2005-12-07
Carrying the 'White Man's Burden' in Iraq
One of the many rarely spoken reasons why conservatives in Washington won't let us leave Iraq is the old notion of civilizing a primitive nation.
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13 comments:
Same old story:
White, American = Bad
Everyone Else = Good
"Before two decades of infrastructure-smashing war, Iraq was considered to be as advanced as many countries in Western Europe."
So advanced as a matter of fact that they realized the value of torturing and putting in shredders those who disagreed with them.
"Its universities were the envy of the Arabic world, as was its health care system, which featured the most modern hospitals in the region."
I'll bet that healthcare system came in real handy, such as in cases where the Iraqi national soccer team had their feet beaten so severely after losses that many players remained crippled for life.
Making this a racial issue and excusing this kind of behavior out of contempt for your own country is beyond distasteful.
This is a sickening article.
Amen, Six. Who ever doubted that Iraq was once (at least) a civilized society? Perhaps some day the US will also degrade into total retardation... to the point where its sole government leader starts paying people in other retarded countries to go kill civilians in a nearby civilization. At such a point, after years of such conduct, a military from some civilized nation (maybe even a non-white one, like Japan, Taiwan, South Korea... or India or China, if we wait long enough) might come in and institute the makings of a civilization.
Then the people of the US will face a choice: assume and insist that the invaders are evil, and respond to them by acting like murderous barbarians, or accept the invaders and give them a chance to prove that they will do what they have promised.
"So advanced as a matter of fact that they realized the value of torturing and putting in shredders those who disagreed with them."
Ever heard of Guantanamo? Ever heard of McCarthy? You act like this doesn't happen in America.
"I'll bet that healthcare system came in real handy, such as in cases where the Iraqi national soccer team had their feet beaten so severely after losses that many players remained crippled for life."
At least if they get sick they can go to a doctor and not be worried about going bankrupted by medical bills because of a lack of insurance.
"Making this a racial issue and excusing this kind of behavior out of contempt for your own country is beyond distasteful."
I believe it was Rudyard Kipling who coined the phrase "white man's burden". It is Joe Lieberman and Paul Philpott who insist that we are civilizing a backward nation. This feeling of cultural superiority is part of the reason the U.S. is so hated around the world.
"... to the point where its sole government leader starts paying people in other retarded countries to go kill civilians in a nearby civilization."
Remember Nicaragua? Zaire? Angola? Guatamala? Haiti? The U.S. does this all the time.
"Then the people of the US will face a choice: assume and insist that the invaders are evil, and respond to them by acting like murderous barbarians, or accept the invaders and give them a chance to prove that they will do what they have promised."
Why would these changes have to be enacted behind the barrel of a gun? Forcing democracy on a people is undemocratic.
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I believe it was Rudyard Kipling who coined the phrase "white man's burden".
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Yes, but he applied it correctly to other situations, not incorrectly to this situation.
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It is Joe Lieberman and Paul Philpott who insist that we are civilizing a backward nation. This feeling of cultural superiority is part of the reason the U.S. is so hated around the world.
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I stand behind my charactorization of all the Muslim nations as backwards, i.e., culturally inferior to any nation that has more political, economic, and social freedom. I assume that in 1980 you considered South Africa to be backward and less civilized than the US, no? And do you not consider New York and England of 1860 to have been culturally superior / civilized to that of Alabama? And you admit that MLK, Rosa Parks, etc. fought to make the US more civilized / less backwards, right? So you do admit that there exists relative subjective measures of civilization, right?
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Remember Nicaragua? Zaire? Angola? Guatamala? Haiti? The U.S. does this all the time.
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Yes, I agree. But bloody international interventions in the name of squashing freedome does not make the US distinct. What makes the US distinct in this regard is bloody military interventions that elevate the economic, social, and political freedoms of the targetted nations (Japan, Germany, Confederacy, South Korea). Nicaragua and Guatamala may yet move over to the positive side of this ledger.
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Why would these changes have to be enacted behind the barrel of a gun? Forcing democracy on a people is undemocratic.
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As far as I'm aware, most democracies have been enacted violently, though not always by foriegn conquest. The only reason that I am open to supporting such an action for Iraq is because its previous government used its resources to support anti-democratic international terrorism, and the imposition of democracy has a theoretical prospect of diminishing same.
Note: I remain less than 100% convinced that invading Iraq was the right choice, and certainly believe that Bush made severe mistakes, such as not making zero torture and minimal destruction & causulty a top priority. Another mistake I see is not embracing the concept of forgiveness, even for horrible monsters. This absolutely must happen when revolutions occur, if they are to have a hope of leading to peace and prosperity. This goes equaly for white Zimbabwean farmers as it does to Iraqi Baathists and terrorists. I am not advocating blanket forgiveness for all brutes, but such must be a major and primary component. The bad guys were being bad under a previous regime that enabled this. The trade off of creating a new regime requires letting most of these people transfer to the new regime without punishment.
By "trade off" I mean, you can have a new regime that is a "basketcase" such as Zimbabwe or Cuba, but wherein all the monsters get punished, or you can have a thriving new regime, like South Korea, Japan, or South Carolina, where most of the brutes got to walk away.
It is neither a human right nor a human duty for one group of people to force its culture and beliefs on another people.
Paul, you see no difference between the war in Iraq and the American Civil War?
The southern states in the U.S. rebelled in an effort to maintain their economic and cultural independence. Their culture was racist as was the culture of the northern states. The U.S. civil war was NOT fought to free the slaves! Lincoln himself admitted that the freeing of the slaves was a politically motivated act and if he could have saved the union by leaving blacks in chains he would have.
You always bring up the civil war like it was fought for moral reasons, but abolitionists were a small minority in the North. Most Americans were racist as evidenced by their treatment of blacks and the indigenous people of the continent. They were NOT culturally superior to the Indians and they were culturally THE SAME as the Confederates. Your continuous assertions to the contrary are falacious.
The Allied victory over the Axis powers in World War II was an example of imperialist nations repelling another imperialist nation. Hitler's atrocities against the Jews and Japan's atrocities in China were no worse than Belgium's atrocities in the Congo or Britain's atrocities in India or Spain's atrocities in Mexico or the Trail of Tears in the southern U.S.
They were all imperialist actions motivated by greed and a lust for power and fueled by racism. Despite your racist belief that Kipling was right, most of your examples do not show culturally superior peoples working to improve the another people.
MLK, Rosa Parks, Malcolm X and the Black Panther Party fought to have the United States government live up to the words of the Declaration of Independence and the promises of the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to the U.S. Constitution. Before their movement, the U.S. government sanctioned discrimination, torture and terrorism.
And what a surprise! They sanction those same acts today in Iraq. How is this an example of "civilization"? The very concept of civilizing another nation has always been an excuse for murder, rape and the theft of land and resources. It is un-Christian, un-democratic, and if the Declaration of Independence has any meaning at all, un-American.
========Nadir===
The U.S. civil war was NOT fought to free the slaves! Lincoln himself admitted that the freeing of the slaves was a politically motivated act and if he could have saved the union by leaving blacks in chains he would have.
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Why do you only believe US presidents when they say something that you can use against them?
What do you think would have been the liklihood of Lincoln winning the election, and getting support for his war, if he would have said, "We are invading the Confederacy in order to free all of the slaves, and to enact universal, race-blind application of the laws"?
If Lincoln's intent was to free the slaves and give them 100% liberty, what is the very best thing that he could have said to bring that about?
Why, after the war was won (and in preparation for this), did Lincoln eliminate all Black Codes, and establish a Reconstruction based on federal imposition of univeral citizenship for all blacks?
Why didn't Lincoln compromise and permit slavery to expand into new territories? Are you aware that in conjuction with his iron-clad refusal to permit slavery to expand that he also said such things as, "If slavery does not expand, it will die"?
====Nadir====
And what a surprise! They sanction those same acts today in Iraq. How is this an example of "civilization"?
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I agree with you here, on all counts. Toture is not an example of civilization; it is an example of the opposite.
======Nadir==========
Despite your racist belief that Kipling was right,
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Please justify these claims, that I agree with Kipling, and that I have any racist views. I certainly have no racist views. I do not advocate denying any right to anybody based on race. Nor do I believe that any "race" has any inherent genetic superiority to any other.
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