Victors, victims and witnesses: 250 years of US triumphalism, By Owei Lakemfa

Add us on Google

As I join millions around the world to congratulate the US on its 250th Independence Day, I pray humanity can develop some engineering that can alter its DNA and transform it into a force of peace and development in the universe. That is what will make it truly “God’s own country.”

The world was, two hundred and fifty years ago, gifted a great country, the United States (US). The date was 4 July, 1776; the main event was its Declaration of Independence from Mother Britain. The latter is a small country that went to war with most of humanity, so much that it has been at war with 171 of the current 193 countries in the United Nations. The twenty-two countries that escaped bloody British conflicts were mainly French colonies and the Vatican.

Join the Premium Times WhatsApp Community For Quick Access To News and Happenings Around You.

Open in WhatsApp

The US inherited a war DNA from Britain. This is apparent in the fact that of its 250 years since independence, it has been at war or in armed conflicts for 230 years. In this past quarter of a millennium, it has been engaged in over 500 military interventions; that is an average of two active conflicts annually.

The US baby-marriage with armed conflicts indicates a hereditary war economy. It seems to have an establishment that rejoices at the approach of war. I am not sure the rhetoric of its current president to annihilate other peoples has ever been heard before in human history. For instance, in April he told Iran that unless it reopened the Strait of Hormuz immediately: “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.” A few days before, he had threatened he would be “blasting Iran into oblivion … back to the Stone Ages!!!” On Easter morning, he told Iranians: “Open the F——-in’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell.”

The US is a great country contributing to human knowledge, research, space travel and inventions. But it tends to commercialise everything and sometimes to use knowledge to the detriment of humanity. An example is its experiments on smallpox and using its knowledge to reduce the indigenous Indian population.

In its Declaration of Independence, the US proclaimed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”

However, the truth was that the declaration lied against itself, as the only people who were accepted as being created equal with rights to life and liberty were the white population. Other peoples were regarded and treated as subhuman beings.

Apart from the genocide against the indigenous American Indian population, a dozen presidents of the US who were expected to uphold the Declaration were slave owners. The first president, George Washington, owned over 500 slaves. The main author of the Declaration, Thomas Jefferson, owned more than 600 slaves; James Madison had 100 slaves; and Zachary Taylor, 150 slaves.

Stay Ahead with Premium Times

Follow us on Google News and never miss breaking stories, investigations, and in-depth reporting.

Add as a preferred source on Google

The US has scant regard for the fundamental reasons the United Nations was established: international peace, equal rights, self-determination of peoples, and the sovereignty of countries. In fact, it regards the Latin American region as its “backyard,” which implies an extension of its territory or its playground. For instance, the US invaded and occupied Nicaragua so many times that in 1855 American businessman William Walker’s idea of going on vacation was to be president of a country. 

Presidents James Monroe, Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren, William Henry Harrison, John Tyler, James K Polk, Andrew Johnson and Ulysses S Grant were all slave owners.

Till date, the American Indians continue to protest their unequal state and demand equality within the American federation. Their leader, Leonard Peltier, 80, was only just released from prison in February 2025, after spending fifty years incarcerated. Even at that, he is still confined. African Americans experienced a similar nightmare. In fact, Malcolm X said what the African Americans of his age in the 1960s were witnessing was not the American dream, but the “American nightmare.” The African Americans did not get the vote until 1965.

At least the African Americans can vote. But not so the Puerto Ricans who, till date, cannot vote in the US presidential elections because it is not a US state, but a US colony. Also, it is not allowed to vote in the US Congress. Puerto Rico was colonised in 1898, following the Spanish-American War, and has since then remained a colony. It is one of fifteen colonies that the US maintains, even after 250 years of declaring all human beings equal and free. You are right, the US does not call them colonies. They are baptised as “overseas territories,” except Puerto Rico whose status is undefined.

The Puerto Rican independence leader, Oscar Lopez Rivera, was released from prison in May 2017 after thirty-eight years. The immediate neighbours of the USA are Mexico and Canada. They are sometimes under US threat. Mexico has actually lived the American nightmare, after its neighbour seized 55 per cent of its territory and incorporated it by force. The Mexican territories seized include what are today California, Texas, Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Wyoming and Colorado. As for Canada, the Trump administration threatened to appropriate it as its 51st state.

The US has scant regard for the fundamental reasons the United Nations was established: international peace, equal rights, self-determination of peoples, and the sovereignty of countries. In fact, it regards the Latin American region as its “backyard,” which implies an extension of its territory or its playground. For instance, the US invaded and occupied Nicaragua so many times that in 1855 American businessman William Walker’s idea of going on vacation was to be president of a country. He overthrew the Nicaraguan government and ruled for ten months, during which he reinstated the slave trade. He was removed, not by the US government, but by a force financed by his fellow American businessman, Cornelius Vanderbilt.

President Trump has also unilaterally gifted Western Sahara, an African country and founding member of the African Union, to its neighbour, Morocco. The US gives a country it does not own as a friendship package to the monarch of another country! I am not sure there is something more absurd in international relations.

The US, which has occupied the Cuban Guantanamo Bay since 1903, has for 64 years now imposed unilateral restrictions on that country, including barring it from trade with other countries and disallowing it from buying food, fuel and medicines. Trump this year talked about a “friendly takeover” of Cuba.

In the region, the US has militarily overthrown various governments, including that of Jacobo Arbenz of Guatemala in 1954, Salvador Allende on 11 September, 1973, and militarily seized Grenada in October 1983. In Asia, it overthrew Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh of Iran in 1953.

In Africa, the US joined Belgium and Mother Britain to overthrow Patrice Lumumba of the Democratic Republic of the Congo in September 1960. It overthrew the visionary Pan-Africanist, President Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana in February 1966. The US led its allies to bomb rich Libya into poverty and the four pieces it is today. That was in October 2011, during which President Muammar Gaddafi was summarily executed.

President Trump has also unilaterally gifted Western Sahara, an African country and founding member of the African Union, to its neighbour, Morocco. The US gives a country it does not own as a friendship package to the monarch of another country! I am not sure there is something more absurd in international relations.

As I join millions around the world to congratulate the US on its 250th Independence Day, I pray humanity can develop some engineering that can alter its DNA and transform it into a force of peace and development in the universe. That is what will make it truly “God’s own country.”

Owei Lakemfa, a former secretary general of African workers, is a human rights activist, journalist and author.