The South East Asian nation of Myanmar (also known as Burma), has a long history as an independent nation, punctuated by over sixty years of conquest and occupation as a colonial possession of the expansionist British Empire. Burma was seized by the Japanese in World War Two, and became a major battleground as British, Indian, American, and Chinese forces battled against the Japanese. Three year after the defeat of Japan, Burma once again became an independent nation, but almost immediately plunged into civil war, as Karen ethnic group rebelled and a Communist uprising nearly toppled the new government. The civil war began in 1948, and has continued with varying degrees of intensity ever since. In 1988, a pro-democracy movement was crushed violently by the military dictatorship, which also renamed the nation "Myanmar." In late 2007, a new, so-far peaceful anti-government uprising led by Buddhist monks has been met with violence from government security forces.

It should be noted that the current involvement of the Buddhist monks in the 2007 protests harkens back to the long-running resistance to the British conquest and occupation of Burma in the 19th and 20th Centuries. Many of the protests against British rule were led by Buddhist monks, so the current monk-led protests are part of a tradition of Burmese/Myanmar popular action to unpopular and repressive regimes.

Below is a listing of the wars and conflicts of Burma and Myanmar since the first war with the British Empire in the early 1800s.

First Anglo-Burmese War (1824–1826)

Second Anglo-Burmese War (1852)

Third Anglo-Burmese War (1885)

Burmese Resistance to British Conquest (1885-1889)

Second World War: Burma Campaign (1942-1945)

Burmese Civil War (1948-Present)–Long and complex civil war involving several different uprisings and rebellions against the Burmese government. This long-running war includes government warfare against the Karen, Kachin, Shan and other ethnic groups, Communist rebels, and pro-democracy protestors and rebels (these last two in 1988 and 2007).

Chinese KMT Invasion (1950)–Refugee Nationalist (Koumintang, or KMT) Chinese soldiers retreated across the Chinese-Burma border to escape the advancing Chinese Communist armies of Mao Tse-Tung.

Sino-Burma Border War (1956)

A new web page uploaded to the Historyguy.com website today dealing with Burma/Myanmar. 

Wars and Conflicts of Burma/Myanmar –The Wars and Conflicts of Burma/Myanmar from the Anglo-Burmese Wars to the pro-democracy Myanmar uprising of 2007.

http://www.historyguy.com/wars_of_burma_myanmar.htm

So, what are the real consequences of September 11, 2001 on how America wages war around the world?  That would seem to be an stupid question with an obvious answer:  The U.S. invaded Afghanistan to retaliate against al-Qaida and its Taliban allies, and later invaded Iraq to prevent Saddam Hussein from developing weapons of mass destruction and initiating a nuclear (or biological/chemical) 9/11.  (Those are the "official" versions of the reasons, by the way).

What many do not realize, largely because the mainstream media ignores or downplays them, is that the United States (and its allies) have been very, very active militarily around the world since the terrorist attacks of September 11 in their efforts to combat radical Islamic militants.

One of the first publicly acknowledged military efforts (after Afghanistan), was the deployment of U.S. Special Forces troops to the Philippines to aid the government there against the Abu Sayyaf rebels in the largely Muslim southern islands.

Another area the U.S. intervened in was the ongoing struggle in Yemen, an Arab country to the south of Saudi Arabia.  There, some of the tribes in the countryside who traditionally cause trouble for the central government, began working with al-Qaida.  This resulted in the U.S. providing aid to the Yemeni government and occasionally popping fugitive al-Qaida terrorists with Hellfire missiles fired from Predator drone aircraft.

Those Predator drones, by the way, are based in tiny Djibouti, a former French colony across the Mandab Straits from Yemen.  American Special Forces, (and, one would assume, Central Intelligence Agency officers), are based as a quick-reaction force for the entire Horn of Africa region.  A more recent, and so far tactically successful intervention, was American aid for the Ethiopian invasion/intervention against Islamist forces in Somalia in December of 2006. U.S. Special Forces traveled with the Ethiopian Army, and the U.S. military launched air and missile attacks on suspected Somali Islamists and al-Qaida fugitives.

American Special Forces also have aided allied nations in improving their defenses, including the Republic of Georgia (formerly an oppressed region of the late, unlamented Soviet Union), who have their own issues as a neighbor of Russia and the rebellious Muslim Russian region of Chechnya.

During last summer’s war in the Mid-East between Israel and Hezbollah, the U.S. re-supplied the Israeli military with ammunition and other materiel to aid the Israelis in their fight against the Islamic militant army.

The U.S. has also given significant material aid to Lebanon in its recent fight against al-Qaida allies in northern Lebanon.

Al-Qaida of course, has not been idle, as bin Laden’s organization maintains insurgencies against U.S. allies in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Thailand, Algeria, Egypt, Libya (yes, the U.S. and Libya kissed and made up, largely because Kaddafy saw the ease with which American forces seized Baghdad), Ethiopia, and is active in undermining government authority in other nations. 

Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida declared war on America in 1996, and few Americans paid him any attention.  He attacked us in 1998, with the African Embassy bombings, and again in 2000, with an attack on the USS Cole.  The assault on 9/11/2001 finally snapped America out of its comfortable sense of security, and the United States launched its Global War on Terror.  Does anyone doubt that this is truly a "World War?"

We will come back to this theme in the future…

Here it is; the eve of another 9/11 anniversary.  I no longer bother watching the politicians give speeches at Ground Zero, the Pentagon, or in Pennsylvania.  Six years on now, and I look at a changed world.

Prior to September 11, 2001, few Americans, even those who watched the news regularly or read the newspapers would could have told you anything about Osama bin Laden, al-Qaida, or the Taliban if asked.  Never mind that bin Laden had declared war on the U.S. back in 1996, and then followed up with attacks against American Embassies in Africa in 1998 and an attack on the USS Cole in 2000; Americans, as a whole, had no idea what was about to hit us.

In the world of September 10, 2001, America’s (and President Bush’s) primary international fear was China.  A recent collision between American and Chinese military planes had caused a ripple of concern for relations between the two powers.  American students generally cared little for the outside world.  The Middle East was known primarily as the place a lot of oil came from, and the location of Saddam Hussein.  By the way, it is generally forgotten that the U.S. and the U.K. were actively conducting aerial warfare against Iraq, and protecting/occupying a large swath of northern Iraq inhabited by the long-oppressed Kurds.

And then there was Afghanistan.  A country largely ignored by America and the non-Islamic world after the big, bad Soviets ended their war against Islamic Jihadists.  Bin Laden was a part of that Islamic resistance movement, but few Americans outside of the CIA and a few history/military affairs geeks among the civilian population bothered to remember that bin Laden (like Saddam in another war), was once on the side that was shooting at our avowed enemies.  Did that make them our friends?  No, just useful tools to fight and weaken our opponents of the moment.

So what does all this talk of the world as it stood on the day before al-Qaida attacked America really mean?  Only that history often turns on events that have links and connections to related, yet often largely unknown events, movements, and people.

Should Americans have seen bin Laden as a vital threat?  Obviously yes, we should have seen him as the threat he proved himself to be.  Are we any different now?  Has America learned its lesson yet? 

Of course not!  Ask any high school or college history teacher in the U.S.  Americans as a whole do not pay much attention to history (unless presented on the History Channel and features lots of explosions and maybe a glimpse or two of Hitler), and that is an ongoing problem.  How many Americans can answer this question?

Has the U.S. and China ever fought a war against each other?  And if so, can you name the wars?  Can you, Dear Reader of this Blog, answer that question without googling it?

This is not an idle question, because one of the more obvious results of the 9/11 attacks and America’s response has been the now four-year-old War in Iraq.  The current war is often compared and contrasted with the American war in Vietnam.  Is it accurate to compare them?  What are the consequences of America’s collective lack of knowledge of the world and its history?  Middle East Muslims remember and talk about the medieval Crusades like they happened last year.  Most Americans could not even explain what the Crusades were about.  Those questions are best addressed in a blog post for another day.  

The next History Guy Blog post will actually be about 9/11 and what has so far resulted from that horrible day.  Stay tuned!