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American Independence Day is annually celebrated on July 4 and is often known as the Fourth of July. It is the anniversary of the publication of the declaration of independence from Great Britain in 1776. Patriotic displays and family events are organized throughout the United States.

Americans across the country are set to celebrate July 4 —also known as Independence Day or July 4^th—this weekend with parades, barbeques and red, white and blue gear. In the nation’s capital, President Joe Biden is set to host a group of essential workers and military families on the South Lawn of the White House on Sunday, 4^th of July. The National Park Service is also hosting the annual Independence Day fireworks celebration on the National Mall.

The Fourth of Julyhas been a federal holiday in the United States since 1941, but the tradition of Independence Day celebrations goes back to the 18th century and the American Revolution. On July 2nd, 1776, the Continental Congress voted in favor of independence, and two days later delegates from the 13 colonies adopted the Declaration of Independence, a historic document drafted by Thomas Jefferson.

A History of Independence Day

When the initial battles in the Revolutionary War broke out in April 1775, few colonists desired complete independence from Great Britain, and those who did were considered radical.

By the middle of the following year, however, many more colonists had come to favor independence, thanks to growing hostility against Britain and the spread of revolutionary sentiments such as those expressed in the bestselling pamphlet “Common Sense,” published by Thomas Paine in early 1776.

On June 7, when the Continental Congress met at the Pennsylvania State House (later Independence Hall) in Philadelphia, the Virginia delegate Richard Henry Lee introduced a motion calling for the colonies’ independence.

Amid heated debate, Congress postponed the vote on Lee’s resolution, but appointed a five-man committee—including Thomas Jefferson of Virginia, John Adams of Massachusetts, Roger Sherman of Connecticut, Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania and Robert R. Livingston of New York—to draft a formal statement justifying the break with Great Britain.

On July 2nd, the Continental Congress voted in favor of Lee’s resolution for independence in a near-unanimous vote (the New York delegation abstained, but later voted affirmatively). On that day, John Adams wrote to his wife Abigail that July 2 “will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival” and that the celebration should include “Pomp and Parade…Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other.”

On July 4th, the Continental Congress formally adopted the Declaration of Independence, which had been written largely by Jefferson. Though the vote for actual independence took place on July 2nd, from then on, the 4th became the day that was celebrated as the birth of American independence.

Early Fourth of July Celebrations

In the pre-Revolutionary years, colonists had held annual celebrations of the king’s birthday, which traditionally included the ringing of bells, bonfires, processions and speechmaking. By contrast, during the summer of 1776 some colonists celebrated the birth of independence by holding mock funerals for King George III as a way of symbolizing the end of the monarchy’s hold on America and the triumph of liberty.

Festivities including concerts, bonfires, parades and the firing of cannons and muskets usually accompanied the first public readings of the Declaration of Independence, beginning immediately after its adoption. Philadelphia held the first annual commemoration of independence on July 4, 1777, while Congress was still occupied with the ongoing war.

George Washington issued double rations of rum to all his soldiers to mark the anniversary of independence in 1778, and in 1781, several months before the key American victory at the Battle of Yorktown, Massachusetts became the first state to make July 4th an official state holiday.

After the Revolutionary War, Americans continued to commemorate Independence Day every year, in celebrations that allowed the new nation’s emerging political leaders to address citizens and create a feeling of unity. By the last decade of the 18th century, the two major political parties—the Federalist Party and Democratic-Republicans—that had arisen began holding separate Fourth of July celebrations in many large cities.

Fourth of July Fireworks

The first fireworks were used as early as 200 BC. The tradition of setting off fireworks on the 4 of July began in Philadelphia on July 4, 1777, during the first organized celebration of Independence Day. Ship’s cannon fired a 13-gun salute in honor of the 13 colonies. The Pennsylvania Evening Post reported: “at night there was a grand exhibition of fireworks (which began and concluded with thirteen rockets) on the Commons, and the city was beautifully illuminated.” That same night, the Sons of Liberty set off fireworks over Boston Common.

Fourth of July Becomes a Federal Holiday

The tradition of patriotic celebration became even more widespread after the War of 1812, in which the United States again faced Great Britain. In 1870, the U.S. Congress made July 4th a federal holiday; in 1941, the provision was expanded to grant a paid holiday to all federal employees.

Over the years, the political importance of the holiday would decline, but Independence Day remained an important national holiday and a symbol of patriotism.

Falling in mid-summer, the Fourth of July has since the late 19th century become a major focus of leisure activities and a common occasion for family get-togethers, often involving fireworks and outdoor barbecues. The most common symbol of the holiday is the American flag, and a common musical accompaniment is “The Star-Spangled Banner,” the national anthem of the United States.

 

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The Founding Fathers

These military leaders, rebels, politicians and writers varied in personality, status and background, but all played a part in forming a new nation and hammering out the framework for the young democracy.

 

Without them, there would have been no United States of America. The Founding Fathers, a group of predominantly wealthy plantation owners and businessmen, united 13 disparate colonies, fought for independence from Britain and penned a series of influential governing documents that steer the country to this day.

All the Founding Fathers, including the first four U.S. presidents, at one point considered themselves British subjects. But they revolted against the restrictive rule of King George III—outlining their grievances in the Declaration of Independence, a powerful call for freedom and equality—and won a stunning military victory over what was then the world’s preeminent superpower.

The Founders proved equally adept later on in peacetime. When the federal government tottered under the Articles of Confederation, prominent citizens met anew to hammer out the U.S. Constitution, overcoming major areas of disagreement between large and small states and Southern and Northern ones to form a stable political system. Showing foresight, they included a Bill of Rights, which enshrined many civil liberties into law and provided a blueprint for other emerging democracies.

 

There’s no official consensus on who should be considered a Founding Father, and some historians object to the term altogether. On the whole, though, it’s applied to those leaders who initiated the Revolutionary War and framed the Constitution. Here are eight of the most influential characters in America’s origin story:

George Washington

Before he fought against the British, George Washington fought for the British, serving as a commander in the French and Indian War. A prosperous Virginia farmer who owned hundreds of slaves, he came to resent the various taxes and restrictions being imposed on the colonies by the British crown.

Once the Revolutionary War broke out in 1775, he was placed in charge of the Continental Army and quickly suffered a near-disastrous defeat at the Battle of Brooklyn. More defeats followed—all in all, Washington lost more battles than he won. Nonetheless, he kept his ragtag troops together even through a freezing winter at Valley Forge and, with the help of his French allies, was able to expel the British by 1783.

Washington then returned to Virginia intent on resuming his career as a farmer. But he was persuaded to re-enter politics as head of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, believing that a stronger federal government was needed to preserve the nation. In 1789, Washington was overwhelmingly elected the first president of the United States. He is aptly known as the “Father of His Country.”

Alexander Hamilton

A poor, illegitimate orphan, Alexander Hamilton emigrated as a teenager from the British West Indies to New York. Rising to prominence as an aide-de-camp to Washington during the Revolutionary War, he became an impassioned supporter of a strong central government.

After attending the Constitutional Convention in 1787, he wrote the majority of the highly persuasive Federalist Papers, which argued for the Constitution’s ratification. Washington then tapped him to serve as the first U.S. treasury secretary, a position he used to push for the creation of a national bank. Later immortalized on the $10 bill, Hamilton was killed in an 1804 duel with his bitter rival Aaron Burr, the sitting vice president.

Benjamin Franklin

Early America’s foremost Renaissance man, Benjamin Franklin was a skilled author, printer, scientist, inventor and diplomat despite a formal education that ended at age 10. When not designing bifocals, harnessing electricity, playing music or publishing Poor Richard’s Almanack, he worked constantly on civic projects to improve his adopted city of Philadelphia.

In the beginning stages of the American Revolution, Franklin was appointed to the five-member committee that drafted the Declaration of Independence. He then traveled to France, where he secured French assistance for the war effort and helped negotiate the 1783 Treaty of Paris, the official end to the conflict. Just prior to his death, Franklin served as a sort of elder statesman at the Constitutional Convention.

John Adams

A distinguished Massachusetts lawyer, John Adams became a relatively early proponent of the revolutionary cause. Just like Franklin, he served on the committee that wrote the Declaration of Independence, journeyed overseas to secure French military aid and helped negotiate the Treaty of Paris. He chaired other key committees as well and even found time to draft the Massachusetts Constitution (which is still in use).

After about 10 years of diplomatic service abroad, Adams returned home in 1788 and subsequently became vice president under Washington. Following Washington’s two terms, he was then elected president, serving from 1797 to 1801. In a striking coincidence, Adams and his friend-turned-rival-turned-friend Thomas Jefferson both died on the same day, July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

Samuel Adams

The second cousin of John Adams, Samuel Adams was a political firebrand who drummed up immense opposition to British policies in Boston, a hotbed of the resistance. Believing that the colonists were subject to “taxation without representation,” he joined the Sons of Liberty, an underground dissident group that at times resorted to tarring and feathering British loyalists.

Adams likely planned the 1773 Boston Tea Party, and in 1775 his attempted arrest helped spark the Battles of Lexington and Concord, the first skirmish of the Revolutionary War. Unlike many of the Founders, Adams was staunchly anti-slavery. He signed the Declaration of Independence and went on to serve as governor of Massachusetts.

Thomas Jefferson

Well educated and prosperous, Thomas Jefferson was a Virginia lawyer and politician who came to believe the British Parliament held no authority over the 13 colonies. In 1776, he was given the immense task of writing the Declaration of Independence, in which he famously declared that “all men are created equal” and “that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights,” such as “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” (A lifelong slaveholder, he did not extend these concepts to African-Americans.)

As secretary of state under Washington, Jefferson clashed constantly with Hamilton over foreign policy and the role of government. He later served as vice president to John Adams prior to becoming president himself, in 1801.

James Madison

A close friend of Jefferson’s, James Madison likewise grew up on a Virginia plantation and served in the state legislature. At the 1787 Constitutional Convention, he proved to be perhaps the most influential delegate, developing a plan to divide the federal government into three branches—legislative, executive and judicial—each with checks on its power. This plan, which was largely adopted, earned him the moniker “Father of the Constitution.”

Madison next co-authored the Federalist Papers and, as a U.S. congressman, became the driving force behind the Bill of Rights. He was elected president in 1808 after serving as Jefferson’s secretary of state.

John Jay

Not nearly as recognized as his major Founder cohorts, John Jay nonetheless played a pivotal role in the creation of the United States. A lawyer, he originally preferred reconciling with Britain rather than fighting for independence. Once war broke out, however, he wholeheartedly joined the side of the colonists, serving, among other roles, as a diplomat to Spain and linking up with Franklin and Adams to negotiate the Treaty of Paris.

Upon returning to the United States, Jay served as secretary of foreign affairs under the Articles of Confederation and authored a few of the Federalist Papers. In 1789, he became the first chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, and six years later he was elected governor of New York.

Additional Founders

Many other figures have also been cited as Founding Fathers (or Mothers). These include John Hancock, best known for his flashy signature on the Declaration of Independence; Gouverneur Morris, who wrote much of the Constitution; Thomas Paine, the British-born author of Common Sense; Paul Revere, a Boston silversmith whose “midnight ride” warned of approaching redcoats; George Mason, who helped craft the Constitution but ultimately refused to sign it; Charles Carroll, the lone Catholic to sign the Declaration of Independence; Patrick Henry, who famously declared “Give me liberty, or give me death!”; John Marshall, a Revolutionary War veteran and longtime chief justice of the Supreme Court; and Abigail Adams, who implored her husband, John, to “remember the ladies” while shaping the new country.

Source: History.com

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Columbus discovers the land

 Americans get a day off work on October 12 to celebrate Columbus Day. It’s an annual holiday that commemorates the day on October 12, 1492, when the Italian explorer Christopher Columbus officially set foot in the Americas, and claimed the land for Spain. It has been a national holiday in the United States since 1937.

It is commonly said that “Columbus discovered America.” It would be more accurate, perhaps, to say that he introduced the Americas to Western Europe during his four voyages to the region between 1492 and 1502. It’s also safe to say that he paved the way for the massive influx of western Europeans that would ultimately form several new nations including the United States, Canada and Mexico.

But to say he “discovered” America is a bit of a misnomer because there were plenty of people already here when he arrived.

European colonization

The invasion of the North American continent and its peoples began with the Spanish in 1565 at St. Augustine, Florida. Thencame British in 1587 when the Plymouth Company established a settlement that they dubbed Roanoke in present-day Virginia. This first settlement failed mysteriously and in 1606, the London Company established a presence in what would become Jamestown, Virginia. From there, the French founded Quebec in 1608, then the Dutch started a colony in 1609 in present-day New York. While Native Americans resisted European efforts to amass land and power during this period, they struggled to do so while also fighting new diseases introduced by the Europeans and the slave trade.

English, French, and Spanish colonies

The history of colonial North America centersprimarily around the struggle of England, France, andSpain to gain control of the continent. Settlerscrossed the Atlantic for different reasons, and theirgovernments took different approaches to their colonizing efforts. These differences created both advantages and disadvantages that profoundly affected theNew World’s fate.

France and Spain, for instance,were governed by autocratic sovereigns whose rulewas absolute; their colonists went to America as servants of the Crown.

The English colonists, on theother hand, enjoyed far more freedom and were ableto govern themselves as long as they followed Englishlaw and were loyal to the king. In addition, unlikeFrance and Spain, England encouraged immigrationfrom other nations, thus boosting its colonial population.

By 1763 the English had established dominancein North America, having defeated France and Spainin the French and Indian War. However, thoseregions that had been colonized by the French or Spanish would retain national characteristics thatlinger to this day.

Massacre of native Indians

In “An American Genocide, The United States and the California Catastrophe, 1846–1873”, historian Benjamin Madley recorded the numbers of killings of California Indians between 1846 and 1873. He found evidence that during this period, at least 9,400 to 16,000 California Indians were killed by non-Indians.

African blacks brought in as slaves

Hundreds of thousands of Africans, both free and enslaved, aided the establishment and survival of colonies in the Americas and the New World. However, many consider a significant starting point to slavery in America to be 1619, when the privateer The White Lion brought 20 African slaves ashore in the British colony of Jamestown, Virginia. The crew had seized the Africans from the Portuguese slave ship Sao Jao Bautista.

Throughout the 17th century, European settlers in North America turned to enslaved Africans as a cheaper, more plentiful labor source than indentured servants, who were mostly poor Europeans.

Though it is impossible to give accurate figures, some historians have estimated that 6 to 7 million enslaved people were imported to the New World during the 18th century alone, depriving the African continent of some of its healthiest and ablest men and women.

In the 17th and 18th centuries, enslaved Africans worked mainly on the tobacco, rice and indigo plantations of the southern coast, from the Chesapeake Bay colonies of Maryland and Virginia south to Georgia.

After the American Revolution, many colonists—particularly in the North, where slavery was relatively unimportant to the agricultural economy—began to link the oppression of enslaved Africans to their own oppression by the British, and to call for slavery’s abolition.

 

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Constitution of the United States of America

Constitution of the United States of Americais the fundamental law of the U.S. federal system of government and a landmark document of the Western world. The oldest written national constitution in use, the Constitution defines the principal organs of government and their jurisdictions and the basic rights of citizens.

Constitutional Convention

The Constitution was written during the summer of 1787 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, by 55 delegates to a Constitutional Convention that was called ostensibly to amend the Articles of Confederation (1781–89), the country’s first written constitution. The Constitution was the product of political compromise after long and often rancorous debates over issues such as states’ rights, representation, and slavery. Delegates from small and large states disagreed over whether the number of representatives in the new federal legislature should be the same for each state—as was the case under the Articles of Confederation—or different depending on a state’s population. In addition, some delegates from Northern states sought to abolish slavery or, failing that, to make representation dependent on the size of a state’s free population. At the same time, some Southern delegates threatened to abandon the convention if their demands to keep slavery and the slave trade legal and to count slaves for representation purposes were not met. Eventually the framers resolved their disputes by adopting a proposal put forward by the Connecticut delegation. The Great Compromise, as it came to be known, created a bicameral legislature with a Senate, in which all states would be equally represented, and a House of Representatives, in which representation would be apportioned on the basis of a state’s free population plus three-fifths of its enslaved population. (The inclusion of the enslaved population was known separately as the three-fifths compromise.) A further compromise on slavery prohibited Congress from banning the importation of enslaved people until 1808 (Article I, Section 9). After all the disagreements were bridged, the new Constitution was signed by 39 delegates on September 17, 1787, and it was submitted for ratification to the 13 states on September 28.

In 1787–88, in an effort to persuade New York to ratify the Constitution, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison published a series of essays on the Constitution and republican government in New York newspapers. Their work, written under the pseudonym “Publius” and collected and published in book form as The Federalist (1788), became a classic exposition and defense of the Constitution. In June 1788, after the Constitution had been ratified by nine states (as required by Article VII), Congress set March 4, 1789, as the date for the new government to commence proceedings (the first elections under the Constitution were held late in 1788). Because ratification in many states was contingent on the promised addition of a Bill of Rights, Congress proposed 12 amendments in September 1789; 10 were ratified by the states, and their adoption was certified on December 15, 1791. (One of the original 12 proposed amendments, which prohibited midterm changes in compensation for members of Congress, was ratified in 1992 as the Twenty-seventh Amendment. The last one, concerning the ratio of citizens per member of the House of Representatives, has never been adopted.)

The authors of the Constitution were heavily influenced by the country’s experience under the Articles of Confederation, which had attempted to retain as much independence and sovereignty for the states as possible and to assign to the central government only those nationally important functions that the states could not handle individually. But the events of the years 1781 to 1787, including the national government’s inability to act during Shays’s Rebellion (1786–87) in Massachusetts, showed that the Articles were unworkable because they deprived the national government of many essential powers, including direct taxation and the ability to regulate interstate commerce. It was hoped that the new Constitution would remedy this problem.

The framers of the Constitution were especially concerned with limiting the power of government and securing the liberty of citizens. The doctrine of legislative, executive, and judicial separation of powers, the checks and balances of each branch against the others, and the explicit guarantees of individual liberty were all designed to strike a balance between authority and liberty—the central purpose of American constitutional law.

Civil liberties and the Bill of Rights

The federal government is obliged by many constitutional provisions to respect the individual citizen’s basic rights. Some civil liberties were specified in the original document, notably in the provisions guaranteeing the writ of habeas corpus and trial by jury in criminal cases (Article III, Section 2) and forbidding bills of attainder and ex post facto laws (Article I, Section 9). But the most significant limitations to government’s power over the individual were added in 1791 in the Bill of Rights. The Constitution’s First Amendment guarantees the rights of conscience, such as freedom of religion, speech, and the press, and the right of peaceful assembly and petition. Other guarantees in the Bill of Rights require fair procedures for persons accused of a crime—such as protection against unreasonable search and seizure, compulsory self-incrimination, double jeopardy, and excessive bail—and guarantees of a speedy and public trial by a local, impartial jury before an impartial judge and representation by counsel. Rights of private property are also guaranteed. Although the Bill of Rights is a broad expression of individual civil liberties, the ambiguous wording of many of its provisions—such as the Second Amendment’s right “to keep and bear arms” and the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of “cruel and unusual punishments”—has been a source of constitutional controversy and intense political debate. Further, the rights guaranteed are not absolute, and there has been considerable disagreement about the extent to which they limit governmental authority. The Bill of Rights originally protected citizens only from the national government. For example, although the Constitution prohibited the establishment of an official religion at the national level, the official state-supported religion of Massachusetts was Congregationalism until 1833. Thus, individual citizens had to look to state constitutions for protection of their rights against state governments.

 

The Fourteenth Amendment

After the American Civil War, three new constitutional amendments were adopted: the Thirteenth (1865), which abolished slavery; the Fourteenth (1868), which granted citizenship to those who had been enslaved; and the Fifteenth (1870), which guaranteed formerly enslaved men the right to vote. The Fourteenth Amendment placed an important federal limitation on the states by forbidding them to deny to any person “life, liberty, or property, without due process of law” and guaranteeing every person within a state’s jurisdiction “the equal protection of its laws.” Later interpretations by the Supreme Court in the 20th century gave these two clauses added significance. In Gitlow v. New York (1925), the due process clause was interpreted by the Supreme Court to broaden the applicability of the Bill of Rights’ protection of speech to the states, holding both levels of government to the same constitutional standard. During subsequent decades, the Supreme Court selectively applied the due process clause to protect from state infringement other rights and liberties guaranteed in the Bill of Rights, a process known as “selective incorporation.” Those rights and liberties included freedom of religion and of the press and the right to a fair trial, including the right to an impartial judge and to the assistance of counsel. Most controversial were the Supreme Court’s use of the due process clause to ground an implicit right of privacy in Roe v. Wade (1973), which led to the nationwide legalization of abortion, and its selective incorporation of the Second Amendment’s right to “keep and bear Arms” in McDonald v. Chicago (2010).

The Supreme Court applied the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment in its landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954), in which it ruled that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. In the 1960s and ’70s the equal protection clause was used by the Supreme Court to extend protections to other areas, including zoning laws, voting rights, and gender discrimination. The broad interpretation of this clause has also caused considerable controversy.

 

World War I was the deadliest conflict until that point in human history, claiming tens of millions of casualties on all sides. Under President Woodrow Wilson, the United States remained neutral until 1917 and then entered the war on the side of the Allied powers (the United Kingdom, France, and Russia).

President Woodrow Wilson sought to maintain US neutrality but was ultimately unable to keep the United States out of the war, largely because of escalating German aggression. On May 7, 1915, the Germans sunk the British ocean liner RMS Lusitania, which had over a hundred Americans on board. Wilson warned that the United States would not permit unrestricted submarine warfare or any further violations of international law.

In January 1917, the Germans resumed submarine warfare. A few days after this announcement, the Wilson administration obtained a copy of the Zimmermann Telegram, which urged Mexico to join the war effort on the side of Germany and pledged that in the event of a German victory, the territories of Arizona, Texas, and New Mexico would be stripped from the United States and returned to Mexico. The publication of the Zimmermann Telegram and the escalation of German submarine attacks on US merchant vessels led the US Congress to declare war on Germany on April 6, 1917.

More than 1.3 million men and twenty thousand women enlisted in the armed forces.  Though some Americans opposed US entry into the war, many believed they had a civic duty to support the war effort. US government propaganda sought to mobilize the American citizenry through appeals to patriotism and civic duty, and by linking US democracy with support for the democracies of Western Europe.

The Selective Service Act of 1917 authorized the conscription of military manpower for the war effort so that the United States did not have to rely solely on volunteers. Because many American citizens believed it was their patriotic duty to support the war effort, the draft was well-received and rates of draft-dodging were relatively low.

The First World War had an enormous impact on US politics, culture, and society. Advocates of female suffrage successfully linked the patriotic efforts of women in the war with voting rights. This strategy was highly effective, and in 1920, the US Congress ratified the Nineteenth Amendment, which guaranteed women the right to vote.

Others were not so lucky. Hyper-vigilance on the home front led to spontaneous outbreaks of violence against groups whose loyalty to the United States was considered suspect. German-Americans, labor activists, suffragists, immigrants, African Americans, and socialists were subjected to threats, harassment, imprisonment, and physical violence.

At the same time, civil liberties were sharply curtailed. The Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918 criminalized the expression of antiwar sentiment and criticism of the US government and armed forces. Voluntary associations were created to identify dissidents, and many of these worked together with the Federal Bureau of Investigation to patrol the home front and punish perceived “enemies.

 

 

America and World War II

When events began happening in Europe that would eventually lead to World War II, many Americans took an increasingly hard line toward getting involved. The events of World War I had fed into the United States’ natural desire of isolationism, and this was reflected by the passage of Neutrality Acts and the general hands-off approach to the events that unfolded on the world stage.

America’s isolation from war ended on December 7, 1941, when Japan staged a surprise attack on American military installations in the Pacific. The most devastating strike came at Pearl Harbor, the Hawaiian naval base where much of the US Pacific Fleet was moored. In a two-hour attack, Japanese warplanes sank or damaged 18 warships and destroyed 164 aircraft. Over 2,400 servicemen and civilians lost their lives.

Though stunned by the events of December 7, Americans were also resolute. On December 8, President Roosevelt asked Congress to declare war against Japan. The declaration passed with just one dissenting vote. Three days later, Germany and Italy, allied with Japan, declared war on the United States. America was now drawn into a global war. It had allies in this fight–most importantly Great Britain and the Soviet Union. But the job the nation faced in December 1941 was formidable.

The United States faced a mammoth job in December 1941. Ill-equipped and wounded, the nation was at war with three formidable adversaries. It had to prepare to fight on two distant and very different fronts, Europe and the Pacific.America needed to quickly raise, train, and outfit a vast military force. At the same time, it had to find a way to provide material aid to its hard-pressed allies in Great Britain and the Soviet Union.

The military history of the United States in World War II covers the war against the Axis Powers, starting with the 7 December 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. During the first two years of World War II, the United States had maintained formal neutrality as made official in the Quarantine Speech delivered by US President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1937, while supplying Britain, the Soviet Union, and China with war material through the Lend-Lease Act which was signed into law on 11 March 1941, as well as deploying the US military to replace the British forces stationed in Iceland.

Following the “Greer incident” Roosevelt publicly confirmed the “shoot on sight” order on 11 September 1941, effectively declaring naval war on Germany and Italy in the Battle of the Atlantic. In the Pacific Theater, there was unofficial early US combat activity such as the Flying Tigers.

During the war some 16,112,566 Americans served in the United States Armed Forces, with 405,399 killed and 671,278 wounded. There were also 130,201 American prisoners of war, of whom 116,129 returned home after the war.

Key civilian advisors to President Roosevelt included Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, who mobilized the nation’s industries and induction centers to supply the Army, commanded by General George Marshall and the Army Air Forces under General Hap Arnold. The Navy, led by Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox and Admiral Ernest King, proved more autonomous. Overall priorities were set by Roosevelt and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, chaired by William Leahy. The highest priority was the defeat of Germany in Europe, but first the war against Japan in the Pacific was more urgent after the sinking of the main battleship fleet at Pearl Harbor.

Admiral King put Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, based in Hawaii, in charge of the Pacific War against Japan. The Imperial Japanese Navy had the advantage, taking the Philippines as well as British and Dutch possessions, and threatening Australia but in June 1942, its main carriers were sunk during the Battle of Midway, and the Americans seized the initiative.

The Pacific War became one of island hopping, so as to move air bases closer and closer to Japan. The Army, based in Australia under General Douglas MacArthur, steadily advanced across New Guinea to the Philippines, with plans to invade the Japanese home islands in late 1945. With its merchant fleet sunk by American submarines, Japan ran short of aviation gasoline and fuel oil, as the US Navy in June 1944 captured islands within bombing range of the Japanese home islands. Strategic bombing directed by General Curtis Lemay destroyed all the major Japanese cities, as the US captured Okinawa after heavy losses in spring 1945. With the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Soviet invasion of Manchuria, and an invasion of the home islands imminent, Japan surrendered.

The war in Europe involved aid to Britain, her allies, and the Soviet Union, with the US supplying munitions until it could ready an invasion force. US forces were first tested to a limited degree in the North African Campaign and then employed more significantly with British Forces in Italy in 1943–45, where US forces, representing about a third of the Allied forces deployed, bogged down after Italy surrendered and the Germans took over. Finally, the main invasion of France took place in June 1944, under General Dwight D. Eisenhower. Meanwhile, the US Army Air Forces and the British Royal Air Force engaged in the area bombardment of German cities and systematically targeted German transportation links and synthetic oil plants, as it knocked out what was left of the Luftwaffe post Battle of Britain in 1944. Being invaded from all sides, it became clear that Germany would lose the war. Berlin fell to the Soviets in May 1945, and with Adolf Hitler dead, the Germans surrendered.

The military effort was strongly supported by civilians on the home front, who provided the military personnel, the munitions, the money, and the morale to fight the war to victory. World War II cost the United States an estimated $341 billion in 1945 dollars – equivalent to 74% of America’s GDP and expenditures during the war. In 2020 dollars, the war cost over $4.9 trillion.

 

Creation of NATO

The North Atlantic Alliance was founded in the aftermath of the Second World War. Its purpose was to secure peace in Europe, to promote cooperation among its members and to guard their freedom – all of this in the context of countering the threat posed at the time by the Soviet Union. The Alliance’s founding treaty was signed in Washington in 1949 by a dozen European and North American countries. It commits the Allies to democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law, as well as to peaceful resolution of disputes. Importantly, the treaty sets out the idea of collective defense, meaning that an attack against one Ally is considered as an attack against all Allies. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization – or NATO – ensures that the security of its European member countries is inseparably linked to that of its North American member countries. The Organization also provides a unique forum for dialogue and cooperation across the Atlantic.

 

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America’s involvement in conflicts

 

Vietnam War

The involvement of the United States in the Vietnam War began after World War II and escalated into full commitment during the Vietnam War from 1955 to 1973. The U.S. involvement in South Vietnam stemmed from a combination of factors: France’s long colonial history in French Indochina, the U.S. war with Japan in the Pacific, and both Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong’s pledge in 1950 to support Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Minh’s guerrilla forces.

Related to this, the U.S. was adamantly against providing any aid to France that would in any way prop up France’s struggle to maintain its pre-WWII colonial empire. However, Stalin and Mao’s offering their support to the Viet Minh in 1950, changed the battlefield dynamic and geopolitical character of the struggle to one of a global conflict against Maoist and Stalinist expansionism. It was at the time, in September 1950, that French forces began to be moderately backed by America.

Beginning with US$10M worth of military supplies, President Harry S. Truman from that initial support provided progressively increasing amounts of financial and military assistance to French forces fighting in what was still in the minds of the Western powers French Indochina. Beginning in 1950, U.S. involvement increased from just assisting French coalition forces to providing direct military assistance to the associated states (Annam, Tonkin, Laos, and Cambodia).

Eventually, U.S. missions were carried out at a more consistent rate by sending increasing amounts of military assistance from the United States. Their main intent was to restrict Communist expansion in Indochina as they thought it would soon lead to Communist takeovers in Thailand, Laos, Malaya, and all of what later became Vietnam. This would have resulted in a change in balance of power throughout Asia. The U.S. foreign policy establishment saw the U.S.’s national security and Western Europe’s interests being marginalized due to the rise of this Communist expansion, and thus it strived to restrict it.

Under Truman, the support went from $10M in September 1950 to $150M by the end of 1951. The struggle passed from Truman to Eisenhower, who saw the fall of French Indochina, and in 1961 the Eisenhower administration passed the conflict to Kennedy. In May 1961, Kennedy sent 500 more military advisers, bringing American forces there to 1,400. With the budget increased and with American boot on the ground in Vietnam by at least 1961, these actions came to be questioned by other segments of the U.S. government and among the people of the United States.

Ultimately, estimates of the number of Vietnamese soldiers and civilians killed vary from 966,000 to 3,812,000. 2017 records report that the conflict resulted in 58,318 U.S. fatalities.

 

Cuba (The Spanish – American War)

The Spanish–American War (April 21 – August 13, 1898) was an armed conflict between Spain and the United States. Hostilities began in the aftermath of the internal explosion of USS Maine in Havana Harbor in Cuba, leading to U.S. intervention in the Cuban War of Independence. The war led to the U.S. emerging predominant in the Caribbean region and resulted in U.S. acquisition of Spain’s Pacific possessions. That led to U.S. involvement in the Philippine Revolution and later to the Philippine-American War.

The main issue was Cuban independence. Revolts had been occurring for some years in Cuba against Spanish colonial rule. The U.S. backed these revolts upon entering the Spanish–American War. There had been war scares before, as in the Virginius Affair in 1873. But in the late 1890s, American public opinion swayed in support of the rebellion due to reports of concentration camps (death estimates range from 150,000 to 400,000 people) set up to control the populace.

The business community had just recovered from a deep depression and feared that a war would reverse the gains. Accordingly, most business interests lobbied vigorously against going to war. President William McKinley ignored the exaggerated news reporting and sought a peaceful settlement. However, after the United States Navy armored cruiser Maine mysteriously exploded and sank in Havana Harbor on February 15, 1898, political pressures from the Democratic Party pushed McKinley into a war that he had wished to avoid.

On April 20, 1898, McKinley signed a joint Congressional resolution demanding Spanish withdrawal and authorizing the President to use military force to help Cuba gain independence. In response, Spain severed diplomatic relations with the United States on April 21. On the same day, the U.S. Navy began a blockade of Cuba. Both sides declared war; neither had allies.

The 10-week war was fought in both the Caribbean and the Pacific. As U.S. agitators for war well knew, U.S. naval power would prove decisive, allowing expeditionary forces to disembark in Cuba against a Spanish garrison already facing nationwide Cuban insurgent attacks and further wasted by yellow fever. The invaders obtained the surrender of Santiago de Cuba and Manila despite the good performance of some Spanish infantry units, and fierce fighting for positions such as San Juan Hill. Madrid sued for peace after two Spanish squadrons were sunk in the battles of Santiago de Cuba and Manila Bay, and a third, more modern fleet was recalled home to protect the Spanish coasts.

The result was the 1898 Treaty of Paris, negotiated on terms favorable to the U.S. which allowed it temporary control of Cuba and ceded ownership of Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippine islands. The cession of the Philippines involved payment of $20 million ($620 million today) to Spain by the U.S. to cover infrastructure owned by Spain.

The defeat and loss of the Spanish Empire’s last remnants was a profound shock to Spain’s national psyche and provoked a thorough philosophical and artistic reevaluation of Spanish society known as the Generation of ’98. The United States gained several island possessions spanning the globe, which provoked rancorous debate over the wisdom of expansionism.

 

Cold war

The Cold War was a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc, which began following World War II. Historians do not fully agree on its starting and ending points, but the period is generally considered to span the 1947 Truman Doctrine (12 March 1947) to the 1991 Dissolution of the Soviet Union (26 December 1991). The term “cold” is used because there was no large-scale fighting directly between the two superpowers, but they each supported major regional conflicts known as proxy wars. The conflict was based around the ideological and geopolitical struggle for global influence by these two superpowers, following their temporary alliance and victory against Nazi Germany in 1945. Aside from the nuclear arsenal development and conventional military deployment, the struggle for dominance was expressed via indirect means such as psychological warfare, propaganda campaigns, espionage, far-reaching embargoes, rivalry at sports events and technological competitions such as the Space Race.

 

The Western Bloc was led by the United States as well as the other First World nations of the Western Bloc that were generally liberal democratic but tied to a network of the authoritarian states, most of which were their former colonies. The Eastern Bloc was led by the Soviet Union and its Communist Party, which had an influence across the Second World. The US government supported right-wing governments and uprisings across the world, while the Soviet government funded communist parties and revolutions around the world. As nearly all the colonial states achieved independence in the period 1945–1960, they became Third World battlefields in the Cold War.

 

The first phase of the Cold War began shortly after the end of the Second World War in 1945. The United States created the NATO military alliance in 1949 in the apprehension of a Soviet attack and termed their global policy against Soviet influence containment. The Soviet Union formed the Warsaw Pact in 1955 in response to NATO. Major crises of this phase included the 1948–49 Berlin Blockade, the 1927–1950 Chinese Civil War, the 1950–1953 Korean War, the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, the 1956 Suez Crisis, the Berlin Crisis of 1961 and the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. The USA and the USSR competed for influence in Latin America, the Middle East, and the decolonizing states of Africa and Asia.

 

Following the Cuban Missile Crisis, a new phase began that saw the Sino-Soviet split between China and the Soviet Union complicate relations within the Communist sphere, while US ally France began to demand greater autonomy of action. The USSR invaded Czechoslovakia to suppress the 1968 Prague Spring, while the US experienced internal turmoil from the civil rights movement and opposition to the Vietnam War. In the 1960s–70s, an international peace movement took root among citizens around the world. Movements against nuclear arms testing and for nuclear disarmament took place, with large anti-war protests. By the 1970s, both sides had started making allowances for peace and security, ushering in a period of détente that saw the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks and the US opening relations with the People’s Republic of China as a strategic counterweight to the USSR.

 

Détente collapsed at the end of the decade with the beginning of the Soviet–Afghan War in 1979. The early 1980s was another period of elevated tension. The United States increased diplomatic, military, and economic pressures on the Soviet Union, at a time when it was already suffering from economic stagnation. In the mid-1980s, the new Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev introduced the liberalizing reforms of glasnost (“openness”, c. 1985) and perestroika (“reorganization”, 1987) and ended Soviet involvement in Afghanistan. Pressures for national sovereignty grew stronger in Eastern Europe, and Gorbachev refused to militarily support their governments any longer.

In 1989, the fall of the Iron Curtain after the Pan-European Picnic and a peaceful wave of revolutions (with the exception of Romania and Afghanistan) overthrew almost all communist governments of the Eastern Bloc. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union itself lost control in the Soviet Union and was banned following an abortive coup attempt in August 1991. This in turn led to the formal dissolution of the USSR in December 1991, the declaration of independence of its constituent republics and the collapse of communist governments across much of Africa and Asia. The United States was left as the world’s only superpower.

 

The Cold War and its events have left a significant legacy. It is often referred to in popular culture, especially with themes of espionage and the threat of nuclear warfare.

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Endless wars in the Middle East

The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait on August 2, 1990 marked the beginning of America’s “endless wars” in the Middle East. Before that point, American combat operations in the region had been generally temporary and short-term. President George H.W. Bush wanted to continue that pattern when he responded forcefully and appropriately to Iraq’s aggression, but it did not work out that way. Four presidents since have discovered it’s hard to get home.

Americans fought the Nazis in North Africa in World War II, but the first combat operation in the Middle East proper did not come until July 18, 1958, when President Dwight Eisenhower sent Marines ashore in Beirut, Lebanon. Operation Blue Bat was prompted by a coup, not in Lebanon but in Iraq. On July 17, 1958, the Iraqi army overthrew the most pro-Western government in the Middle East, the Hashemite monarchy that then ruled both Iraq and Jordan. King Faisal II and his family were brutally murdered.

The normally cautious Ike panicked and sent the Marines to Beirut to prop up a Maronite Christian president facing a popular revolt against his effort to get a second and unconstitutional term in office. President Eisenhower was worried that the whole region was about to fall into the hands of the charismatic Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, hailed throughout the Arab world as an anti-colonialist who was routing the forces of Western imperialism. Nasser was a Soviet proxy, Ike believed, but he had not been behind the coup in Baghdad. In fact, Nasser was as surprised as Eisenhower.

On the ground, the heavily armed Marines rushing ashore were met by vendors selling Coca-Cola and girls sunning in bikinis. It was a bit of a farce, but it was also extremely dangerous and could have turned into a quagmire. Fortunately, cooler heads in the American Embassy prevailed and made a deal with the opposition, and then Washington backed down. Another Maronite was selected president and the civil war ended peacefully. Only one American soldier died in combat, and after 102 days ashore the Marines left Lebanon.

The next combat operation also involved fears of Nasserism and the Russians. Egypt and the Soviets intervened in Yemen in 1962 to support a republican coup against a monarchy. Saudi Arabia and Jordan backed the royalists against Egypt and civil war ensued. The Egyptians bombed royalist camps in Saudi Arabia, and King Faisal appealed to John F. Kennedy for help.

JFK sent the United States Air Force to protect the Saudis in mid-1963. Operation Hard Surface lasted six months. U.S. Air Force jets flew combat air patrols along the border with Yemen. No actual combat took place, as Nasser did not want to take on the Americans and Kennedy did not want a war.

In the years after 1964, American combat operations in the region were usually short-lived. Americans did lose troops. Thirty-four crewmen were killed on June 8, 1967 when Israel attacked the USS Liberty. Two hundred and forty-one Marines and sailors died back in Beirut on October 23, 1983, when Ronald Reagan foolishly intervened in another Lebanese civil war. Reagan then wisely pulled out of Lebanon.

Reagan got involved in the region’s longest modern conventional war, the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. After Iraq attacked the USS Stark in May 1987, killing 34 sailors, the Reagan administration blamed Iran for the war. The U.S. Navy fought an undeclared naval war in the Persian Gulf for over a year against the Iranians. It ended when Iran and Iraq accepted a ceasefire. The navy largely left the Gulf, leaving only a small base in Bahrain. In 1990, that was the only American military base in the Middle East outside Turkey.

The Iran-Iraq war cost Iraq a fortune, including tens of billions in loans from Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

Bush and his National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft created a coalition to fight Iraq that included dozens of countries with major troop contributions from Britain and France in particular, as well as Egypt and Syria. Over a half-million American troops were deployed to the Gulf. More went to Israel after the war began and Saddam fired his Scuds at Israel.

Bush tried to avoid an open-ended war. He wisely did not invade Iraq after the liberation of Kuwait, but he created a no-fly zone in northern Iraq, Operation Provide Comfort, that led to years of combat patrols over Iraq. The northern zone was extended to include another no-fly zone in the south, Operation Southern Watch, to protect Iraqi Shiites and keep the Iraqis away from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, at least in the air. Thankfully, no Americans were shot down by the Iraqis, although tragically two American helicopters were shot down over Kurdistan on April 14, 1994 by Air Force jets, killing 26 Americans on board.

August 1990 was a turning point for Americans. Bush did the right thing, but as ever in war there were unanticipated consequences to the use of force. President Barack Obama and his Vice President Joe Biden tried to get out of Iraq but were drawn back in by ISIS. President Donald Trump talked about leaving the endless wars, but actually put more troops on the ground, including sending them back into Saudi Arabia after Americans left the kingdom in 2005. Washington has discovered getting in is easy, getting out is seemingly impossible.

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The U.S. War in Afghanistan

Afghanistan emerged as a significant U.S. foreign policy concern in 2001, when theUnited States, in response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, led a militarycampaign against Al Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban government that harbored andsupported it. In the intervening 19 years, the United States has suffered over 22,000military casualties (including around 2,400 fatalities) in Afghanistan and Congress hasappropriated approximately $144 billion for reconstruction and security forces there.

In that time, an electedAfghan government has replaced the Taliban; improvement in most measures of human development is limited;and future prospects of gains remain mixed.The United States and its international partners are removing their military forces from Afghanistan as part of awithdrawal announced by President Biden on April 14, 2021, heralding a possible end to the nearly two-decadeU.S. military presence in the country. In a February 2020 agreement with the Taliban, the Trump Administrationhad committed to withdrawing military forces by May 2021, in return for which the Taliban committed topreventing other groups, including Al Qaeda, from using Afghan soil to recruit, train, or fundraise towardsactivities that threaten the United States or its allies. U.S. officials contend that the Taliban have not fulfilled theircommitments, as violence between the Taliban and Afghan government has increased and Taliban links with AlQaeda remain in place, according to United Nations sanctions monitors.

Afghan government representatives were not participants in U.S.-Taliban talks, leading some observers toconclude that the United States would prioritize a military withdrawal over securing a political settlement thatpreserves some of the social, political, and humanitarian gains made since 2001. After months of delays, onSeptember 12, 2020, Afghan government and Taliban representatives officially met in Doha, Qatar, to begin theirfirst direct peace negotiations toward such a settlement, a significant moment with potentially dramaticimplications for the course of the ongoing Afghan conflict. Talks between the two sides continue but have notmade substantial progress and remain complicated by a number of factors.

In light of the stalling of intra-Afghan talks, the United States appears to have intensified its efforts to broker anintra-Afghan agreement. The United States reportedly produced a draft peace agreement to “jumpstart”negotiations that includes a variety of options, including the establishment of an interim “transitional”government, which Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has rejected. The culmination of these efforts was to be asenior-level Afghan conference in Turkey planned for April 2021, but the Taliban refused to attend and continueto reject participating in such a meeting. Observers speculate about what kind of political arrangement, if any,could satisfy both the elected Afghan government and the Taliban, who have not specified in detail their vision forAfghanistan’s future beyond creating an “Islamic government.”

Afghan officials have sought to downplay the impact of the U.S. military withdrawal on their own forces’capabilities, but some official U.S. assessments indicate that the withdrawal could lead to Taliban gains on thebattlefield. By many measures, the Taliban are in a stronger position now than at any point since 2001, controllingas much as half of the country. Future changes in political arrangements and/or in the securityenvironment may in turn influence U.S. policymakers’ consideration of future levels and conditions ofdevelopment assistance. It is unclear to what extent, if at all, the prospect of continued U.S. assistance toAfghanistan (which remains one of the world’s poorest countries) represents leverage over the Taliban.

Killing of Osama bin Laden

Osama bin Laden, the founder and first leader of the Islamist militant group al-Qaeda, was killed in Pakistan on May 2, 2011, by United States Navy SEALs of the U.S. Naval Special Warfare Development Group.

The operation, code-named Operation Neptune Spear, was carried out in a CIA-led operation with Joint Special Operations Command, commonly known as JSOC, coordinating the Special Mission Units involved in the raid. In addition to SEAL Team Six, participating units under JSOC included the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (Airborne)—also known as “Night Stalkers”—and operators from the CIA’s Special Activities Division, which recruits heavily from former JSOC Special Mission Units. The operation ended a nearly 10-year search for bin Laden, following his role in the September 11 attacks on the United States.

The raid on bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, was launched from Afghanistan. U.S. military officials said that after the raid U.S. forces took the body of bin Laden to Afghanistan for identification, then buried it at sea within 24 hours of his death in accordance with Islamic tradition.

Al-Qaeda confirmed the death on May 6 with posts made on militant websites, vowing to avenge the killing. Other Pakistani militant groups, including the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, vowed retaliation against the U.S. and against Pakistan for not preventing the operation.

The raid, supported by over 90% of the American public,was welcomed by the United Nations, NATO, the European Union and a large number of governments, but was condemned by others, including two-thirds of the Pakistani public. Legal and ethical aspects of the killing, such as his not being taken alive despite being unarmed, were questioned by others, including Amnesty International. Also controversial was the decision not to release any photographic or DNA evidence of bin Laden’s death to the public.

In the aftermath of the killing, Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani formed a commission under Senior Justice Javed Iqbal to investigate the circumstances surrounding the attack. The resulting Abbottabad Commission Report, which revealed Pakistani state military and intelligence authorities’ “collective failure” that enabled bin Laden to hide in Pakistan for nine years, was leaked to Al Jazeera on July 8, 2013.

In an interview in 2019, Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan claimed that Pakistani intelligence led the CIA to Osama bin Laden.

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How 9/11 Changed America?

Before September 11, 2001, the United States wasn’t officially engaged in any wars. Few Americans had ever heard of al-Qaeda or Osama bin Laden, and ISIS didn’t even exist.

The US deported half the number of people it does today. American surveillance state was a fraction of its current size. And — perhaps hardest to believe — Americans   didn’t have to take offtheir shoes to go through airport security.

America’s involvement in the War on Terror — prompted by the 9/11 terrorist attacks — resulted in a dramatic change in American nation’s attitudes and concerns about safety, vigilance and privacy.

It ushered in a new generation of policies like the USA Patriot Act, prioritizing national security and defense, often at the expense of civil liberties.

These changes continue to have ripple effects across the globe, particularly in the Middle East, where American-led military operations helped foment rebellions and ongoing warfare throughout the region.

Below are four of the many dramatic impacts — nationwide and in California — resulting from the events of that one tragic day.

Ongoing Wars

Less than a month after 9/11, U.S. troops invaded Afghanistan in an attempt to dismantle al-Qaeda — the terrorist group that claimed responsibility for the attacks — and remove the Taliban government harboring it.  Two years later, in March 2003, the United States invaded Iraq and deposed President Saddam Hussein. Although not directly linked to the terrorist attacks, Hussein was suspected of producing weapons of mass destruction (none were ever found). The invasion was a key part of America’s newly launched War on Terror, under the leadership of President George W. Bush.

American military involvement in Afghanistan, which continues today, has turned into the longest-running war in U.S. history. And although formal U.S. combat operations ended in late 2014, more than 8,000 U.S. troops are still there to stem the ongoing Taliban insurgency. In August 2017, President Trump announced his intention to boost troop levels in the region in response to deteriorating security conditions.

In December 2011, remaining U.S. troops were pulled out of Iraq, leaving that nation in a far more volatile state than when military operations first began in 2003. But as the Islamic State extremist — which sprouted from the chaos of war — continues to terrorize the region, the U.S. has resumed intermittent air strikes.

In 2002, the Bush Administration also opened the Guantanamo Bay detention center in Cuba, where it began sending suspected enemy combatants. Held indefinitely, prisoners were denied access to trials or legal representation, and were subject to brutal interrogation techniques. There were more than 650 foreign inmates at the facility by 2003.

Critics have long pushed to shut down the Guantanamo facility, calling it a gross violation of basic human rights and a stain on America’s image abroad. And although early in his first term, Obama vowed to close it — and significantly reduced the population (there are only 41 inmates remaining) — he failed to completely shut it down. Guantanamo remainsoperational, and President Trumpvowed to begin refilling it with foreign-born prisoners.

After 9/11, budgets for defense-related agencies skyrocketed: Homeland Security’s discretionary budget jumped from about $16 billion in 2002 to more than $43 billion in 2011. Meanwhile, the budgets of the Coast Guard, Transportation Security Administration and Border Patrol have all more than doubled since 2001.

In the last 15 years, millions of young U.S. soldiers have been deployed overseas, thousands have been killed and many have returned home with debilitating physical and mental injuries.

According to U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, roughly 3.1 million Americans entered military service between 2001 and 2011, and nearly 2 million were deployed to Afghanistan or Iraq. In that time, more than 6,000 American troops have been killed, and roughly 44,000 wounded. Of returning service members, more than 18 percent have post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or depression, and almost 20 percent reported suffering from the effects of traumatic brain injury (TBI).

Immigration and Deportation

The Bush Administration created the Department of Homeland Security in 2002, a cabinet-level office that merged 22 government agencies. The Immigration and Naturalization Service and the U.S. Customs Service — both formerly part of the Department of Justice — were consolidated into the newly formed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The agency has overseen a massive increase in deportations; they have nearly doubled since 9/11.

According to the Department of Homeland Security’s Yearbook of Immigration Statistics, there were roughly 200,000 annual deportations a year between 1999 and 2001. While that number dropped slightly in 2002, it began to steadily climb the following year. In the first two years of the Obama Administration (2009 – 2010), deportations hit a record high: nearly 400,000 annually.  About half of those deported during that period were convicted of a criminal offense, although mostly low-level, non-violent crimes.

The Secure Communities program, established in 2008 and officially phased out in 2014, allowed local law enforcement to check the immigration status of every person booked in a county or local jail — even if not ultimately convicted of a crime — by comparing fingerprints against federal immigration records. The program resulted in numerous instances of undocumented immigrants entering deportation proceedings after being stopped for minor infractions (like not using a turn signal while driving).

By 2014, when Obama announced plans to phase out the program, ICE had established Secure Communities partnerships with every single law enforcement jurisdiction in the nation (all 3,181 of them).

At airports

Long airport lines, full body scans, the occasional pat-down (for the lucky ones). It’s all partofthe course when one fliesthese days. But not so long ago, it wasn’t unusual to show up at the airport a half-hour before a domestic flight, keep one’s shoes tied tight, and skip through the metal detector while sipping a Big Gulp, all without ever having to show an ID.

Before the advent of color-coded security threat warnings, pat downs were rare, liquids were allowed, and the notion of having to go through full-body scanners was the stuff of science fiction. Heck, prior to 9/11, some airport security teams even allowed passengers to take box cutters aboard (the supposed weapon used by the 9/11 hijackers). Any knife with a blade up to four inches long was permitted. And cigarette lighters? No problem!

In the wake of the terrorist attacks, airport security underwent a series of major overhauls. And a service that was once largely provided by private companies is now primarily overseen by the massive Transportation Security Administration.

Created in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the TSA is tasked with instituting new security procedures and managing screenings at every commercial airport checkpoint in the country (although, private contractors still operate at some airports). It marks the single largest federal start-up since the days of World War II. The agency is authorized to refer to watch lists of individuals who could pose flight safety risks.

Although advocates argue that the changes have made air travel safer, the additional security steps have also tacked on a significant amount of travel time for the average passenger, while sometimes infringing on privacy rights and, in many instances, increasing scrutiny of minority travelers, particularly those of Middle Eastern descent.

Big surveillance

The U.S. intelligence state boomed in the wake of 9/11. The growth resulted in a marked increase in government oversight, primarily through a vast, clandestine network of phone and web surveillance.

Classified documents that were leaked in 2013 by former government contractor Edward Snowden detail the expansion of a colossal surveillance state that’s seeped into the lives of millions of ordinary Americans. The exponential growth of this apparatus — armed with a $52.6 billion budget in 2013 — was brought to light when the Washington Post obtained a “black budget” report from Snowden, detailing the bureaucratic and operational landscape of the 16 spy agencies and more than 107,000 employees that now make up the U.S. intelligence community.

Further audits reveal that the National Security Agency alone has annually scooped up as many as 56,000 emails and other communications by Americans with no connection to terrorism, and in doing so, had violated privacy laws thousands of times per year.

Source: Kqed.org

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Historic achievements

On July 16, 1969, Apollo 11 blasted off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida.  This spacecraft would take 3 American astronauts to the Moon, landing 2 on its surface and return all 3 safely to Earth, less than a decade after the first manned space flight.  The US and Americans have achieved many great things, and here is a list 10 of them.  Not all significant inventions or achievements are necessarily for humanitarian purposes, some of them are for war.  Some, like DDT and the polio vaccines saved millions of lives.

The Internet, 1985

Although no official opening date exists, the Internet was an American concept actually put forth by the US Government in the 1960’s, interlinking thousands of public and private computer and communication systems, going into effect in the mid-1980’s.  During the first few years, almost all Internet use was by government and academic users, with the 1990’s seeing enormous expansion in use by businesses and private individuals.  About 100 times more people use the Internet today than in 1995 and well over 90% of US classrooms have Internet access.  Al Gore did not invent the Internet, nor did he say he did, but he and others were advocates that made it happen.

Cell Phones, 1973

First shown to the world in 1973 by American television and radio manufacturer, Motorola, the cell phone has become a worldwide device that makes communications in most civilized places oh so easy.  It is hard to even remember what teenagers did before this invention.

Machine Guns, 1862, 1884

Dr. Gatling invented his hand cranked multi-barrel gun in time for limited use during the Civil War, and his guns were still in service until 1911.  Hiram Maxim, born in Maine, immigrated to England at age 41 and perfected his automatic machine gun, the first modern such weapon, which was used from then until the 1950’s.  The Maxim Gun is the basis for other machine guns that have followed.

Panama Canal, 1914

A project that dwarfed the problems in building the Suez Canal (or any other canal), the US accomplished what the French could not, and provided easy access between the Atlantic and Pacific.  Facing incredible engineering obstacles and especially disease, this US achievement accommodates close to 15,000 ships passing through per year and is approaching its millionth customer.  The canal and canal zone were turned over to Panama on December 31, 1999.  Modifications to accommodate much larger ships are being undertaken at this time.

Modern Submarine, 1900

Invented by John Holland, an Irish-American who sold his idea to the US Navy, which commissioned their first submarine, the USS Holland in 1900.  Other attempts at undersea craft go back a few hundred years, including the US Turtle and the CSS Hunley, but these were limited range hand powered craft.  In the 19th Century attempts were made at producing steam powered subs, but no practical model appeared until Holland invented a sub that ran on a gasoline internal combustion engine on the surface and on powerful electric batteries and motors under water.  Unfortunately, Holland was allowed to sell his designs to other countries and the US Navy failed at a big chance to have a monopoly on modern submarines.

Trans-Oceanic Cable Communication, 1858

American Cyrus West Field masterminded the massive project of laying a telegraph cable from North America to Europe, producing the first trans-Atlantic electronic communication, featuring a message between Queen Victoria (United Kingdom) and President Buchanan (US).  An improved version was completed in 1866, and later telephone and other electronic data transmission cables were laid across other oceans as well as the Atlantic.  Before this project, communication from Europe to North America took 10 days by boat, but with the cable it would take only a few minutes.

First Nuclear Reactor, 1942

Built in Chicago as part of the Manhattan Project, Chicago Pile-1 became the first man-made nuclear reactor with a controllable self-sustaining nuclear reaction.  This led to the production of nuclear electricity producing plants, a potential source of energy for humankind without burning fossil fuels, if only we could design and supervise enough safety measures into such plants.

Model T Ford, 1908

Built from 1908 to 1927 this was not the first practical car, but it was the first mass produced practical car that normal people could afford, costing as low as $260.  At one point in the 1920’s, almost half the cars in the world were Model T Fords, truly the car that put the masses behind the steering wheel.  15 million were built.

First in Flight, 1903

Many inventors around the world were working on controlled, powered, manned flight projects, but the Wright brothers from Ohio were the first to make it reality.  Unfortunately, they also invented the airplane crash fatality.

Men on the Moon, 1969

The US moon landing in 1969 and subsequent lunar forays made the US not only the first to the moon, but also the only country ever to accomplish a manned moon landing.  The Apollo program also provided some really neat photography.

Source: Historyand Headlines

America as the world leader

With the world’s most powerful military, a huge economy, and a leading role in international institutions such as the UN and NATO, the USA is a superpower.

 Economic influence

The United States of America is the world’s foremost economic and military power. It has the third largest population in the world (331,449,281) and its economy produces around one quarter of the world’s wealth – $19.485 trillion. Income in 2015 was $66,080 per capita, one of the highest in the developed world.

The US is home to many entrepreneurs and has created many iconic products which are highly sought after around the world, for example Apple and Facebook.

The US also provides the greatest amount of international aid. Although its percentage contribution to the UN is relatively small – 0.2% of its GDP – this represented over $30 billion. In addition, private American companies and foundations also donate billions of dollars in aid every year. The U.S. Agency for International Development – USAID is involved in 87 missions around the world, has 3500 partnerships and is allocated 1% of the federal budget.

Military influence

Militarily, the US remains the world’s only superpower. Although the US does not spend the most in the world on defense as a proportion of GDP (3.8%), in absolute terms it spends vastly more than any other country – $715 billion. Over one third (36%) of the total world’s defense spending is by the US alone.

The US has the largest naval fleet in the world. The US carrier fleet dwarfs every other country in the world, particularly in terms of in size and technological hardware. The scale of the US navy allows it to have a military presence anywhere in the world.

Cultural influence

The USA’s cultural influence extends across the world, for example over two billion people speak some English in the world today with the majority speaking an Americanized version of the language. US TV programs, films, video games and music have a large domestic market of more than 300 million customers, in addition to their influence on the rest of the world. The USA also has a social and cultural impact on immediate neighbors such as Mexico and Canada and on North/Central America as a whole.

The USA is a leading member of a number of important international organizations.

G8 and G20 Group

These groups contain most of the countries in the world with the largest economies. Summits or meetings of the leaders of the G8 countries offer the opportunity for the US and other group members to develop closer economic ties to expand trade. In addition, it allows the US another forum to discuss issues of global concern such as climate change, terrorism or conflict and poverty. In 2014, Russian membership of the G8 was suspended because of its involvement in the crisis in Ukraine.

The G20 has similar aims to the G8 but includes an additional 12 members to reflect the growing economic importance of countries such as Brazil, India and Indonesia.

The United Nations

The USA is a founding member of the United Nations (UN)

It is one of the five permanent members (P5) on the UN Security Council, alongside the UK, China, Russia and France

It is the biggest single contributor to the UN budget, providing 22% of its total

The USA contributes 27% of the UN peacekeeping budget

Although the US is an important member of the UN, the relationship between the two has been strained. The US hosts the UN headquarters in New York and contributes the most of any single country to UN programs but in most years the US has failed to pay its contribution in full.

As a permanent member of the UN Security Council, the US has the opportunity to veto any Security Council proposal put forward. Since the Security Council is the part of the UN responsible for peace making and peacekeeping as well as international sanctions, this gives the US a very influential role.

The US has at times found decision making within the UN Security Council frustrating or time consuming.

On occasions, the US has ignored the UN and its decision-making procedures. For example, the US did not seek UN approval when it decided to invade Iraq in 2003. The US has also consistently backed Israeli actions financially and militarily despite widespread UN and international condemnation.

Like many other countries, the US will do what it believes is in its best interests regardless of what the UN or the rest of the world think. However, on most occasions, the US does work within the decision-making processes of the UN Security Council, e.g., leading a response to the crisis in Libya in 2011. More recently, the USA’s diplomatic efforts have led to resolving issues in Syria.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization

The US has been a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) since it was established in 1949. NATO is the largest and most powerful military alliance in the world. In theory, the 28-nation organization is made up of members of equal standing, where each country has one vote in decision making.

The USA is the dominant player within NATO

It contributes far more troops, resources and finances than any other single member of the alliance.

Notwithstanding the power and position of pre-eminence of America, the nation has been facing on domestic front quite a few problems-the most serious being the problem of racial divide which has a 100-year-old history. The January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol should be viewed as a manifestation of that racial divide. One hopes, a more just system will soon see an end to the divisive racial divide.

With that hope and faith in the American people to overcome any situation, we wish readers of The Indian Panorama a Happy 4^th of July.