This is a compilation of quotes from the arbiters and benefactors of imperialism. Not the ones who’ve changed their minds about wanting to serve the empire and sought to expose its evils, but who’ve remained proud of their crimes against the victims of colonialism and imperialism. Whether those victims have been Africans, Koreans, Palestinians, Vietnamese, Cambodians, Chileans, Afghans, or other peoples.
I was in the East End of London [a working-class quarter] yesterday and attended a meeting of the unemployed. I listened to the wild speeches, which were just a cry for ‘bread! bread!’ and on my way home I pondered over the scene and I became more than ever convinced of the importance of imperialism.... My cherished idea is a solution for the social problem, i.e., in order to save the 40,000,000 inhabitants of the United Kingdom from a bloody civil war, we colonial statesmen must acquire new lands to settle the surplus population, to provide new markets for the goods produced in the factories and mines. The Empire, as I have always said, is a bread and butter question. If you want to avoid civil war, you must become imperialists.
-Cecil Rhodes
Rhodes put this idea into practice by establishing a genocidal apartheid settler-colonial state in Africa, which has since been defeated by the Natives and turned into the anti-imperialist country of Zimbabwe. Most formerly colonized nations nevertheless continue to be subject to imperial control, like he would want.
It is possible that the Arabs will follow the dictates of sterile nationalist emotions and tell us: “We want neither your honey nor your sting. We’d rather that the Negev remain barren than that Jews should inhabit it.” If this occurs, we will have to talk to them in a different language—and we will have a different language—but such a language will not be ours without a state. This is so because we can no longer tolerate that vast territories capable of absorbing tens of thousands of Jews should remain vacant, and that Jews cannot return to their homeland because the Arabs prefer that the place [the Negev] remains neither ours nor theirs. We must expel Arabs and take their place. Up to now, all our aspirations have been based on an assumption – one that has been vindicated throughout our activities in the country – that there is enough room in the land for the Arabs and ourselves. But if we are compelled to use force – not in order to dispossess the Arabs of the Negev or Transjordan, but in order to guarantee our right to settle there – our force will enable us to do so.
-First Israeli Prime Minister David Ben Gurion, 1937
Since then, the Zionists have fulfilled this goal by bringing 600,000 - 750,000 illegal settlers into the occupied Palestinian territories, and by occupying all of historic Palestine since 1967. This proves Ben Gurion’s vision was indeed one of Arab dispossession, despite his pretending otherwise.
Right at the start of the war, unofficially I slipped a message in ‘under the carpet’ in the Pentagon that we ought to turn SAC loose with incendiaries on some North Korean towns. The answer came back, under the carpet again, that there would be too many civilian casualties; we couldn’t do anything like that. So we went over there and fought the war and eventually burned down every town in North Korea anyway, some way or another, and some in South Korea, too. We even burned down Pusan. . . an accident, but we burned it down anyway. . . Over a period of three years or so, we killed off – what? – twenty percent of the population of Korea as direct casualties of war, or from starvation and exposure? Over a period of three years, this seemed to be acceptable to everybody, but to kill a few people at the start right away, no, we can’t seem to stomach that.
-U.S. Air Force General Curtis LeMay
[Nixon] wants a massive bombing campaign in Cambodia. He doesn't want to hear anything about it. It's an order, to be done. Anything that flies or anything that moves….It's wave after wave of planes [in Vietnam]. You see, they can't see the B-52 and they dropped a million pounds of bombs ... I bet you we will have had more planes over there in one day than Johnson had in a month ... each plane can carry about 10 times the load of World War II plane could carry….How many people did (Khmer Rouge Foreign Minister Ieng Sary) kill? Tens of thousands? You should tell the Cambodians (i.e., Khmer Rouge) that we will be friends with them. They are murderous thugs, but we won’t let that stand in the way. We are prepared to improve relations with them. Tell them the latter part, but don’t tell them what I said before.
-Henry Kissinger on bombing Vietnam and Cambodia, and on how Washington was to relate to the Pol Pot regime
I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves.
-Kissinger in his public statement on the Pinochet military coup
We will not let Chile go down the drain….The example of a successful elected Marxist government in Chile would surely have an impact on — and even precedent value for — other parts of the world, especially in Italy; the imitative spread of similar phenomena elsewhere would in turn significantly affect the world balance and our own position in it….cooperate closely and establish firm basis for cordial and most constructive relationship [with Pinochet]….I think we should understand our policy-that however unpleasant they [the Pinochet regime] act, this government is better for us than Allende was….In the United States, as you know, we are sympathetic with what you [Pinochet] are trying to do here. We want to help, not undermine you. You did a great service to the West in overthrowing Allende.
-Kissinger in his declassified private statements on Pinochet, and/or in direct conversation with Pinochet himself
The United States’ larger interest would be served by the demise of the Taraki-Amin regime, despite whatever setbacks this might mean for future social and economic reforms in Afghanistan. The overthrow of the DRA would show the rest of the world, particularly the Third World, that the Soviet’s view of the socialist course of history being inevitable is not accurate.
-1979 U.S. State Department memo, discussing how Washington viewed the destruction of women’s rights as necessary for defeating communism within Afghanistan
Oil remains fundamentally a government business. While many regions of the world offer great oil opportunities, the Middle East with two-thirds of the world’s oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies, even though companies are anxious for greater access there, progress continues to be slow.
-Dick Cheney in 1999, a few years before carrying out the campaign of lies that would justify invading Iraq for the benefit of his oil company Halliburton
I want to make the case for secrecy in government when it comes to the conduct of national security affairs, and possibly for deception where that’s appropriate. You know Winston Churchill said during World War Two that in wartime truth is so important it should be surrounded by a bodyguard of lies….If I had to say something I knew was false to protect American national security, I would do it.
-John Bolton in 2010, after helping Cheney sell these lies
In terms of how you think about problem sets, I – when I was a cadet, what’s the first – what’s the cadet motto at West Point? You will not lie, cheat, or steal, or tolerate those who do. I was the CIA director. We lied, we cheated, we stole. It’s – it was like – we had entire training courses. It reminds you of the glory of the American experiment.
-Mike Pompeo, speaking at a Texas A&M University event in 2019
I’ve been in a lot of meetings about foreign policy. You know, for years and generations, wars have been fought over oil. In a short matter of time, they will be fought over water. So when we think about building up our economy, around our infrastructure, around something like water policy, it’s literally about jobs, it’s about the fundamental source of life that Tammy Duckworth was talking about, will sustain life, and it’s about strengthening up our nation.
-Kamala Harris earlier this year
With both points of that statement—that oil has been a motivator for U.S. wars and that water wars are coming—Harris was incriminating imperialism. Harris admitted that when officials like Cheney have talked about oil being a “prize,” they’ve meant this as a rationale for starting wars. And by implying that water will soon take on the same incentivizing role as oil in U.S. foreign policy, Harris was admitting the extent to which capital and empire have destroyed the world and how much they’ll continue destroying the world. Now that the U.S. military’s unparalleled pollution has brought the planet beyond the climate tipping point in terms of whether we’ll surpass 1.5 degrees of warming, the imperialists plan to wreak even more death and chaos.
This is the logical conclusion of all the morally reprehensible stances that these imperialists and colonizers have taken over the decades: a planet that’s being consumed by the drive for conquest and profits.
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