The Crimes of U.S. Presidents

President Theodore Roosevelt wrote, “The most ultimately righteous of all wars is a war with savages.” The extreme racism of Roosevelt extended past Native Americans to Mexicans. He called them a “weaker race.” He called Filipinos “savages, barbarians, a wild and ignorant people.”

In the Philippines, President Roosevelt oversaw some of the most hideous military campaigns in US history on the islands of Samar and Luzon. General Jacob Smith told Marine Major Littleton Waller, “I want no prisoners… Kill everyone over ten.” Smith sent Waller a written order “that the interior of Samar must be made a howling wilderness.” U.S. actions killed 15,000 Filipinos in Samar and 600,000 in Luzon.

Four years later, Roosevelt won a Nobel Peace Prize. Three more Presidents won the Nobel Prize. Claudia Tenney argued Trump should win one, too. If that’s true, let’s prove his worthiness by examination of the record of Presidential Nobel Prize winners.

Woodrow Wilson was “the greatest interventionist of all.” Wilson invaded Mexico in 1814, Haiti in 1915, the Dominican Republic in 1916, Cuba in 1917, and Panama in 1918. We illegally occupied Haiti for nineteen years, and the Dominican Republic for eight years. Wilson’s invasion of Haiti killed an estimated 20,000 people and restored a form of slavery.

At gunpoint, U.S. marines forced the civilian population to accept U.S. businesses. Piero Gleijeses wrote, “Dominican peasants were driven off their lands and Dominican villages burned for the benefit of… [American] sugar companies.” James Loewen wrote, “Wilson’s interventions in Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Nicaragua set the stage for the dictators Batista [in Cuba], Trujillo [in the Dominican Republic]… and the Somozas [in Nicaragua].”

The New Yorker wrote, “The US supported the Duvalier dictatorships that ruled Haiti from 1957-1986.” Washington’s support for the Somoza and Duvalier dictatorships brings us to the Nobel Peace Prize winner Jimmy Carter. He made human rights “the soul of our foreign policy.” Yet, the Harvard Crimson wrote, “In a letter to President Carter, Nicaraguan church leaders charged that the U.S. has helped maintain Somoza’s power through ‘brute force.’”

Robert Pastor admitted, “Somoza… fought [his own population] with the brutality a nation usually reserves for its enemy.” A brutality that killed an estimated 40,000 people. Carter supported the brutal dictatorship of Pinochet in Chile. Carter supported the Indonesian dictatorship of Suharto, while he slaughtered over 200,000 people in East Timor.

CNN said President Obama was “the war-ending President who, as of Tuesday, has ordered airstrikes in seven different countries.” The Obama administration led the NATO airstrikes that destroyed Libya. Obama resumed military aid to the Egyptian dictatorship. Even after al-Sisi slaughtered more than 817 civilians in “the deadliest day in modern Egyptian history.”

His administration (and the Trump administration) supported the Saudi dictatorship as it starved 85,000 Yemeni children under the age of five. Obama told his aides, “Turns out I’m really good at killing people.”

This vile record of Presidential Nobel Prize winners proved Tenney was correct to nominate Trump.

-Anton Porcari

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