Tasks of Empire,
Rounding Up the Bush Gang
excerpted from the book
Robbing Us Blind
The Return of the Bush Gang
and the Mugging of America
by Steve Brouwer
Common Courage Press, 2004,
paper
p187
President William McKinley explaining to the ladies of Methodist
Missionary Society how he decided that the United States should
conquer the Philippines in 1900.
I went down on my knees and prayed Almighty
God...and one night late it came -) to me this way...there was
nothing left for us to do but to take them all...and Christianize
them.
p187
George W. Bush, August 5, 2002
There's no telling how many wars it will
take to secure freedom in the homeland.
p187
We once had freedom in the United States, before we started calling
our nation "The Homeland." Why would anyone want to
call our country "The Homeland?" The word does not sit
well with democracy because it has an imperial ring to it. In
the 20th century, the word was more fitting to the fascist countries
that dreamed of expanding outwards into Europe and beyond. It
suggests that soldiers and citizens should be able to venture
out into the world, acquire the riches of any land they like,
wreak vengeance upon those who dare to oppose them, and return
home to "The Homeland" where their safety, and the safety
and comfort of their loved ones, is guaranteed. Only empires have
"homeland" to distinguish their base territory from
all the lands they have conquered.
We are now two years into a different
century and the Bush Gang has changed the rules. In the 21st century,
if they have their way, the United States of America will become
something different-the United Empire of America perhaps-an openly
aggressive, super-duper power that makes the rest of the world
conform to American standards, American culture, and American
demands. Long-time anti-imperialist critic Noam Chomsky summed
up the situation when he spoke to the World Social Forum in early
2003: "the most powerful state in history has proclaimed,
loud and clear, that it intends to rule the world by force, the
dimension in which it reigns supreme."
It used to be that only outright anti
capitalists spoke about American imperialism and empire, as part
of a deep critique of the direction the United States was heading.
But in 2002, rather suddenly, one could find arguments in favor
of "American Empire" throughout the mainstream media,
written by those who are very close associates of the Bush Gang
and their vision of the world. The New York Times quoted conservative
columnist Charles Krauthammer as saying,
People are now coming out of the closet
on the word 'empire.' The fact is, no country has been as dominant
culturally, economically, technologically and militarily in the
history of the world since the Roman Empire.
The Weekly Standard published "The
Case for American Empire," by former editorial features editor
at The Wall Street Journal Max Boot.
He wrote: "We are an attractive empire;"
and "Afghanistan and other troubled lands today cry out for
the sort of enlightened foreign administration once provided by
self-confident Englishmen in jodphurs and pith helmets."
Robert D. Kaplan, the author of Warrior Politics: Why Leadership
Demands a Pagan Ethos, said, "There's a positive side to
empire. It's in some ways the most benign form of order.''
Even those who were not enthusiastic supporters
of Bush's imperial ambitions were ruminating on the situation.
Paul Kennedy of Yale, author of The Rise and Fall of the Great
Powers, wrote in the Financial Times of London, "From the
time the first settlers arrived in Virginia from England and started
moving westward, this was an imperial nation, a conquering nation."
As Kennedy well knows, the ambitions of the Anglo-Americans did
not end with the annihilation of the American Indian nations and
the extension of the republic to the edge of the Pacific. The
Robber Barons had their imperial urges, which Henry Cabot Lodge
described so eloquently in the 1890s, "The great nations
are rapidly absorbing for their future expansion all the waste
nations of the earth. It is a movement that makes for civilization
and the advancement of the race." The aristocratic Lodge
did not think the Anglo-Saxon elite could contain their lust for
other lands, such as Cuba and the Philippines: "We have a
record of conquest, colonization and expansion unequaled by any
people in the 19th century," he bragged. "We are not
about to be curbed now."
Imperialism requires war. And on this
issue, George W. Bush was able to find common ground with Theodore
Roosevelt, who on domestic issues was an enemy of the Robber Baron
mentality. Roosevelt wrote to a friend one year before the United
States embarked upon the Spanish American War and its conquest
of Cuba and the Philippines, "I should welcome almost any
war, for I think this country needs one."
p191
Theodore Roosevelt, who on domestic issues was an enemy of the
Robber Baron mentality. Roosevelt wrote to a friend one year before
the United States embarked upon the Spanish American War and its
conquest of Cuba and the Philippines, "I should welcome almost
any war, for I think this country needs one."
p194
Project for the New American Century
Real freedom in the Middle East is the
last thing the Anglo-Americans, now led by the Bush Gang, want
to see. It is as unlikely for them to promote democracy and self-determination
among the Arab, Iranians, Afghans, and Kurds in 2003 as it would
have been for the Spanish government to restore the good fortunes
of the indigenous, non-Christian civilizations of the Western
hemisphere in 1603. At that historical moment, nearly a century
after Spain started looting the gold and silver from the temples
and mines of Mexico, Peru, and Bolivia, the conquistadors had
not nearly finished the job. Should we expect anything less from
the dominant empire of the 21st century when there are still trillions
of barrels of "black gold" to be extracted from the
earth? And when 65% of those reserves lie beneath Iraq, Iran,
Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirate?
The United States, Great Britain, and
Israel are extending their control over the Middle East because
it benefits all three of them at the expense of the rest of the
world. Long before George W. Bush announced his candidacy for
president, the Bush Gang was formulating a plan which would harness
the right-wing Likudnik lobby, the right-wing segment of the military-industrial
complex, and the right-wing Christian lobby to one imperial wagon.
In 1997, a small group of potentially
powerful people, just twenty five of them, announced the formation
of a new organization dedicated to building up the power of the
United States to unparalleled levels. They were clearly looking
forward to the presidential election of 2000 and the beginning
of a new millennium, because they called their organization "The
Project for the New American Century" (PNAC). Among the principal
signers of the Statement of Principles were Dick Cheney and Donald
Rumsfeld, as well as a number of people whom they recruited to
join them in the Bush administration, including Cheney's National
Security Adviser, I. Lewis Libby, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul
Wolfowitz, former Middle East envoy Zalmay Khalilzad, and new
special Middle East envoy Elliot Abrams. A few right-wing Republican
politicians, Jeb Bush, Dan Quayle, and Steve Forbes signed on;
two influential representatives of the Christian Right, William
Bennett and Gary Bauer; and some influential neo-conservative
intellectuals and writers, such as Francis Fukuyama, Norman Podhoretz,
Midge Decter, and Eliot Cohen. This was a pretty tight group;
according to their declaration of principles they were committed:
to accept responsibility for America's
unique role in preserving and extending an international order
friendly to our security, our prosperity, and our principles [my
emphasis].
Intimately connected to those who signed
the declaration of principles were other people who had drafted
much of the language of the organization and would later make
the recommendations of the Project for a New American Century
(PNAC) into the foundation of a new, definitive U.S. policy-for
example, Richard Perle, Chairman of the Defense Policy Board that
reports to the Pentagon; William Kristol of The Weekly Standard;
John Bolton, at the State Department as chief arms control negotiator;
and Douglas Feith, chief assistant to Rumsfeld. The Project for
a New American Century from the beginning saw itself as an agent
of bold change, one that could strengthen Israel as well as the
United States. Just a year before its founding, in 1996, Israeli
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was presented with a report
that recommended repudiation of the Oslo Accords and the whole
idea of "land for peace," and instead called for the
seizure of the West Bank and Gaza Strip as well as encouraging
an outright invasion of Iraq by the United States. It then suggested
the next items that should be on the agenda: toppling the governments
of Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Iran. This report, entitled
"A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm,"
was co authored by Perle, Feith, and David Wurmser, who now works
at the State Department under Bolton. A few days later these ideas,
which would later become key policies of both Netanyahu and Sharon,
were endorsed by the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal.
In the next few years, John Bolton and
others wrote essays for the PNAC and for the neo conservative
press that expounded upon these three themes: expanding Israel,
taking out Iraq, and subduing the rest of the Middle East in one
way or another. By the fall of 2002, advocates of this position
were sharing their enthusiasm with the mainstream media. Interviewed
in The Boston Globe, Meyrav Wurmser, wife of David Wurmser and
director of the Center for Middle East Policy at the ultra-right
Hudson Institute, was enthusiastic about the extended effects
of the U.S. establishing "democracy" in Iraq: "Everyone
will flip out, starting with the Saudis. It will send shock waves
throughout the Arab world... After a war with Iraq, then you really
shape the region."
This position was bolstered by support
from various other neo-conservative allies and the right-wing
foundations. Writing in the London Telegraph on the first anniversary
of 9/11 was Michael Ledeen, who holds a special position as "freedom
analyst" at the American Enterprise Institute. He once worked
as a foreign policy propagandist for the Reagan/Bush administration
in the 1 980s and formulated much of the misleading anti-Communist
rhetoric that led to the Central American wars. Ledeen described
a "war of vast dimensions" coming in the Middle East,
one that would topple "tyrannies and replace them with freer
societies, as was done after the Second World War ....A war on
such a scale has hardly been mentioned by commentators and politicians,
yet it is implicit in everything President Bush has said and done
... America's enemies will soon be the subject of revolutionary
change at its hands."
James Woolsey, the former CIA director
under Clinton who later joined the neo-conservative effort at
PNAC, seconded Ledeen's arguments at a NATO conference in Prague
in November of 2002 and announced that "Iraq can be seen
as the first battle of the fourth world war."
Within this context, the program for building
up the right wing in Israel and conducting a widespread war to
"liberate" Iraq was not an end in itself, but part of
an even bigger geo-political transformation, the new role that
was being assumed by the United States. In September of 2000,
just before the presidential election, the Project for a New American
Century came out with a detailed blueprint
for the military and foreign policy of the future Bush administration,
a report called "Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategies,
Forces And Resources For A New Century" The ninety page report
bluntly suggested the direction that the U.S. would end up pursuing
a year later after the attacks of September 11, 2001: "The
United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent
role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict
with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a
substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the
issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein."
The rest of the document outlined most
of the detailed program that Bush presented two years later in
the fall of 2002. "The National Security of the United States"
was the Bush Gang's plan for nothing less than a total change
in the declared foreign policy of the United States. Whereas in
the past the U.S. had claimed to be resisting hostile regimes
such as the Soviet Union through containment and pledged itself
to work within a variety of global organizations and treaties
that promoted peace, the new policy was clearly imperial in tone.
It stated that the United State would not be constrained by membership
in multinational peacekeeping organizations - "we will be
prepared to act apart when our interests and unique responsibilities
require" - and when necessary would construct "coalitions
of the willing" to follow its bidding.
The new National Security Doctrine suggested
that the U.S. had the right to discourage others nations from
building up their military power and could act "to dissuade
potential adversaries from pursuing a military buildup in hopes
of surpassing, or equaling, the power of the United States."
This included the new explicit policy of "pre-emptive"
war whenever the U.S. feels threatened: "America will act
against such emerging threats before they are fully formed."
What is more, the new American edict told other nations that the
conservative economic objectives of the Republican Party were
policies that should be implemented throughout the whole world.
The list included the following requirements: "pro-growth
legal and regulatory policies to encourage business investment,
innovation, and entrepreneurial activity; tax policies-particularly
lower marginal tax rates-that improve incentives for work and
investment... strong financial systems that allow capital to be
put to its most efficient use; sound fiscal policies to support
business activity... and free trade that provides new avenues
for growth and fosters the diffusion of technologies and ideas
that increase productivity and opportunity.''
This new foreign policy was the basis
for the speech that Bush made to the United Nations in September
of 2002. He told them that the United States was ready to go it
alone in the world if the U.N. did not join his preemptive war.
The U.S. would take any action that it deemed necessary, against
Iraq or anyone else. His administration was making preparations
to act quickly and decisively by shedding its various multilateral
constraints.
p199
Joseph Schumpeter's classic essay, The Sociology of Imperialism
There was no corner of the known world
where some interest was not alleged to be in danger or under actual
attack. If the interests were not Roman, they were those of Rome's
allies: and if Rome had no allies, then allies would be invented...
The fight was always invested with an aura of legality. Rome was
always being attacked by evil-minded neighbors, always fighting
for a breathing space. The whole world was pervaded by a host
of enemies, and it was manifestly Rome's duty to guard against
their indubitably aggressive designs.
p199
President Dwight Eisenhower saw gathering years ago, the military
industrial complex.
In the councils of government, we must
guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether
sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential
for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our
liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for
granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel
the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery
of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security
and liberty may prosper together.
p200
reporter Maggie Burns
"The U.S. Department of Commerce
licensed 70 biological exports to Iraq between 1985 and 1989,
including at least 21 batches of lethal strains of anthrax, sent
by the American Type Culture Collection Shipments."
When Iraq used chemical weapons against
the Iranian troops and the Kurds, no one was calling them "weapons
of mass destruction." Instead, the United States chose to
ignore their use.
p203
William Blum, Z Magazine, 1999
The engine of American foreign policy
has been fueled not by a devotion to any kind of morality, but
rather by the necessity to serve other imperatives, which can
be summarized as follows: making the world safe for American corporations;
enhancing the financial statements of defense contractors at home
who have contributed generously to members of congress; preventing
the rise of any society that might serve as a successful example
of an alternative to the capitalist model; extending political
and economic hegemony over as wide an area as possible, as befits
a "great power."
p203
John Foster Dulles, U.S Secretary of State in the 1950s
"The world ... is divided into two
groups of people, the Christian anti-Communists and the others."
p204
Our struggles with Al Qaeda and Iraq have their origins with antagonisms
created in large part by U.S. meddling in the world. While we
did not force Al Qaeda to attack us, we did create the conditions
under which Muslim fundamentalists ran rampant in Central Asia.
As the books of Ahmed Rashid so carefully point out, Al Qaeda
and the Taliban would never have come into being or gained any
terrorist expertise if they had not been trained and funded by
the United States, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia. The idea was to
use them to unmercifully harass the Soviet Union and provoke a
war in Afghanistan in the 1980s. The operation was very successful
from the U.S. point of view for it helped lead to the demise of
the Soviet Union. The problems arose later when we ignored the
terrorist fundamentalists we had created.
The Bush Gang, like the Clinton administration,
was annoyed with Al Qaeda's activities, but they had bigger things
on their mind, which they had already mapped out in their Project
for the New American Century. They wanted to control the natural
resources of the world, most especially hydrocarbons, and they
wanted to control the Central Asian and Middle Eastern countries
surrounding that oil and natural gas. They not only wanted strategic
control over the energy products themselves, but they also wanted
to set up military bases in various small countries and control
energy distribution lines and routes going out to the rest of
the world. Thus, by the summer of 2001, the Bush administration
was surrounding the Taliban and Al Qaeda, organizing neighboring
countries to help coerce Afghanistan into agreeing to oil pipeline
deals with American companies, and threatening to invade the country
if they did not comply.
All of this helped provoke the devastating
attacks on the World Trade Towers and the Pentagon. They constitute
a horrific example of "blowback," the word coined by
the CIA for the unintentional repercussions of covert operations
and subversion practiced by those who are trying to manipulate
geopolitical events around the world.
p207
If the Bush Gang remains in power after 2004, they will have the
opportunity to renew or intensify destabilization efforts against
Cuba and Venezuela; they also may decide that Luis da Silva's
democratic, left-leaning government in Brazil needs to be disciplined
and brought into line.
p208
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger sputtering, "I don't see
why we have to stand by and watch a country go Communist due to
the irresponsibility of its own people." The CIA then began
working with its friends in the Chilean army on a final solution
to Chilean independence, because, as Kissinger said, "the
issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left
to decide for themselves."
p208
... in Venezuela in 2002 - President Chavez was attempting to
reorganize the nation's very profitable state-owned oil business
in order to bring prosperity, better education, and health care
to the majority of the population.
p208
... with the backing of ... American friends, the upper classes
of Venezuela tried to stage a coup but failed when the military
would not follow a few corrupt senior officers.
Six months later, right-wing business
leaders, who controlled all the media in the country, tried another
tack. They had their allies, the oil executives, stage a lock-out
and shut-down of the entire oil industry, cutting off all exports.
Meanwhile the conservative media oligarchy called for daily demonstrations
in the wealthy areas of Caracas, the capital city. All day long
the TV stations showed middle class demonstrators who were banging
loudly on their pots and pans, just like their counterparts in
Chile years before. Stories and images of the strike by the rich
were carried out to newspapers and television stations all over
the world, portraying a whole country in rebellion and in great
distress.
In reality, the majority of the population
were not affected and went on with daily life in the streets and
markets, while the armed forces tried to help load the oil tankers
that were scheduled to make deliveries around the world. In Venezuela,
the divide between rich and poor was immense, and it mimicked,
in one country, the split that exists in the whole world. The
twenty percent (or less) of the population that was middle class
and rich was predominantly white and Spanish. The eighty percent
that struggled to get by on very little were a more brown-skinned
mix of indigenous Americans, descendants of African slaves, and
poor whites. Their president was the first in Venezuelan history
who was brown-skinned himself.
The rich were calling on the U.S. for
help, not because they were being abused, but because they did
not want to share Venezuela's wealth with their fellow citizens.
At Christmas time 2002 the upper-class strike began to fizzle,
and some non-rich Venezuelans joked that the wealthy could not
sustain their rebellion because they always did their shopping
in Miami at that time of year. More significantly, the Organization
of American States would not relent to pressure from Washington
and condemn President Chavez. Instead they called for the continuation
of democratic rule at the same time that the left-leaning President-elect
of Brazil, Luis da Silva, conveyed his support to Chavez.
The question remained: was it possible
for a democratic government that had resisted the wishes of Washington
to survive the standard de-stabilization plan? At the very moment
that the Bush Gang was mobilizing its forces to control the oil
of the Middle East, its imperial will was being challenged by
democratically elected elements in its own backyard. Just as mainstream
conservative forces were openly praising the idea of an American
Empire and launching the half-baked idea that it would bring democracy
and freedom to large parts of the Muslim world and Asia, the United
States was being embarrassed by its clumsy attempts to subvert
freedom and re-privatize the oil resources of Venezuela.
p215
In his "Fireside Chat" radio program of January 11,
1944, [Franklin] Roosevelt explicitly told the American people
they deserved "a second Bill of Rights" which would
encompass the economic rights of all citizens to fair employment,
good education, adequate medical care, and security in their old
age. The new economic rights that Roosevelt listed for his audience
sounded pretty substantial:
The right to a useful and remunerative
job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;
the right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing
and recreation; the right of farmers to raise and sell their products
at a return which will give them and their families a decent living;
the right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an
atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by
monopolies at home or abroad; the right of every family to a decent
home; the right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to
achieve and enjoy good health; the right to adequate protection
from the economic fears of old age and sickness and accident and
unemployment; and finally, the right to a good education.
"...If such a reaction should develop-if
history were to repeat itself and we were to return to the so-called
normalcy of the 1920s-then it is certain that even though we shall
have conquered our enemies on the battlefields abroad, we shall
have yielded to the spirit of Fascism here at home.
p217
John Jay, the president of the first Continental Congress and
the first Chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court
"The people who own the country ought
to run it."
p226
Hiram Johnson, Republican Senator from California, 1917
"The first casualty when war comes
is truth."
p233
Marcy Kaptur, Congresswoman from Ohio, 2002
To win, our party must adopt a reform
paradigm. We will never raise more money than the Republicans.
Never. We must elevate the non-money | wing of the Democratic
Party and create | populist symbols to convey our message.
p233
The basics of a meaningful progressive program are not difficult
to lay out:
1) full employment at good wages, with
a flexible work week, and a higher minimum wage.
2) quality day care and quality nursing home care for all who
need it
3) federally funded health care that serves everyone.
4) good public schools, inexpensive higher education and training
programs for all.
5) comprehensive environmental programs that safeguard our health
and the natural world.
6) public works spending that restores roads, bridges, and other
parts of the nation's infrastructure.
p233
Progressive, Egalitarian Solutions
* Raise taxes on the rich. Re-establish
hefty upper-bracket federal income tax rates, even if they are
not quite comparable to the 70-90% rates imposed during the prosperous
decades of the 1950s and 1960s. The top rate on the richest 1%
should be at least 50%, and should yield an effective rate of
40% on all income, including capital gains and dividends.
* Re-establish corporate profit taxes
at 50%, the approximate rate of the 1950s.
* Raise the minimum wage to $7.50 or $8.00
per hour. (This only seems high because it has been held down
so long. If the minimum wage had increased proportionately to
productivity gains since 1979, it would now be about $10 per hour.)
* Do not let Bush get away with abolishing
the estate tax on great fortunes. Re-establish and increase the
effective amount of estate tax collected on rich inheritances
of $5 million and above.
* Institute an annual wealth tax on the
biggest American fortunes at a rate of between 1% and 3%.
* Cut military spending on new weaponry
by $100 to $200 billion to stay in line with the diminished military
budgets of the rest of the world, and immediately begin a staged
program of demilitarization, disarmament, and weapons inspections
throughout the world.
* Extend Social Security taxation to the
highest salaries, and to most forms of investment income. This
would keep the overall withholding percentage at the current rate
of 12.3%; and it would contribute extra funds for a universal
health program.
* Introduce federal Health Security, a
universal government health program that will provide health care
for all Americans. It will be paid through a combination of revenues,
such as progressive income taxes levied on the rich and the corporations
and the extended withholding tax. The reduction in administrative
costs, overhead, and profit will save at least 12% to 14% of costs
(see Chapter 11); this savings can be applied to the care of all
42 million Americans who are not now covered by insurance. A range
of fees will be set for hospitals and doctors; many drugs will
be purchased at discount rates by state or federal agencies. The
government will provide malpractice coverage and set up strict
boards of review for medical competency, but doctors will be free
to practice alone or in clinical groups as they see fit. All patients
will be free to choose their physicians, nurse practitioners,
and other professionals. Medical school education will be totally
free for all doctors, nurses, and other health workers.
p239
Louis Brandeis, Supreme Court Justice (1916-1939)
We can have a democratic society or we
can have great concentrated wealth in the hands of a few. We cannot
have both.
p239
Warren Buffett, second richest man in the United States, May 20,2003
Supporters of making dividends tax-free
like to paint critics as promoters of class warfare. The fact
is, however, that their proposal promotes class welfare. For my
class.
p253
Martin Luther King, Jr., April 4, 1967, the day he led the largest
anti-war march in U.S. history
Somehow the madness must cease ... a nation
that continues year after year to spend more money on military
defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual
death.
p254
While the corporate upper class and the Bush Gang were staging
their raids on American society for over twenty years, the ultra-conservative
turn of U.S. politics eviscerated the Democratic Party. The Republicans
continued to control the political agenda even when Clinton was
president. And sometimes the Democrats, bereft of ideas and a
sense of moral direction, joined the Republicans as willing accomplices
of the richest citizens and corporations as they looted the economy.
Political commentator and television host Bill Moyers summed up
the situation as of March of 2003:
In no small part because they coveted
the same corporate money, Democrats practically walked away from
the politics of struggle, leaving millions of working people with
no one to fight for them. We see the consequences all around us
in what a friend of mine calls "a suffocating consensus."
Even as poverty spreads, inequality grows, and our quality of
life diminishes, Democrats have become the doves of class warfare.
p257
If Arkansas, which looks suspiciously like a center of third world
development within the United States, is the economic and political
model stuck inside our President's head [Clinton], then we are
already in trouble. And if Singapore is the model state for globalizing
high-tech development in the eyes of the world's investing class,
then we are drifting toward something worse: an illusion of democracy
called 'authoritarian democracy'.
p258
Alexis de Tocqueville
A nation that demands from its government
nothing but the maintenance of order is already a slave in the
bottom of its heart ...
p260
Mark Twain penned his most famous anti-imperialist essay, "To
a Person Sitting in Darkness," in response to the war the
United States was waging against the Filipinos, who had just won
their struggle for independence from Spain. He was also answering
the hypocritical presidential platform of the Republicans, who
wanted a colony in the Pacific and promised "to confer the
blessings of liberty and civilization upon all the rescued peoples."
Twain served as vice president of the Anti-Imperialist League,
which included such people as philosopher William James, industrialist
Andrew Carnegie, and Samuel Gompers of the AFL. The League tried
to stop our murderous foreign adventure in the Philippines, where
more than 200,000 people were slaughtered in the name of Christianity
and American democracy. Twain wrote:
The Person Sitting in Darkness is almost
sure to say: "There is something curious about this-curious
and unaccountable. There must be two Americas: one that sets the
captive free, and one that takes a once-captive's new freedom
away from him, and picks a quarrel with him with nothing to found
it on; then kills him to get his land.
"Of course, we must not venture
to ignore our General MacArthur's reports-oh, why do they keep
on printing those embarrassing things? -we must drop them trippingly
from the tongue and take the chances
During the last ten months our losses
have been 268 killed and 750 wounded; Filipino loss, three thousand
two hundred and twenty-seven killed, and 694 wounded.
We must stand ready to grab the Person
Sitting in Darkness, for he will swoon away at this confession,
saying: "Good God, those 'niggers' spare their wounded, and
the Americans massacre theirs!" We must bring him to, and
coax him and coddle him, and assure him that the ways of Providence
are best, and that it would not become us to find fault with them;
and then, to show him that we are only imitators, not originators,
we must read the following passage from the letter of an American
soldier-lad in the Philippines to his mother, published in Public
Opinion, of Decorah, lowa, describing the finish of a victorious
battle 'WE NEVER LEFT ONE ALIVE. IF ONE WAS WOUNDED, WE WOULD
RUN OUR BAYONETS THROUGH HIM.'
And as for a flag for the Philippine
Province, it is easily managed. We can have a special one-our
States do it: we can have just our usual flag, with the white
stripes painted black and the stars replaced by the skull and
cross-bones."
p261
From a certain point of view-that of the artificial person known
as the corporation, which only "lives" as long as it
maximizes the return on invested capital-it does not look so crazy
to employ an enormous military machine in the service of a new
empire. The human point of view is something else entirely. Why
should other nations of the earth tolerate this? And, even if
many of them acquiesce to the Bush Gang's imperial desires, why
would the people of the United States want to sustain such a project?
The major media corporations, being part
of the multinational corporate web, effectively limit real debate
about our choices in foreign and domestic policy. And in anticipation
of the war in Iraq, they beat the drums for war almost as effectively
as William Randolph Hearst did one hundred years ago. So naturally
many people have swallowed the scary nonsense peddled by the Bush
Gang in the name of patriotism. Our government wants to keep frightening
American parents with constant images of impending terror, while
simultaneously training our children to be gendarmes guarding
our growing outposts and new colonies. They are told that they
can be heroes who will protect American interests and freedom.
One option for young citizens, as there are fewer prospects of
good employment at home, is to become legionnaires or centurions
who venture out into the empire. In so doing they will face the
same moral problem that faced American soldiers in the Philippines
in 1900 and later in Vietnam. The new centurions may be asked
to do many things "for the homeland" that are reprehensible.
p263
Bush said to Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward
"I'm in the Lord's hands.... This
will be a monumental struggle between good and evil.''
Robbing
Us Blind
Index
of Website
Home Page