Ray

Another view:

President Bush told the Congress in Jan 2004, "America is a nation with a mission, and that mission comes from out most basic beliefs. We have no desire to dominate, no ambitions of empire."

Naill Ferguson who teaches in NY University and an authority on British Empire wrote in Newsweek, "The US is not an empire in all but name - the first case in history of an empire in denial."

Michael Ignatieff, Carr Professor of the Practice of Human Rights at Harvard University, wrote in The NY Times, "If Americans have an empire, they have acquired it in a state of deep denial."

It must be noted that both are eager that American adopt the mantle of imperial power, so that it might not be constrained to manufacture an "Empire Lite" (Ignatieff) or "Empire on a shoe string" (Ferguson).

Rudyard Kipling moved to Vermont in 1899 during this time the US invaded Philippines, Puerto Rico and Cuba. Kipling was so moved that he wrote his famous poem 'The White Man's Burden: The US and the Philippines Islands'. "Take up the White Man's Burden _ Send forth the best ye breed," sang this Englishman, go civilise "your new caught, sullen people, half devil, half child." Such conquests are not for gain, Kipling wrote, but they are "the savage wars of peace. Fill full the mouth of Famine, and bid the sickness cease". (Do I hear the strains of such sentiments on this thread?).

Kipling, veteran of the British Raj in India, knew that Empire never sees itself hand to as malevolent. It is always at hand to bring civilisation, to dispense liberty, and to offer the benefits of modernity. Ferguson quotes Kipling in his book on the British Empire and then concludes: "No one would dare use such politically incorrect language today. The reality nevertheless is that the US has - whether it admits or not - has taken up some kind of global burden, just as Kipling urged. It considers itself responsible not just waging war against terrorism and rogue states, but also spreading the benefits of capitalism and democracy overseas. And just as the British Empire before it, the American Empire unfailing acts in the name of liberty, even when its own self interest is manifestly uppermost".

America, for Ignatieff and Ferguson, is the bona fide centre of an empire, an imperialist power that is unwilling to proclaim itself. Why are Americans in a state of denial? Ignatieff offers an answer: "(American Imperialism) is the imperialism of a people who remember that their country secured its independence by revolt against an empire, and who think of themselves as the friend of freedom everywhere. It is an empire without consciousness of itself as such (an empire), constantly shocked that its good intentions arouse resentment abroad. But that does not make it any less an empire, with a conviction that it alone, in Herman Melville's words, bears 'the ark of the liberties of the world'."

Ignatieff correctly points out that the American Revolution provides the US government and citizenry with the myth of purity - the US being a power that emerged from an anti colonial struggle, its own interventions overseas can only be on behalf of liberty and against tyranny. Furthermore, since the bulk of the citizens do not benefit from imperialism (and many lose their loved ones in its defence), they do not see the benefits of imperialism. Empire's rewards accrue to the corporations and not to the citizens, families of the middle class or the poor. The bulk of the US population pays the financial cost of imperialism, and the corporate elites reap its benefits.

The myth of purity predates the 1776 Revolution. When Americans began to write about their Puritan ancestors who arrived on the coast of New England and Virginia in the 1620s, they depicted themselves as persecuted Europeans who had fled the religious orthodoxy of "Old Europe" to make a place that did not replicate Europe's deviousness and intrigue. The Puritans opposed artificiality of feudal manners and favoured plain speak and independence. The Americans who followed the first settlers saw themselves in this light, as hardy, courageous, tough and guileless.

The English historian, Gareth Steadman Jones points out that the "expansion" of the Puritans from the Atlantic coast westward follows a colonial logic. The 1776 Revolution, he notes, did free the colonials from their home country, but it did not liberate those who had become the new servants of the Puritans - the enslaved Africans, the Amerindians (Red Indians) who had not been exterminated and the poor whites (many of whom had recently been indentured servants). "The essential fact", Gareth Steadman Jones writes "is that white settlers in North America were partners in English mercantile imperialism, and not its victims."

In 1786, in Northampton, Massachusetts, a "mob" of farmers and artisans captured the courthouse to prevent the conviction of those who had fallen into debt. The act incited a major rebellion led by Daniel Shay that lasted until 1787. Shay's Rebellion, as it is called, sought to liberate workers and farmers from excessive taxes on land and on the poll tax that allowed only the rich to vote. The rebels failed and the US state remained in the hands of urban merchants and the rural gentry (including the plantation owners whose lands were worked by enslaved Africans). Liberty in those days, meant liberty from the tyranny of England - not from the tyranny of the /American elites.

One of the advantages of the American Revolution came in the rejections of the controls placed by the English Crown on the expansion to the West - out towards the Pacific Ocean. Now the "pioneers" could go forth and expand, exterminate the Amerindians, conquer huge tracts of Mexico and set up a colonial regime that, as far as the Amerindians and Mexican go, extends to the present. This expansion produced that largest domestic market on this planet, and enabled the US economy to grow at a pace that is rivalled by the rate of growth of the Chinese economy over the last three decades. For the US ruling class, Steadman Jones concludes, "The absence of territorialism "abroad" was founded on an unprecedented territorialism at home."

__________________


"Some have learnt many Tricks of sly Evasion, Instead of Truth they use Equivocation, And eke it out with mental Reservation, Which is to good Men an Abomination."

I don't have to attend every argument I'm invited to.

HAKUNA MATATA

Ray

(Continued from last post)

When the West had been absorbed, and when the US economy grew strong enough for its military to exert itself, the government began to act on the 1823 Monroe Doctrine which preserved the Americas from Tierra del Fuego in Argentian to the Canadian border as the domain of the US. In 1867, the US Secretary of State William Seward purchased the province of Alaska, then known as Seward's Folly. The expansion to Alaska was part of Seward's design to extend US interests toward Asia. In 1853, Seward already preached a forward policy to move into the Asian market. He said, "Multiply your ships and send them forth to the East. The nation that draws most of the materials and provisions from the earth, and fabricates the most, and sells the most of productions and fabrics to foreign nations, must be, and will be, the greatest power on the earth."

In 1898, when the opportunity provided itself, the US superseded Spain as the paramount power in the Philippines, Puerto Rico and Cuba - the event that provoked Kipling's poem. When radical public opinion, joined by such luminaries as Mark Twain and his league against Imperialism, spoke against US move into Spain's former colonies, the distinguished Senator from Indiana, Albert Beveridge, rose to defend the policy. He offered the usual bluster about "the mission of our race, trustee, under God, of the civilisation of the world", and how, "God has marked us as His Chosen People, henceforth to lead in the regeneration of the world." The US must act because the Filipinos "are a barbarous race. It is barely possible that 1000 men in all ate archipelago are capable of self government in the Anglo Saxon sense." Racism provides a firm foundation to justify colonialism. - They are inferior, so we must take care of them. One can sense much the same sort of attitude in the US administration's comment pon the Iraqi population's capacity for self governance. Former CIA Director James Woolsey and Princeton University Professor Bernard Lewis suggested in late 2003, that Iraq revert to its 1925 Constitution and accept monarchical rule because the Iraqi people, in their view, are not capable of democracy.

In Iraq, the US denial over its empire is helped by the privatisation of imperialism. The US government is present in Iraq as the army of occupation, but the work of colonial reconstruction is not conducted primarily by the state. This work, empire building, is left to private entities such as Bechtel, Halliburton, etc. The US head in Iraq Paul Bremer's Order No 39 privatised all state industries and allowed foreign ownership in most sector of the economy: Americans will now see their work overseas as the creation of "markets" (and yet they cry foul about outsourcing) and "opportunities" not the squelching of will of the Iraqis for the benefit of the US economy. Privatisation of the Empire has only allowed the American denial over its imperialism a loner lease.

America's denial about its empire is not new - indeed it is as old as America itself. In 1899, a Negro (now known as Afro American) poet, John Edward Bruce, replied to Kipling (The White Man's Burden poem) in his "The Coloured American":

What talk of the White Man's Burden!
What burden hath he borne?
That has not been shared by the black man
From the day Creation dawned?
Why taunt us with our weakness,
Why boast of your brutal strength:
Know ye not that the children of meekness
Shall inherit the earth - at length?

Ray

I love a song titled "Duetschland Uber Alles".

It is clear in its aim and no pulling punches!

Trooth

Nazi germany intended to dominate the World (minus the British Empire). The plans went somewhat awry (i.e. Hitler was forced to fight the British Empire which he had wanted to avoid for various reasons) and to include the US (he was constructing his long range bombers to have a go at the East Coast and his U-boats had dominion over the eastern seaboard shipping for quite some time). The rest of the world was part of the power struggle (North Africa, South America etc). Japan wished to expand and consolidate her Empire into the Pacific. The attack on the US was an inevitability to enable to entranchment of military positions within the pacific. Japan knew it would be attacked by the US had it not pre-emptively "defended" itself before still proceeding on with its expansion plans within the Pacific. It was, as we all know, to give them 6 months breathing space as much as it was to wipe out the USN.

Compare with modern day Iran, with comparison of scale and intent.

I expect you could, are you so sure about your bretheren? Is this the only consequence of a nation running out of money?

If i was living in {insert name of oppressed country} i would not trust anything said along the lines of "rise up and we will support you". GWI (sorry OofE) showed that the wests word on that matter is meaningless. The west wants to form the governments in the "liberated" countries, it can't do that by supporting rebellions it can only really achieve that through occupation. Therefore it comes down, like everything, to a battle over national interest being strong enough to invade.

Trooth

.

TIn my opinion the US still has within its consciousness, not only many of the ideal fo its founding fathers but some of the ideals prevelant within that era. It does still havea somewhat puritanical streak,a nd certainly its attitude to trade is more firmly based in that of the 18th and 19th cerntirues. These are not necessarily bad things.

However, whilst there is undoubted wisdom within the US governmental infrastructure it has long be tempered by the preconceptions of the 18th Century. This is evidenced by the US itself taking some 200 years to actually adopt its own constitution. Again, there is some inevitability about that and human nature. People gain power far more willingly than they relinquish it.

However, many US senators are of the corrollary opinion to that opinion expressed by Beveridge. That it is the US's moral right to spread {insert liberty based ideas} to the rest of the world. Again, this is an ideal of empire. It is the same idea that drove the Victorians on to expand the British Empire into the dark continents and to enlighten the barbarians, the indian, the african. Needless to say, the natives got the moral and spiritual enrichment, while the Victorian's where simply materially enriched! This too was not always done by government, it as also done by private companies, with large private armies. Much like we are seeing today.

You know what they say. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Confed999

Ray, I have never called Mr. Anan any name except bureaucrat. I have never claimed the US didn't need help, in fact I think we need all the good guys on our side instead of *****ing about our past differences. I'm mad at the UN because this is something that should have been taken seriously all these years. Instead it became a program that was literally starving the population and still the UN did nothing. The UN has the chance to help now, as does the rest of the world, and I think they should take it. As I said before though, the UN can't be counted on.
May I comment? Saddam needed to be dealt with, at the first available excuse. I doubt things would have been different with Gore, I bet the excuse would still have been used.
They are good sentiments. I would be afraid if I stopped hearing them, that's for sure. I also submit that we aren't an empire, we're something else, similar but different.
I'm sure this is one of those things I have no idea what you're talking about, but:
June 21, 1788: A ninth state, New Hampshire, ratifies the Constitution. Three-fourths of the states have signed on, making it the new code of laws for the United States.
Or, at the latest:
May 29, 1790: Rhode Island ratifies the Constitution, the last of the original thirteen states to so.

__________________
No man is free until all men are free - John Hossack
I agree completely with this Administration’s goal of a regime change in Iraq-John Kerry
even if that enforcement is mostly at the hands of the United States, a right we retain even if the Security Council fails to act-John Kerry
He may even miscalculate and slide these weapons off to terrorist groups to invite them to be a surrogate to use them against the United States. It’s the miscalculation that poses the greatest threat-John Kerry

Praxus

Does it really matter?

I don't see how him planing an Invasion during Afghanistan makes the war any less just. I think it was the wrong war, but a just war.

Trooth

That was a comment, not a criticism, the US constitution is a fine document, however it took a long time for women's suffrage to be resolved or for apartheid issues to be dealth with. It was more a comment on human nature, than an indictment of the US. After all, we are all to some degree a product of our times, and whilst great documents can be created, it doesn't mean that those great thoughts aren't filtered through culture. In many ways US society can trace a lineage back to a British mentality of, say, the 19th Century, better than Britain itself.

Confed999

Ahhhhh, you mean adopting the full ideal, not the law. That will never happen. Ideals tend toward perfection, humanity tends toward fault. Many things have been added to, and taken from, the Constitution. It's a constantly evolving document, a major strength and weakness.

troung

“Umm I think we can go without the welfare state for a little while.”

So then it’s good to go broke. Look at a map and see the size of Iran, Afghanistan and Iraq. America does not control Afghanistan because we just got in the dumb Iraq war. Hell we don’t control Iraq and you want to take over Iran, which happens to be bigger and have more people?

That’s just silly.

"Iran is our principle enemy, not Al Quadi, Afghanistan, or Iraq."

Huh? Iran did not attack us on 9-11. And please don;t use the militant Islam thing becuase Iran backed the NA before we did. They also lost 2 planes fighting the Taliban.

The world is not a video game.

Trooth

My view on the UN getting involved in Iraq is that it should not volunteer to do so wihtout a clear mandate. It has no place interfeering in the affairs of other nations unless requested to do so by its member states and should not put its people in harms way without a clear mandate. After all all of the actions, resolutions etc of the UN are largely drafted by the member states.

Therefore for the UN to become involved in Iraq i would be much happier if the US / UK and the Iraqi council (although i assume it does not have a seat as such) were to petition the UN to request involvement and put it to the vote.

Otherwise i see Iraq as largely a psuedo internal issue for theCoalition to take care of.

There is of course one stumbling block with this approach .....l

Ray

It is not that the US alone which is not popular with the Iraqis. I believe that the UN too is not popular with the Iraqis.

Is Spain really pulling out? It will matter marginally only since they have only 1300 men.

Officer of Engineers

Sir,

Welcome to my world. That 1300 is a ***** and a half to replace. It's an entire bn supporting a bde. Their departure is going to cripple that bde until the bn is replace. Since all the forces are already committed, the other units would have to strip their assets just to adjust to the void.

__________________
Chimo

Praxus

What, how did you equate getting rid of welfare and going broke?

How can you win a war without destroying the prime supporter of the philosophy that wants us destroyed?

Please spare me this BS about the world not being a Video Game.

We don't control Afghanistan because we went in like idiots, we payed the Northern Alliance people who may have questionable allegences, not to mention the fact that they are incompotent, to do the fighting we should be doing. All we managed to do was make a bunch of holes in the ground with very exspensive bombs.

Iran the principle supporter of our enemy and wether you want to acknowledge it or not is Militant Islam.

I fear that only a nuke blowing apart one of our cities will enlighten everyone to the fact that this is a war for the preservation of the west.

Ray

OK Now I see the significance.