As the United States marks its 250th Independence Day, I join millions in offering congratulations, but also a fervent hope: that humanity might one day engineer a way to alter the nation’s DNA, transforming it from a force often associated with conflict into a beacon of peace and development across the universe. Only then could it truly earn the title “God’s own country.”
The world was gifted a great nation on July 4, 1776, when the US declared independence from Mother Britain. Britain, a small country, has a history of war with most of humanity, having been in conflict with 171 of the 193 current United Nations member states. The 22 countries that escaped bloody British clashes were largely French colonies and the Vatican.
The US inherited this war DNA from Britain. In its 250 years since independence, it has been at war or engaged in armed conflicts for 230 of them. Over this quarter-millennium, it has conducted more than 500 military interventions, averaging two active conflicts per year. This marriage to armed conflict suggests a hereditary war economy, with an establishment that seems to welcome the approach of war.
The rhetoric of its current president has raised eyebrows. In April, he told Iran that unless it reopened the Strait of Hormuz immediately, “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.” Days earlier, he threatened to “blast Iran into oblivion… back to the Stone Ages!!!” On Easter morning, he declared, “Open the F——-in’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell.”
The US is undeniably a great country, contributing to human knowledge, research, space travel, and inventions. Yet, it tends to commercialize everything and sometimes uses knowledge to humanity’s detriment. An example is its experiments with smallpox, using that knowledge to reduce the indigenous Indian population.
The Declaration of Independence proclaimed, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” But this declaration lied against itself. Only the white population was accepted as created equal with rights to life and liberty. Others were regarded and treated as subhuman.
Beyond the genocide against indigenous American Indians, a dozen US presidents who were supposed to uphold the Declaration were slave owners. George Washington owned over 500 slaves. Thomas Jefferson, the main author of the Declaration, owned more than 600. James Madison had 100, and Zachary Taylor, 150.
The US has scant regard for the fundamental reasons the United Nations was established: international peace, equal rights, self-determination, and sovereignty. It regards Latin America as its “backyard,” an extension of its territory or playground. The US invaded and occupied Nicaragua so many times that in 1855, American businessman William Walker’s idea of a vacation was to become president of a country. He overthrew the Nicaraguan government and ruled for ten months, reinstating the slave trade before being removed by a force financed by fellow American Cornelius Vanderbilt.
Presidents James Monroe, Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren, William Henry Harrison, John Tyler, James K Polk, Andrew Johnson, and Ulysses S Grant were all slave owners.
American Indians continue to protest their unequal state and demand equality. Their leader, Leonard Peltier, 80, was released from prison in February 2025 after 50 years, but remains confined. African Americans experienced a similar nightmare. Malcolm X said what they witnessed in the 1960s was not the American dream but the “American nightmare.” African Americans did not get the vote until 1965.
At least African Americans can vote. Puerto Ricans cannot vote in US presidential elections because Puerto Rico is not a state but a colony. It was colonized in 1898 after the Spanish-American War and remains so today, one of 15 colonies the US maintains after 250 years of declaring all humans equal and free. The US calls them “overseas territories,” except Puerto Rico, whose status is undefined.
Puerto Rican independence leader Oscar Lopez Rivera was released from prison in May 2017 after 38 years. The US’s immediate neighbors, Mexico and Canada, have also felt its threats. Mexico experienced the American nightmare when the US seized 55 percent of its territory, including what is now California, Texas, Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Wyoming, and Colorado. As for Canada, the Trump administration threatened to appropriate it as the 51st state.
The US has militarily overthrown governments across the globe, including Jacobo Arbenz of Guatemala in 1954, Salvador Allende on September 11, 1973, and seized Grenada in October 1983. In Asia, it overthrew Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh of Iran in 1953. In Africa, it joined Belgium and Britain to overthrow Patrice Lumumba of the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1960 and Pan-Africanist President Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana in 1966. It led allies to bomb rich Libya into poverty and four pieces in October 2011, during which President Muammar Gaddafi was summarily executed.
President Trump unilaterally gifted Western Sahara, an African country and founding member of the African Union, to Morocco. The US gives a country it does not own as a friendship package to a monarch. There may be nothing more absurd in international relations.
The US, which has occupied Cuban Guantanamo Bay since 1903, has for 64 years imposed unilateral restrictions on Cuba, including barring trade and preventing purchases of food, fuel, and medicines. Trump this year talked about a “friendly takeover” of Cuba.
As I join millions in congratulating the US on its 250th Independence Day, I pray humanity can develop engineering to alter its DNA, transforming it into a force of peace and development. That would make it truly “God’s own country.”
