That's a particularly ripe load of bollocks, though. It's a feeble echo of Kipling's "white man's burden" -- itself a craven apology for empire. Here is Sharon Smith on counterpunch, full text linked above.
For more than a century, the U.S. has claimed each time it invaded another sovereign nation that it did so selflessly, shouldering the moral responsibility of "civilizing" a backward population. This process became widely known as "the white man's burden," after Rudyard Kipling's 1899 poem of the same name, which described the conquered populations as "your new-caught, sullen peoples, half-devil and half-child."
Kipling's poem was written to celebrate the 1898 U.S. invasion and occupation of the Philippines, which killed well over a half a million civilians during the next several years. The U.S. government crushed the Filipino insurgency--and refused to grant independence to the Philippines until 1946.
In Iraq, the U.S. has managed to kill a similar number of Iraqis, but failed to crush the resistance. The Washington establishment (minus the increasingly isolated and delusional Bush and Cheney) has finally concluded that the Iraq war is "unwinnable," and the imperial endgame is beginning. Commitments to "bipartisanship" and "compromise" are already echoing through the halls of Congress, as Democrats and Republicans unite to avoid further humiliation and to salvage what remains of U.S. imperialism's long-standing aims in the Middle East.
Democrats and Republicans have joined together to take aim at the ungrateful Iraqi population, who apparently fail to appreciate the U.S.' selfless efforts to impose "democracy" through military occupation. On this point, the two parties are indistinguishable.
8 comments:
Total rubbish, Tom. Those of us who take the view that you accurately recorded ("hey, we tried to liberate them and they behaved badly. Not our fault!") lack and reject the racist Kipling "white man's burden" view. You are just taking two different views that have nothing to do with each other, and unjustifiably treating them as different articulations of the same view.
We do not advocate, nor think that we have, "caught" anybody, nor do we consider the Iraqi's to be "half-devil and half-child", just for starters.
Just look to the Kurdish portion of Iraq to understand what Bush and people like I hoped to accomplish, which bares zero similarities to the Philippine situation.
I'm sure there were people in the Philippines, too, who understood what the US was trying to accomplish and behaved quite well.
How independent, really, is the Kurdish portion? It's swimming in oil wealth, and pretty homogenous, so it hasn't had to face much sectoral violence. Last time I checked, though, it was crawling with Israeli spies:
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/040628fa_fact?040628fa_fact
Tom: Please explain how Japan and South Korea, and for that matter Germany, France, and Italy, fit into a "US Empire." The lefty cry of "empire" is cute, as its linkage to the real British empire, but it just doesn't correlate with the facts. And who even in the non-Kurdish area, for example the official government, behaves as a US stooge?
Paul, many of the neocons themselves--architects of the Iraq quagmire--embrace empire. Here's Max Boot:
"The United States has been an empire since at least 1803, when Thomas Jefferson purchased the Louisiana Territory. Throughout the 19th century, what Jefferson called the "empire of liberty" expanded across the continent. When U.S. power stretched from "sea to shining sea," the American empire moved abroad, acquiring colonies ranging from Puerto Rico and the Philippines to Hawaii and Alaska.
While the formal empire mostly disappeared after World War II, the United States set out on another bout of imperialism in Germany and Japan. Oh, sorry -- that wasn't imperialism; it was "occupation." But when Americans are running foreign governments, it's a distinction without a difference. Likewise, recent "nation-building" experiments in Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan are imperialism under another name."
Charles Krauthammer has embraced empire, too.
I understand that some of the neocons have embraced the word empire, but only by giving it a new meaning, one that falls outside of the standard documented definition, and one that 1800s Brits and 0000s Romans and 1000BCs Egyptians would hardly understand.
But I am happy that you now take the neocons at their word. Having established this precedent, we can finally have a truly productive discourse. You agree, then, that this "empire" would comprise fully independent democratic, constitutional nations of free people trading goods -- including their nation's natural resources -- and services freely amongst themselves and the free peoples of other nations, right? Or do you take the neocons at their word only when they employ words that you would use against them? They say "empire", then you get to link them by their own words to Rome, Egyptian Thebes, and London, but they say "freedom" and "independence" and you say lier.
It is most unclear above the distinction between your quotations and your own words. You count US conquests of Germany and Japan as US imperialism, or occupation, either way, words you guys use derisively in characterizing the US presence in Iraq. If that's "imperialism", then it sure ain't the 1800s british imperialism, is it? Would you rather be a 1935 citizen of Germany / Japan, or a 1960/1970/1980/1990/2000 citizen?
This is not to say that the US military has never actually committed an act of imperialism or other horrors. But it is clear to me now that often its overseas adventures are not horrible, and in particular judging the US military defeat in Vietnam and the regions where it won and lost in Korea, we can see which side the native peoples would have found freedom and other forms of advancement.
Using the neocon's words, which you now accept at face value, you must concede that they seek free, democratic, and independent governments to replace despotic governments that oppose the US, even if some of them choose to call this "empire building". By whatever name, people in nations ruled by despots should get in line (provided that they have enough freedom-seeking fellows to hold up their end of the couch).
Tom: Some of your terms trouble me:
1. Would you refer to the efforts of the KKK, Bull Connors, and the confederates as "the resistance."?
2. Would you refer to the efforts of the Union and Allied troops as "imposing democracy"?
"Total rubbish, Tom. Those of us who take the view that you accurately recorded ("hey, we tried to liberate them and they behaved badly. Not our fault!") lack and reject the racist Kipling "white man's burden" view. You are just taking two different views that have nothing to do with each other, and unjustifiably treating them as different articulations of the same view."
Total rubbish, Paul. You constantly assert that Iraqi insurgents are "rejecting civilization" as if these people who had running water, electricity and BMWs before the war were somehow living in the Dark Ages. This cultural chauvinism is no better than racism. Your philosophy is a "white man's burden" based on lifestyle and political orientation rather than skin color.
"1. Would you refer to the efforts of the KKK, Bull Connors, and the confederates as "the resistance."?
2. Would you refer to the efforts of the Union and Allied troops as "imposing democracy"?"
The invasion of Iraq has no parallel to the US civil rights movement, the US Civil War or World War II. It is an imperial, aggressive war of one sovereign nation on another. It isn't even an ally coming to the aid of a friend like WWII or even the first Gulf War.
The Iraq War is the neo-imperialist occupation of a sovereign nation by another country under the fallacous guise of "exporting democracy" - an export that the recipient did not request, mind you.
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