Posted by j brownson on March 28, 19103 at 18:54:19:
In Reply to: Wellstone Quoting Goldwater?? Yep. posted by Stephen Wilson on October 26, 19102 at 10:56:58:
I am sending you a copy of what I wrote to the Economist after reading today?s online issue. We probably disagree about more things than less, but I do hold both Barry Goldwater & Paul Wellstone in high regard. this country of ours is petrified of thinking and reading, and discussing informed differences over partisan prejudices.
As a patriot-not-patriarchical-WASP/WMCP, on some issues I have to side with characters I do not much like, such as Pat Buchanan regarding our choice of republic over empire.
My family has been knee deep into the fray since 1639, and like my most illustrious Yankee ancestor Orestes Brownson, I cross many lines it aiming for truth and cutting through the self-serving hype of politics and the idiocy of ideology.
As of today we the people, whom Jefferson elevated and other founders like Hamilton denigrated, have lost our democracy to fear of responsibility, indolence and consumerism. But from the beginning we have been saddled with our (my) Puritan heritage, pros and cons. In additon to enterprise and innnovation, albeit usually to make a buck, our hard headedness and prejudice warps into a hubris expressed as the manifest destiny of a chosen people given promised land from which to rule the world in the name of a stern and ruthless god who has already predestined some for salvation and the rest for eternal da*nation. I still find it bizarre that so many of my fellow Americans are seduced by a 16th century religious subtext and heritage of Cromwell's remorseless hatred for the other and ease in conscience over destroying them, whomever the current "them".
i am angry over this senseless war against Iraq, as whatever the reasons for containing a dictator and potential nasty weapons, it could and should have been done with more sensibility towards alliances and diplomacy. But then FDR, like TR were well educated gentlemen, ruthless when needbe, but skilled diplomats and intelligent coalition builders, unlike this offspring of cr social climbers and carpet baggers like the Bush and Walker families.
Our sustainable future lies with participation in the UN as an equal among equals, albeit somewhat more equal than others. Otherwise, we will see ourselves perhaps gaining the whole world and losing our souls and principles in the process, not to mention, losing our thinly held human habitat, a tiny part of the earth surface that continues to shrink in direct proportion to population growth. And while science and technology can stave off collapse, it too has its costs of mistakes, and dangers of ever more deadly weaponry to please testostrone poisoned maniacs like Rumsfeld, Franks or Cheney. To finish, a grumph over the deep zionist penetration of our foreign policy now caught in the grip of Wolfowitz, Pearle, Kristol, et al., whose seeming true loyalty is more to Israel than to America.
The text below was written from an Irish perspective although it my ancestors probably invaded Ireland, persecuted Catholics, and wrought genocide against the Irish people.
JAB
Belfast, Basra & WASP Imperialism
??We have enormous experience in Belfast and we know how fluid these situations can become,? said Air Marshall Brian Burridge, the commander of British forces in the Gulf. Dealing with Basra, he insisted, could not be hurried.?
Economist Online 28, Mar 2003.
"Shock & Awe" might apply to reading such references to Anglo-Saxon imperialism embedded in the Economist, which I thought might be more sensitive to history.
According to American sociologist Michael Hechter, the English strategy for empire evolved through successive and often repeated invasion, conquest, oppression, and exploitation of Cornwall, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. In his seminal work on nationalism and empire, Internal Colonialism: The Celtic Fringe, Hechter demonstrates how the English then applied the same strategy worldwide. Theories of internal colonialism have since been applied to yze repression and resistance among Afro-Americans, in South Africa, and other settler-colonial states such as Palestinian struggle against Israeli occupation.
It now seems that a WASP(*) regime in America has inherited the English Imperial strategy along with cohorts of its troops and their expertise in Imperial rule, not to mention quite a bit of Cromwell-like Puritan hubris regarding God?s favour of an elect.
Perhaps if England were more amenable to resolving conflict in Northern Ireland, it might be turned over to the United Nations. England could then withdraw its forces of military occupation, and its neo-colonial rule through Orangemen. A show of such good sense might save the world from witnessing the debacle of British troops applying urban warfare lessons from Belfast to Basra and Baghdad. These current urban battles will not, however, be like Dublin in 1916, where more people watched that participated in the rising and resistance.
The average Iraqi is 15 years old, and now armed with an AK47. Many adolescents will certainly be killed, and like their Palestinian and Irish counterparts have learned, slingshots cannot stop tanks, but bullets can kill in both directions. Tragically, such battles continue on into the 21st century only to sow seeds of hatred in yet another generation, and add another layer of resentment and resistance to an Anglo-American world order.
Every Iraqi, and those of us with some schoolbook history, know about the Mongol sack of Baghdad in 1258, and about the 1922-23 RAF aerial bombardment of civilian populations in Mesopotamia. While the RAF might have also been revenging the Ottoman defeat of English forces at Kut, it was also to terrorize the population into accepting England?s creation of Iraq as a petro-colony out of territory seized as spoils of war from a defunct Ottoman Empire. These RAF atrocities against civilian populations preceded Luftwaffe bombing of Guernica, which shocked the world in April 1937, but are common to current Anglo-American rules of engagement.
A reading or viewing of Lawrence of Arabia shows well how England used and deceived Arab peoples whom they instigated to rise up against Ottoman rule. Secretly, the Sykes-Picot treaty had already carved up the region into Anglo-French territories. England?s Imperial administration promoted a Hashemite chief from the Hijaz to a Kingship forcibly imposed onto peoples of their new Iraq colony. This scenario was repeated with the various sheikhdoms, which were turned into separate petro-colonies, such as Kuwait transferred from Basra authority to the al-Sabah family. The English ignored educated urban elites who subsequently became leaders of Arab national resistance movements, just as leaders of Irish nationalism were also being ignored and repressed at the same time, under the same iron heel.
So too, Turkey hovers in the wings. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk hated English occupation of Turkish lands more deeply than he despised the Ottoman alliance with Germany. Ataturk defeated an Anglo-Colonial army at Gallipoli, then after the war rallied Turks to push all occupation forces out of Anatolia and found a new country. But unable to rescue Mosul and Kirkuk from British military control, and unable to secure them diplomatically, Ataturk remained angry at English imperialism and wary of American culpability. All his efforts failed because the English Admiralty knew that to rule the seas, hence the Empire, its fleets now sailed on waves of oil, of which their new colony of Iraq had an abundance. Every Turkish schoolchild know this story, which perhaps precipitates conflict on and off the soccer pitch.
Alas, it seems many peoples of the world still have a common enemy in White Anglo Saxon Protestant (WASP*) Imperialism, even though its leadership has shifted to the New American Empire.
Finally, all said and done, perhaps Sinn Fein should send some Belfast experts in urban guerilla tactics to advise the youth of Basra and Baghdad.
J. Austin Brownson, PhD
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