How many Muslim countries the US bombed or occupied since 1980?
Barack Obama, in his post-election press conference yesterday, announced that he would seek an Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) from the new Congress, one that would authorize Obama’s bombing campaign in Iraq and Syria—the one he began three months ago.
Share It :
If one were being generous, one could say that seeking congressional authorization for a war that commenced months ago is at least better than fighting a war even after Congress explicitly rejected its authorization, as Obama lawlessly did in the now-collapsed country of Libya.
When Obama began bombing targets inside Syria in September, I noted that it was the seventh predominantly Muslim country that had been bombed by the US during his presidency (that did not count Obama’s bombing of the Muslim minority in the Philippines).
I also previously noted that this new bombing campaign meant that Obama had become the fourth consecutive US President to order bombs dropped on Iraq.
Standing alone, those are both amazingly revealing facts. American violence is so ongoing and continuous that we barely notice it any more.
Just this week, a US drone launched a missile that killed 10 people in Yemen, and the dead were promptly labeled “suspected militants” (which actually just means they are “military-age males”); those killings received almost no discussion.
To get a full scope of American violence in the world, it is worth asking a broader question: how many countries in the Islamic world has the US bombed or occupied since 1980?
That answer was provided in a recent Washington Post op-ed by the military historian and former US Army Col. Andrew Bacevich:
As America’s efforts to “degrade and ultimately destroy” ISIL militants extent into Syria, Iraq War III has seamlessly morphed into Greater Middle East Battlefield XIV. That is, Syria has become at least the ۱۴th country in the Islamic world that US forces have invaded or occupied or bombed, and in which American soldiers have killed or been killed. And that’s just since 1980.
Let’s tick them off: Iran (1980, 1978-1988), Libya (1981, 1986, 1989, 2011), Lebanon (1983), Kuwait (1991), Iraq (1991-2011, 2014-), Somalia (1992-1993, 2007-), Bosnia (1995), Saudi Arabia (1991, 1996), Afghanistan (1998, 2001-), Sudan (1998), Kosovo (1999), Yemen (2000, 2002-), Pakistan (2004-) and now Syria. Whew.
Bacevich’s count excludes the bombing and occupation of still other predominantly Muslim countries by key US allies such as Israel and Saudi Arabia, carried out with crucial American support. It excludes coups against democratically elected governments, torture, and imprisonment of people with no charges.
It also, of course, excludes all the other bombing and invading and occupying that the US has carried out during this time period in other parts of the world, including in Central America and the Caribbean, as well as various proxy wars in Africa.
