Are you Anti-Imperialist?
PaulBot415
2012/06/17 05:28:08
|
|
|||||
|
7 votes
|
|
58% | |||
|
3 votes
|
|
25% | |||
|
2 votes
|
|
17% | |||
The Modern Anti-Imperialist: By Zachary M. Casciato
Two of the greatest Americans who ever lived, in their times were considered “Anti-Imperialists,” which for those of you who don’t know, means they were against America ever becoming a world power. They believed that Hamiltonian Foreign Policy and American Manifest Destiny was no the right way to govern our country. This, of course, came to the forefront of American Politics during the War in the Filipines in 1900. President McKinley’s administration was in charge at the time and though things in the world were very different back then, the feelings toward the war were the same as now from many people. Many Americans had lost their patriotic fervor that had been left over from the Spanish War and the liberation of Cuba. The two men I would focus on most from the time period are, however not William McKinley or any of his generals, but Grover Cleveland and Mark Twain.
But before I draw your attention to the reasoning of these two loved Americans of our past, I would like to draw parallels between then and now. McKinley was at war during an election year and it was an unnecessary war in a country that did not want us there. The American volunteer army was taking heavy casualties dealing with guerilla fighters in the Filipines in an imperialistic war for more land and dominion over an island trade route to Europe and Asia. Spurred on by success in Cuba and despite the protest of many members of Congress, McKinley decided America was to liberate The Filipines as well and enstate Democracy, sound familiar? George W. Bush basically did the same thing in 2001 when he went to war on terror. And once the anger over 9-11 wore off a little bit and American citizens started thinking rationally, we realized we did not want a war. Hell, the mere fact that America even has a standing army during peace times is because of Imperialism, because the Founding Fathers did not believe in a peace time army.
In the late 1700’s a standing peacetime army would be frowned upon in the same way as a foreign occupation, but of course at some point, our government decided an army was necessary. Unfortunately for the citizens of the United States, it was another brick in the wall being built between us and our Constitutional Rights. There are and always will be people that believe The Constitution and The Bill of Rights protect us no matter what and I wish it was true, but they are only pieces of old parchment paper. The ideals immortalized at the beginning of this experiment we now call a country, are what really protect the people of the USA, but those ideals will not hold without support from the people and the government. If our current leaders are only concerned with conquest and with keeping their own power, then our leaders are Imperialist leaders. It is the difference between one who defends and one who attacks, and that is what it comes down to. It really is this black and white, truly cut and dry. Are we attacking terrorists or defending Iraqi freedom? I’m not sure that many people have a clear answer to this question and it becomes less clear, the further we live past Nine Eleven. We forget the enemy and therefore, we are no longer defending, but attacking and so we are the aggressors.
Webster’s Dictionary defines imperialism as follows:
“The policy, practice, or advocacy of extending the power and dominion of a nation especially by direct territorial acquisitions or by gaining indirect control over the political or economic life of other areas; broadly : the extension or imposition of power, authority, or influence”
So how far does the current control of America extend at this point, how far does our country’s hand reach into foreign affairs? At the time of Mark Twain, our army occupied very little more than the United States and he was worried about the rise of Imperialism back then, so how real is the threat now? I can tell you that according to Wikipedia, The United States has troops deployed in over 150 different countries. If I wasn’t born and raised an American citizen, I would be afraid of America and to me, that no longer represents Freedom and Equality, but war and terror. Not to mention, even though I’m an American citizen, I still can’t trust the government, which is the case in many foreign countries as well, but those countries do not advertise freedom. As well as having ground troops in over 150 countries here is a list of all the foreign countries we have bombed since 1950, (including a bomb dropped by the FBI and Law Enforcement in Phillydelphia, PA in the 80’s):
Korea and China 1950-53 (Korean War)
Guatemala 1954
Indonesia 1958
Cuba 1959-1961
Guatemala 1960
Congo 1964
Laos 1964-73
Vietnam 1961-73
Cambodia 1969-70
Guatemala 1967-69
Grenada 1983
Lebanon 1983, 1984 (both Lebanese and Syrian targets)
Libya 1986
El Salvador 1980s
Nicaragua 1980s
State of Pennsylvania, USA (FBI bombs a city block, 11 dead)
France 1986 (French Embassy in Libya)
Iran 1987
Panama 1989
Iraq 1991 (Persian Gulf War)
Kuwait 1991
Somalia 1993
Bosnia 1994, 1995
Sudan 1998
Afghanistan 1998
Yugoslavia 1999
China 1999 (Chinese Embassy in Belgrade)
Yemen 2002
Iraq 1991-2003 (US/UK on regular basis)
Pakistan 2002-03 (Part of Operation Iraqi Freedom)
Iraq 2003-present
Afghanistan 2001-present
Iran 2003 (Accidental)
Pakistan 2007-present
Somalia 2007-8, 2011
Yemen 2009, 2011
Libya 2011
When I first saw this list, I was disappointed at what has become of our country. It took Pearl Harbor to finally convince FDR to send America to war in WW2 and even then, more so in the Pacific and was still hesitant to send troops to Europe. Now we jump at the chance to go to war or to get involved in other foreign conflicts, either for glory or profit or land. A truly conquering power and a force to be reckoned with, but that was not what the USA was supposed to be at all, it was supposed to be quite the opposite.
Imagine a country where people are not taxed, a country with no peace time military, a country concentrated on it’s own problems and citizens. Our economy would be better, we would be better informed and not in a constant state of war.
“This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience .... 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.”
-Dwight D Eisenhower
Many warned the country about the risks of becoming a world military power and many important leaders of the country ignored the warnings. It’s the classic argument between people who believe in Jeffersonian Democracy or Hamiltonian Hypocrisy. Before the Philipine American War for Independence, in 1879, Mark Twain had this to say about war:
“If the bubble reputation can be obtained only at the cannon's mouth, I am willing to go there for it, provided the cannon is empty. If it is loaded my immortal and inflexible purpose is to get over the fence and go home. My invariable practice in war has been to bring out of every fight two-thirds more men than when I went in. This seems to me Napoleonic in its grandeur.”
- "Mark Twain as a Presidential Candidate," New York Evening Post, 9 June 1879
27 years of US Imperialism later and the older and more experienced author and statesman had this to say:
“To be a patriot, one had to say, and keep on saying, ‘ Our country, right or wrong,’ and urge on the little war. Have you not perceived that that phrase is an insult to the nation.”
- Mark Twain, "Glances at History," 1906
He was right to think that future leaders and powerful people would come up with lies in order to convince their fellow country men to go to pointless war for them (as seen in Kuwait). Maybe it is true that the war in Iraq was solely engineered by the US government and years of planning came to fruition September 11th, 2001. Much of Al Quaida was trained by the US or trained by Iraqis who were once trained by US military personnel. Even if Osama Bin Laden was not a CIA plant, the US still had it’s hands in the tactics and equipment of the terrorists who perpetrated the attacks of 9/11. Even if it was not one of our own missles that hit The Pentagon, as many believe, it still gave the rich an excuse to send the poor off to fight in the oil fields and deserts of the Middle East. Spreading Democracy and fighting Terrorists? Or turning a profit and policing foreign countries? Where does the line get drawn and who draws that line? If this were a true Democracy wouldn’t the people decide where and when our country would go to war, but instead we turned that power over to elected officials, many of whom speak only for their own power.
“A government for the people must depend for its success on the intelligence, the morality, the justice, and the interest of the people themselves.”
-Grover Cleveland (President 1885-89 and 1893-97)
A quote from a man who won the popular vote of the people of the United States, but somehow was only President twice, and this was before there was a two term limit on the office of the President. He was a man who gave land back to Native Americans, he fought against a heavily Republican Congress and maintained a foreign policy of non-intervention. He was criticized for his views, but he stood by his guns and fought for the political policies he believed in, most importantly, he was one of few Presidents in his time and really one of few Americans in the late 1800’s who was not an expansionist. He was, of course succeeded by William McKinley in 1897 who died in office and was later succeeded by Teddy Roosevelt. McKinley and Roosevelt both being Imperialist Presidents and both had been soldiers as well. McKinley, not surprisingly, was assassinated by an Anarchist named Leon Czolgosz in 1901.
"…In Grover Cleveland the greatness lies in typical rather than unusual qualities. He had no endowments that thousands of men do not have. He possessed honesty, courage, firmness, independence, and common sense. But he possessed them to a degree other men do not."
-Allan Nevins (Biographer)
How many wars will the US declare in the name of so-called “freedom and Democracy?” How many times will the American people let politicians send our young men and women off to war in the name of profit and expansion? Every conflict our military has been involved in after WW2 has been largely disapproved of by the American public and we had no business being involved in many of said conflicts.
When the Roman Empire had become to big to control and they had expanded too far and spread their military too thin, the Roman Empire fell. The same thing happened to Alexander’s Greece, Napoleon’s France and Hitler’s Germany. History will repeat itself again and America is currently the country poised on the edge about to fall from power.
The modern Anti-Imperialist believes in bringing the troops home, ending a pointless war, less money spent on military occupations and more spent on American infrastructure. He believes in keeping the masses informed and so they can make the best decision possible when it comes to electing our leaders, not tricking the public into electing the most profitable officials. He also believes in spreading Democracy, but true Democracy, not the current imposter posing as Democracy. That spread of Democracy can begin right here and right now in the USA and our future generations will know true freedom. War will not bring us any future peace, but only more suffering. The more we conquer the people of the world, the lower their opinion of America will become and we will lose our influence. An influence, so far, squandered by selfish, short sighted, narrow minded and uncaring individuals over the past couple of hundred years. America was going to be the first truly free country in the known world when we won independence in 1776, but 236 years later it seems like a failed experiment. Many brave people have died in the name of the principals our country represents, let them not have died in vain. To the modern Anti-Imperialist I say, ‘Do not give up the fight, because you are not alone and those of us who know what is right outnumber those who do only wrong ninety-nine to one and I like those odds.’
JUNE 16, 2012
Two of the greatest Americans who ever lived, in their times were considered “Anti-Imperialists,” which for those of you who don’t know, means they were against America ever becoming a world power. They believed that Hamiltonian Foreign Policy and American Manifest Destiny was no the right way to govern our country. This, of course, came to the forefront of American Politics during the War in the Filipines in 1900. President McKinley’s administration was in charge at the time and though things in the world were very different back then, the feelings toward the war were the same as now from many people. Many Americans had lost their patriotic fervor that had been left over from the Spanish War and the liberation of Cuba. The two men I would focus on most from the time period are, however not William McKinley or any of his generals, but Grover Cleveland and Mark Twain.
But before I draw your attention to the reasoning of these two loved Americans of our past, I would like to draw parallels between then and now. McKinley was at war during an election year and it was an unnecessary war in a country that did not want us there. The American volunteer army was taking heavy casualties dealing with guerilla fighters in the Filipines in an imperialistic war for more land and dominion over an island trade route to Europe and Asia. Spurred on by success in Cuba and despite the protest of many members of Congress, McKinley decided America was to liberate The Filipines as well and enstate Democracy, sound familiar? George W. Bush basically did the same thing in 2001 when he went to war on terror. And once the anger over 9-11 wore off a little bit and American citizens started thinking rationally, we realized we did not want a war. Hell, the mere fact that America even has a standing army during peace times is because of Imperialism, because the Founding Fathers did not believe in a peace time army.
In the late 1700’s a standing peacetime army would be frowned upon in the same way as a foreign occupation, but of course at some point, our government decided an army was necessary. Unfortunately for the citizens of the United States, it was another brick in the wall being built between us and our Constitutional Rights. There are and always will be people that believe The Constitution and The Bill of Rights protect us no matter what and I wish it was true, but they are only pieces of old parchment paper. The ideals immortalized at the beginning of this experiment we now call a country, are what really protect the people of the USA, but those ideals will not hold without support from the people and the government. If our current leaders are only concerned with conquest and with keeping their own power, then our leaders are Imperialist leaders. It is the difference between one who defends and one who attacks, and that is what it comes down to. It really is this black and white, truly cut and dry. Are we attacking terrorists or defending Iraqi freedom? I’m not sure that many people have a clear answer to this question and it becomes less clear, the further we live past Nine Eleven. We forget the enemy and therefore, we are no longer defending, but attacking and so we are the aggressors.
Webster’s Dictionary defines imperialism as follows:
“The policy, practice, or advocacy of extending the power and dominion of a nation especially by direct territorial acquisitions or by gaining indirect control over the political or economic life of other areas; broadly : the extension or imposition of power, authority, or influence”
So how far does the current control of America extend at this point, how far does our country’s hand reach into foreign affairs? At the time of Mark Twain, our army occupied very little more than the United States and he was worried about the rise of Imperialism back then, so how real is the threat now? I can tell you that according to Wikipedia, The United States has troops deployed in over 150 different countries. If I wasn’t born and raised an American citizen, I would be afraid of America and to me, that no longer represents Freedom and Equality, but war and terror. Not to mention, even though I’m an American citizen, I still can’t trust the government, which is the case in many foreign countries as well, but those countries do not advertise freedom. As well as having ground troops in over 150 countries here is a list of all the foreign countries we have bombed since 1950, (including a bomb dropped by the FBI and Law Enforcement in Phillydelphia, PA in the 80’s):
Korea and China 1950-53 (Korean War)
Guatemala 1954
Indonesia 1958
Cuba 1959-1961
Guatemala 1960
Congo 1964
Laos 1964-73
Vietnam 1961-73
Cambodia 1969-70
Guatemala 1967-69
Grenada 1983
Lebanon 1983, 1984 (both Lebanese and Syrian targets)
Libya 1986
El Salvador 1980s
Nicaragua 1980s
State of Pennsylvania, USA (FBI bombs a city block, 11 dead)
France 1986 (French Embassy in Libya)
Iran 1987
Panama 1989
Iraq 1991 (Persian Gulf War)
Kuwait 1991
Somalia 1993
Bosnia 1994, 1995
Sudan 1998
Afghanistan 1998
Yugoslavia 1999
China 1999 (Chinese Embassy in Belgrade)
Yemen 2002
Iraq 1991-2003 (US/UK on regular basis)
Pakistan 2002-03 (Part of Operation Iraqi Freedom)
Iraq 2003-present
Afghanistan 2001-present
Iran 2003 (Accidental)
Pakistan 2007-present
Somalia 2007-8, 2011
Yemen 2009, 2011
Libya 2011
When I first saw this list, I was disappointed at what has become of our country. It took Pearl Harbor to finally convince FDR to send America to war in WW2 and even then, more so in the Pacific and was still hesitant to send troops to Europe. Now we jump at the chance to go to war or to get involved in other foreign conflicts, either for glory or profit or land. A truly conquering power and a force to be reckoned with, but that was not what the USA was supposed to be at all, it was supposed to be quite the opposite.
Imagine a country where people are not taxed, a country with no peace time military, a country concentrated on it’s own problems and citizens. Our economy would be better, we would be better informed and not in a constant state of war.
“This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience .... 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.”
-Dwight D Eisenhower
Many warned the country about the risks of becoming a world military power and many important leaders of the country ignored the warnings. It’s the classic argument between people who believe in Jeffersonian Democracy or Hamiltonian Hypocrisy. Before the Philipine American War for Independence, in 1879, Mark Twain had this to say about war:
“If the bubble reputation can be obtained only at the cannon's mouth, I am willing to go there for it, provided the cannon is empty. If it is loaded my immortal and inflexible purpose is to get over the fence and go home. My invariable practice in war has been to bring out of every fight two-thirds more men than when I went in. This seems to me Napoleonic in its grandeur.”
- "Mark Twain as a Presidential Candidate," New York Evening Post, 9 June 1879
27 years of US Imperialism later and the older and more experienced author and statesman had this to say:
“To be a patriot, one had to say, and keep on saying, ‘ Our country, right or wrong,’ and urge on the little war. Have you not perceived that that phrase is an insult to the nation.”
- Mark Twain, "Glances at History," 1906
He was right to think that future leaders and powerful people would come up with lies in order to convince their fellow country men to go to pointless war for them (as seen in Kuwait). Maybe it is true that the war in Iraq was solely engineered by the US government and years of planning came to fruition September 11th, 2001. Much of Al Quaida was trained by the US or trained by Iraqis who were once trained by US military personnel. Even if Osama Bin Laden was not a CIA plant, the US still had it’s hands in the tactics and equipment of the terrorists who perpetrated the attacks of 9/11. Even if it was not one of our own missles that hit The Pentagon, as many believe, it still gave the rich an excuse to send the poor off to fight in the oil fields and deserts of the Middle East. Spreading Democracy and fighting Terrorists? Or turning a profit and policing foreign countries? Where does the line get drawn and who draws that line? If this were a true Democracy wouldn’t the people decide where and when our country would go to war, but instead we turned that power over to elected officials, many of whom speak only for their own power.
“A government for the people must depend for its success on the intelligence, the morality, the justice, and the interest of the people themselves.”
-Grover Cleveland (President 1885-89 and 1893-97)
A quote from a man who won the popular vote of the people of the United States, but somehow was only President twice, and this was before there was a two term limit on the office of the President. He was a man who gave land back to Native Americans, he fought against a heavily Republican Congress and maintained a foreign policy of non-intervention. He was criticized for his views, but he stood by his guns and fought for the political policies he believed in, most importantly, he was one of few Presidents in his time and really one of few Americans in the late 1800’s who was not an expansionist. He was, of course succeeded by William McKinley in 1897 who died in office and was later succeeded by Teddy Roosevelt. McKinley and Roosevelt both being Imperialist Presidents and both had been soldiers as well. McKinley, not surprisingly, was assassinated by an Anarchist named Leon Czolgosz in 1901.
"…In Grover Cleveland the greatness lies in typical rather than unusual qualities. He had no endowments that thousands of men do not have. He possessed honesty, courage, firmness, independence, and common sense. But he possessed them to a degree other men do not."
-Allan Nevins (Biographer)
How many wars will the US declare in the name of so-called “freedom and Democracy?” How many times will the American people let politicians send our young men and women off to war in the name of profit and expansion? Every conflict our military has been involved in after WW2 has been largely disapproved of by the American public and we had no business being involved in many of said conflicts.
When the Roman Empire had become to big to control and they had expanded too far and spread their military too thin, the Roman Empire fell. The same thing happened to Alexander’s Greece, Napoleon’s France and Hitler’s Germany. History will repeat itself again and America is currently the country poised on the edge about to fall from power.
The modern Anti-Imperialist believes in bringing the troops home, ending a pointless war, less money spent on military occupations and more spent on American infrastructure. He believes in keeping the masses informed and so they can make the best decision possible when it comes to electing our leaders, not tricking the public into electing the most profitable officials. He also believes in spreading Democracy, but true Democracy, not the current imposter posing as Democracy. That spread of Democracy can begin right here and right now in the USA and our future generations will know true freedom. War will not bring us any future peace, but only more suffering. The more we conquer the people of the world, the lower their opinion of America will become and we will lose our influence. An influence, so far, squandered by selfish, short sighted, narrow minded and uncaring individuals over the past couple of hundred years. America was going to be the first truly free country in the known world when we won independence in 1776, but 236 years later it seems like a failed experiment. Many brave people have died in the name of the principals our country represents, let them not have died in vain. To the modern Anti-Imperialist I say, ‘Do not give up the fight, because you are not alone and those of us who know what is right outnumber those who do only wrong ninety-nine to one and I like those odds.’
JUNE 16, 2012
Read More: http://ronpaulsf.blogspot.com/
Sort By
- Ben 2012/07/18 10:50:55 (edited)Yes
+1It's why I believe in the rights of the Falklkand Islands to choose themselves how they wish to be governed.reply - beach bum 2012/06/27 08:15:32Nonoreply
- dvd 2012/06/20 06:06:56
-
nobody said anti-american, it was anti-imperialist.reply
- HarleyCharley 2012/06/17 09:27:14Yes+1no more war....reply
- Z 2012/06/17 05:49:43Undecided+1Mark Twain also hated Missouri government, and all government. "I have found that the people of this state are safest and most at ease when the legislator is adjourned."reply
-
nobody is perfect.reply
- Z PaulBot415 2012/06/17 22:51:53True, but this is a good thing, not a bad one. Government is the source of imperialism. Without government, there is no means, nor is there are reason for imperialism. It is also the source of gang violence. It is a bad thing.reply
-
I agree that it is a bad thing, but anarchy hasnt been proven to work either, whats the middle ground?reply
- Z PaulBot415 2012/06/18 02:01:26First of all, coordinated anarchy, which is not the anarchy that comes from political chaos and upheaval, has never been tried. But actually, minarchy, or the libertarian view of politics, is the middle ground. In other words, not no government, just absolute minimal government.reply
-
What about Sierra Leone?reply
- Z PaulBot415 2012/06/18 14:09:37Sierra Leone is a constitutional republic with a directly elected president and unicameral legislator. I like that they require a candidate to receive 55% to take the presidential office. It isn't anarchy in any form.reply
-
wasnt always that way. (even if google says it was).reply
- Z PaulBot415 2012/06/19 15:06:41That had a civil war a few years ago, but there wasn't any anarchy at the time, any more than the United States was in anarchy during our civil war.reply
