What follows is created with the assistance of AI. To get to this point of clarity took many iterations with a system that has some of my political knowledge embedded. I have edited heavily as I post it here. The outcome is what I want to say. I’d like to verify every fact, but the overall picture would remain despite of possible errors.
Summary
Since 1947, the United States has organised a global system of power routinely described as aid, or maintaining a liberal world order. (It is not doing that under the current fascist turn.)
That word “aid” used for decades conceals the formation of empire.
The empire operates through three interlocking mechanisms
The result is mass death, shattered societies ruled by gangsters, and long-term political dependency, all while the violence is narrated as benevolence.
The three pillars of the system
1. Military
- Arms, intelligence, training, logistics.
- Used overwhelmingly against domestic populations.
- Outcome: killing, torture, mass imprisonment.
2. Direct killing
- Bombing campaigns.
- Invasions and occupations.
- Napalm, chemical agents, siege, starvation.
3. Financial corruption (purchase of people i.e. slavery)
- Bribes, military budgets, development funds.
- A cultivated slave mentality: compliance in exchange for protection.
- Fund the local capitalists and their parties
- Supply CIA intelligence
Selected cases: deaths enabled by U.S. power
| Country / Conflict | Dates | Estimated deaths | U.S. role |
|---|---|---|---|
| Greece – Civil War | 1946–1949 | ~100,000–150,000 | Money, arms, advisers; napalm via client state |
| Turkey | 1947–present | ~0 (direct) | Militarisation, coups, repression without civil war |
| Guatemala | 1954–1996 | ~200,000 | Coup, death squads, counter-insurgency training |
| Chile | 1973–1990 | ~3,000 killed; ~30,000 tortured | Coup backing, economic warfare, regime support |
| Vietnam / Laos / Cambodia | 1955–1975 | ~2–4 million | Direct war, saturation bombing, napalm, chemicals |
| Indonesia | 1965–1966 | ~500,000–1,000,000 | Green light, kill lists, logistics, diplomatic cover |
| Palestine / Israel | 1948–present | ~30,000–40,000 killed (pre-2023); far higher incl. Gaza 2023–25 | Arms, funding, vetoes, impunity |
| Korea | 1950–1953 | ~2–3 million | Direct war; systematic bombing of civilian cities |
| El Salvador | 1980–1992 | ~75,000 | Death squads, military funding |
| Nicaragua | 1981–1990 | ~30,000 | Proxy war, terror, economic strangulation |
| Congo (post-Lumumba) | 1960–1965 | tens–hundreds of thousands | Assassination, managed chaos |
| Iran (post-1953 coup) | 1953–1979 | thousands imprisoned/killed | Coup, secret police, dictatorship |
| Iraq | 2003–2011 | ~150,000–600,000+ | Direct invasion and occupation |
| Afghanistan | 2001–2021 | ~170,000–240,000 | Direct war, drone warfare |
| Panama | 1989 | ~500–3,000 | Direct invasion |
| Syria | 2011 -present | ~500,000 | US share indirect but significant. Covert CIA arms programs, Airstrikes |
| Yeman | 2002 – present | ~15,000–20,000 |
Directly from airstrikes and raids; far higher indirectly via famine and disease |
| Lybia | 2011 – present | ~30,000
|
NATO bombing campaign Regime destruction |
| Somalia | 1992 – present | ~10s of thousands |
Direct intervention, Drone warfare, Proxy forces – A permanent low-visibility war with high civilian cost. |
| Pakistan | 2004 –
|
~4,000–10,000 including civilians |
Drone assassination program, Intelligence operations |
| Sudan | 1990s- 2010s |
|
Proxy politics, Arms flows, Diplomatic engineering Part of the imperial management system. |
| Honduras | 2009 – present | ~thousands via repression and gang-state violence |
Backing of coup government, Security assistance |
| Philippines | 2001 – present | ~tens of thousands (counter-insurgency and “war on drugs”) |
Training, intelligence, Joint operations |
|
Dominican Republic |
1965 | ~600+ Dominican casualties |
Direct military intervention to suppress a nationalist/populist revolt. |
|
Grenada |
1983 |
~45+ Grenadian combatants and others killed (plus Cuban casualties |
Direct invasion to topple a left-leaning government under Cold War pretexts. |
|
Venezuela |
2026 |
~80–100+ reported so far |
Direct military strikes on Caracas and surrounding areas, capture of President Nicolás Maduro and security forces, bombing of civilian infrastructure and military targets. |
Figures are conservative historical ranges. They often exclude wider demographic loss from displacement, famine, and long-term infrastructural collapse. I checked one figure and found this: The Costs of War Project at Brown University:
An estimated over 940,000 people were killed by direct post-9/11 war violence in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and Pakistan between 2001-2023. Of these, more than 432,000 were civilians. The number of people wounded or ill as a result of the conflicts is far higher, as is the number of civilians who died “indirectly,” as a result of wars’ destruction of economies, healthcare systems, infrastructure and the environment. An estimated 3.6-3.8 million people died indirectly in post-9/11 war zones, bringing the total death toll to at least 4.5-4.7 million and counting.
The Indonesian example.
See the 2012 documentary The Act of Killing and the book by Vincent Bevins The Jakarta Method: Washington’s Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World
Half a million to one million people were murdered.
Extermination by United States owned elites
The term Jakarta Method later circulated in:
• Latin America
• Central America
• The Philippines
It meant:
Mass killing of the left enabled by the US.
The Indonesian massacre was described at the time (if at all) as a success.
You do not need to invade a country to destroy a million people. You coerce and own people to do it for you.
The whole thing is covered up. See red with blood.
The American capitalist system and its empire is a killing machine
The US Empire is a coherent post-1945 system.
It kills directly.
It buys people to kill others.
