US/Bombing campaigns since 1945

US/Bombing campaigns since 1945  (Foreign policy of the United States,  US intervention)

Countries the US has bombed since 1945 is in fact only the most visible aspect of US Intervention abroad. In practice, US led assassinations and overthrows of legitimate governments and interference with elections may be just as significant as the actual bombings listed here.

Official narrative

This article was intended as an adjunct to two Wikipedia articles, Timeline of United States military operations (which is extremely long as uses rather biased language) and Covert US foreign regime change actions. Both articles (one of which is rated as of 'low importance') are unclear, lack useful summaries and have big gaps. There was no mention, for example, of the successful World Court action by Nicaragua against the US). The talk page confirm the difficulty faced by editors attempting to restore objectivity to the page in the face of a bevy of editors beholden to the US-sponsored official narrative.

Countries the US has bombed since the end of World War 2

The US is said to have carried out 32 distinct and separate bombing campaigns on 24 different countries between 1945 and 1999. However, the listing below includes later operations as well. In most cases, bombings with aircraft cannot be denied, though in some cases this has been attempted.

Date	Country	Details	Disputed?
2014 - present	Iraq and Syria	Said to be against ISIS with alleged beheadings as the primary casus belli	No
2011 - present	Somalia	Ongoing drone strikes	No
2011	Libya	Early US attacks under UNSC 1973 were followed by NATO's “Operation Unified Protector”, leading to regime change and death of Gaddafi.	No
2004 - present	Yemen	Ongoing drone strikes, allegedly targeting terror suspects	No
2004 - present	Pakistan	Ongoing drone strikes, allegedly targeting militants	No
2003 - 2011	Iraq	Regime change against Saddam Hussein, an ally who had gone rogue. By all accounts, US Ambassador in Baghdad, April Glaspie, gave Saddam the green light to invade Kuwait in August 1990. She was totally silent on everything until her retirement in 2002 and has not spoken since.	No
2001 - present	Afghanistan	Regime change under the guise of trying to catch Osama Bin Laden.	No
1999	Yugoslavia, Serbia	Allegedly to stop an ethnic cleansing that had begun or might begin. Targeted television stations and bombed the Chinese Embassy.	No
1998	Afghanistan	Cruise missiles on Osama Bin Laden's compounds.	No
1998	Sudan	Cruise missile attack on an antibiotic factory wrongly alleged to be producing WMD.	No
1998	Iran		??
1995	Bosnia	Serbian forces bombed. Depleted Uranium shells used.	No
1992- 1994	Somalia	Known to the West chiefly for "Black Hawk Down"	??
1991	Kuwait	See bombing of Iraq, below. Some of the attack took place within Kuwait, leaving quantities of Depleted Uranium, and causing much subsequent concern about cancers.	No
1991	Iraq	Bombing for 40 days and nights devastated the ancient and modern capital city of one of the most advanced nations in the Middle East. 177 million pounds of bombs fell in the most concentrated aerial onslaught in the history of the world. Genuine multi-national effort and seen by most as a "good war".	No
1989 - 1990	Panama	December 1989, a large tenement barrio in Panama City wiped out, 15,000 people left homeless. Casualties disputed.	No
1987 - 1988	Iran		??
1986	Libya	Attempt to kill Gaddafi, Tripoli bombed. Operation El Dorado Canyon, one of more than 50 attempts to assassinate foreign leaders (no listing in Pilger's "The World War on Democracy").	No
1979 - 1990	Nicaragua	Ronald Reagan's "freedom fighters." Sandinistas overthrow Somoza dictatorship in 1978, CIA arms the Contras (ie Somoza's vicious National Guard and other supporters of the dictator). US was condemned for terrorism by the World Court in 1986. All-out war, aimed at destroying all social and economic programs of the government, burning down schools and medical clinics, raping, torturing, mining harbors, bombing and strafing.	Denied by some
1981 - 1992	El Salvador	Officially, the U.S. military presence in El Salvador was limited to an advisory capacity. About 20 Americans were killed or wounded in helicopter and plane crashes while flying reconnaissance or other missions over combat areas, and considerable evidence surfaced of a U.S. role in the ground fighting as well. The war came to an official end in 1992; 75,000 civilian deaths at a cost of six billion dollars. Meaningful social change still largely thwarted by 1999. A handful of the wealthy still owned the country, the poor remained as ever, and dissidents still suffered from death squads.	By some
1983 - 1984	Grenada	Operation Urgent Fury, termed by the UN General Assembly termed it "a flagrant violation of international law".	No
1982 - 1984	Lebanon	Shelled villages from warship.	??
1969 - 1970	Cambodia	More bombs than the whole of WW2.	No
1961 - 1973	Vietnam	South Vietnam devastated.	No
1964 - 1973	Laos		No
1965	Peru	Bombing of Peru and assistance to counter-insurgency operations	By some
1965 - 1966	Dominican Republic		??
1964	Guatemala		??
1964	Belgian Congo		By some
1961	Cuba	"Bay of Pigs", a failed invasion, US-sponsored.	No
1960	Guatemala		By some
1959 - 1960	Cuba	40 years of terrorist attacks, bombings, full-scale military invasion, sanctions, embargoes, isolation, assassinations.	No
1958	Indonesia	Large scale killings	??
1954	Guatemala	A CIA-organised coup (Operation PBSUCCESS) overthrows the democratically-elected and progressive government of Jacobo Arbenz, initiating 35 or 40 years of death-squads, torture, disappearances, mass executions, and unimaginable cruelty (peaking 1967-69) totaling well over 100,000 victims - one of the most inhuman chapters of the 20th century. Arbenz had nationalized the U.S. firm, United Fruit Company. The Russians had so little interest in the country that it didn't even maintain diplomatic relations. Bombers based in Nicaragua. 200,000 people are eventually dead in a 36 year long Guatemalan Civil War.	Disputed by some
1950 - 1953	China		By some
1950 - 1953	Korea	At least 20% and perhaps up to 1/3rd of the population killed in order to prevent re-unification.	No
1945 - 1946	China		By some

 

Related Documents

Title	Type	Publication date	Author(s)	Description
Document:Harold Pinter - 2005 Nobel Prize lecture	speech	7 December 2005	Harold Pinter	Harold Pinter's Nobel Prize acceptance speech made by video-link to the ceremony in Norway because of his illness. He was in the terminal stages of cancer. The speech is inspirational in its scathing rejection of Western (especially US) foreign policy objectives and methods.
Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower	book	2000	William Blum	A critical examination of United States foreign policy during and following the Cold War

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