Despite this, the mandate
was renewed on December 18, 2007 without the approval of the Iraqi parliament. The U.S.-Iraq Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA)
was approved by the Iraqi government in late 2008 between Iraq and the United
States established that U.S. combat forces will withdraw from Iraqi cities by
June 30, 2009, and that all U.S. forces will be completely out of Iraq by
December 31, 2011.
On January
1, 2009, the United States handed control of the Green Zone. On January 31, 2009, Iraq held provincial
elections. On April 30, 2009, the United
Kingdom formally ended combat operations.
The withdrawal of U.S. forces began at the end of June,
with 38 bases handed over to Iraqi forces. On June 29, 2009, U.S. forces
withdrew from Baghdad.
After a
surge in violence following the arrest and execution of the former leader, by
December 2008 the "overall level of violence" in the country had
dropped 80% since before the surge began in January 2007, and the country's
murder rate had dropped to pre-war levels.
The Iraqi government
reported that there were 5 million orphans in Iraq - nearly half of the
country's children in December 2007. Iraq's health has deteriorated to a level
not seen since the 1950s. "They were at the forefront", he said,
referring to health care just before the 1991 Persian Gulf War. "Now
they're looking more and more like a country in sub-Saharan Africa."
Malnutrition rates have risen from 19% before the US-led invasion to a national
average of 28% four years later. Some 60-70% of Iraqi children are suffering
from psychological problems. 68% of Iraqis have no access to safe drinking
water. A cholera outbreak in northern Iraq is thought to be the result of poor water
quality. As many as half of Iraqi doctors have left the
country since 2003. According to a January 2007 BBC World Service
poll of more than 26,000 people in 25 countries, 73% of the global population
disapproves of the US handling of the Iraq War. A September 2007 poll conducted
by the BBC found that 2/3rds of the world's population believed the US should
withdraw its forces from Iraq. According to an April 2004 USA Today/CNN/Gallup
Poll, only a third of the Iraqi people believed that "the American-led
occupation of their country is doing more good than harm, and a solid majority
support an immediate military pullout even though they fear that could put them
in greater danger. The US government has
long maintained its involvement there is with the support of the Iraqi people,
but in 2005 when asked directly, 82–87% of the Iraqi populace was opposed to
the US occupation and wanted US troops to leave. 47% of Iraqis supported
attacking US troops. In addition: 64%
described their family's economic situation as being somewhat or very bad, up
from 30% in 2005. 88% described the availability of electricity as being either
somewhat or very bad, up from 65% in 2004. 69% described the availability of
clean water as somewhat or very bad, up from 48% in 2004. 88% described the
availability of fuel for cooking and driving as being somewhat or very bad. 58%
described reconstruction efforts in the area in which they live as either
somewhat or very ineffective, and 9% described them as being totally
nonexistent.
There are
estimated to have been 1,033,000 violent deaths in Iraq since the occupation
began and all excess deaths as of May 2009 number 1,339,711. Saddam’s
army had an estimated 375,000 of whom 6,370-10,800 Iraqi combatants were killed
in the invasion. 300,000 Coalition
Forces invaded and 130,000 remained behind as occupying forces. As of July 17, 2009, 4,683 Coalition
forces were killed, 4,328 members of the U.S. military died in combat in Iraq
and 139 others: the British military has reported 176 deaths; Italy, 33;
Ukraine, 18; Poland, 21; Bulgaria, 13; Spain, 11; Denmark, seven; El Salvador,
five; Slovakia, four; Latvia and Georgia, three each; Estonia, Netherlands,
Thailand, Romania, two each; and Australia, Hungary, Kazakhstan, South Korea,
one death each. Coalition missing
or captured (US): 1. Coalition wounded, injured, diseased, or
other medical: 31,557 US, 1,785 UK. 50,000 Kurdish Peshmerga invaded and their number has risen to
375,000. As of 2009 there are an
estimated 631,000 Iraqi Security Forces, 254,000 in the Army, 227,000 in the
police and 150,000 in the Federal Police Service. Of 70,000 Iraqi resistance fighters, 60,000
in the Mahdi Army, 1,500 in Al Qaeda an estimated 18,613-24,111 insurgents have been killed
since the invasion. 11,525 post Saddam Iraqi. Security Forces have been killed. Of 94,000 members of local militias loyal to
the government more than 680 are thought to have been killed. There are an estimated 12,794 (U.S.-held) 24,200 (Iraqi-held)
detainees. There are 161,000 military contractors, 85,000 Iraqi,
45,500 other and 27,400 US of whom 1,314
(US 249) were killed, 18 (US 4) are missing or captured and 10,569 were wounded
and injured. Iraq
accounts for more than $12.5 billion of the $34 billion US weapon sales to
foreign countries (not including the potential F-16 fighter planes). The financial cost of the war has been more
than £4.5 billion ($9 billion) to the UK, and over $845 billion to the U.S.,
with the total cost to the U.S. economy estimated at $3 trillion.
Bibliography
Afghanistan Freedom Act of 6 October, 2001 HR3049 and 11
October, 2001 HR 3088 that waged Operation Enduring Freedom SJ 23 passed in the
House and Senate to become PL-107-40 September 13, 2001
Agreement
on Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam. Paris Peace Accords. January 17, 1973
Agreement on Provisional Arrangements in Afghanistan
Pending the Re-establishment of Permanent Government Institutions. Bonn, Germany. December 5, 2001
Agreement on the Settlement of the Situation Relating to
Afghanistan. Geneva
Accords. May 15, 1988
Atlantic Charter. August 14, 1941
Bosnia and Herzegovina
v. Yugoslavia, International Court of Justice. 1993
Bush, George Jr. Executive
Order 13268 Termination of Emergency With Respect to the
Taliban and Amendment of September 23, 200 and Executive Order 13224 of July 2, 2002
Bush, George Jr. Executive
Order 13350 Termination of
Emergency Declared in E.O. 12722 With
Respect to Iraq and Modification of Executive Order 13290 , Executive Order 13303, and Executive Order 13315 on July 29, 2004
Bush, George Sr. Executive Order 12710 Termination of
emergency with respect to Panama. April 5,
1990
Bush, George Sr. Executive Order 12722 Blocking Iraqi
government property and prohibiting transactions with Iraq. August 2, 1990
Bush, George Sr. Executive Order 12744 Designation of Arabian Peninsula areas,
airspace, and adjacent waters as a combat zone. January 21, 1991
Bush, George Sr. Executive Order 12771 Revoking
earlier orders with respect to Kuwait. July 25, 1991
Complaint of Aggression upon the
Republic of Korea. United Nations Security Council Resolutions. 82-85, 88, 90. June 25, 27, July 7, 31, September 29, 1951, January
31, 1952
Dayton Peace Accords in Dayton,
Ohio. 1 December 1995
Declaration by United Nations. Washington. January 1, 1942
Declaration of Independence. Second Continental Congress. July 4, 1776
Definite Treaty between Great
Britain and the United States of America. Paris, France. September 3, 1783
Dicker, Richard; Keppler,
Elise. Beyond the Hague. Human Rights Watch. January 2004
Emancipation Proclamation. January 1, 1863
Hewes, George. Boston Tea Party: Eyewitness Account of a
Participant. The Patriot Resource. December 1773
Iraq-Kuwait. United Nations Security Council Resolutions 660-662,
664-667, 669-670, 674, 677-678, 686-689, 692, 700, 705-707, 712, 715, Aug. 2,
6, 9, 18, 25, Sep. 13, 16, 24, 25, 1990, Mar. 2, April 3, 5, 9, May 20, June
17, August 15, Sep. 19, Oct. 11, 1992
Johnson, Lyndon B. Authorization to Employ Armed Forces
for Use in Southeast Asia Pub. L. 88-408, Aug. 10, 1964, 78 Stat. 384
Korean War Veterans Armistice Day 36USCIA(1)§127
Leckie, Robert. The Wars of America.
Vol. 1: From 1600 to 1900. Harper Collins Publisher.
New York. 1992
Nixon, Richard. Termination of
Hostilities in Indochina Pub. L. 92-129, title IV, Sec. 401, Sept. 28, 1971, 85 Stat. 360
Northwest Ordinance. July 13, 1787
Oxfam. The Cost of War: Afghan Experience, 1978-2009. November 2009
Paine, Thomas. Common Sense.
Philadelphia. February 14, 1776
Panama Canal Treaty of 1977
Peace
Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. March 1918
Peace
Treaty of Sèvres. 10 August 1920
Philippine Independence Act. Public Law 73-127. March 24, 1934
Prosecutor
v. Jean Paul Akayesu ICTR-96-4-I
Prosecutor v. Slobodan
Milosevic ICTY IT-02-54
Protocol of Proceedings at the
Crimea Conference. Yalta,
Crimea. February 11, 1945
Protocol of Proceedings. Potsdam, Germany. August 1, 1945
Quotas for Narcotic Raw Materials 21CFR§1312.13
Sanders, Tony J. Me, Myself and
Iraq. Hospitals & Asylums. HA-11-11-07
Stella, Ogunwole. We the
People: American Indians and Alaska Natives in the United States. Census 2000 Special Reports. February
2006
Treaty of Peace Between
the Allied and Associated Powers and Bulgaria, and Protocol and Declaration signed
at of Neuilly. 27 November 1919
Treaty of Peace Between The
Allied and Associated Powers and Hungary And Protocol and Declaration, Signed
at Trianon. 4 June 1920
Treaty of Peace with Turkey Signed at Lausanne. 24 July 1923
Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye. The Allied and Associated
Powers and Austria. 10 September 1919
Treaty of Versailles on 28 June 1919
Truman, Harry. National Emergency
Proclamation. 1950 Proc. No. 2914, Dec. 16, 1950, 15 F.R. 9029, 64 Stat. a454
Truman, Harry. Termination of Wartime
Emergencies. Proc. No. 2974, Apr. 28, 1952, 17 F.R. 3813, 66 Stat. c31
Utley, Robert M.; Washburn, Wilcomb E. Indian Wars. American Heritage Library.
Houghton-Mifflin Company. Boston. 1977
Yugoslavia v. United
States of America. International Court of Justice.
2 June 1999
A Special
Thanksgiving to Wikipedia: the Free Encyclopedia – There When You Need It – Now
It Needs You to Achieve Its Fundraising Goal of $7.5 million USD to Win the War
against Google.