How America's imperialism is rationalized by the government and media. by Mr. C
(libertarian)
Thursday, July 17, 2008
The Rationalization of Tyrannical Imperialism
Since our invasion of Iraq in 2003, it has been interesting to watch mainstream Republicans constantly having to change their reasons for supporting the war. First, they supported it because Iraq was linked to Al Qaeda and had weapons of mass destruction. When WMD's were not found, they said it was enough that there was an Al Qaeda link. When that was proven false, the focus then shifted to how the Iraqi people have benefited from our military occupation of their country. Why, all we have to do is just look at the democracy that now exists in Iraq. The Iraqi people are now a free people and can choose their own leaders in free elections. That alone justifies the war, right? Wrong! Our Constitution places limits not only on our government as a whole, but on how our government can use our military. Straying from the Constitution for the last hundred or so years has resulted in an unconstitutional use of our military and has fostered a foreign policy that can only be described as tyrannical imperialism.
In 1898 the Spanish-American War broke out, and was our first real step toward imperialism. Leading up to the war, yellow journalism was used in order to sway public opinion against Spain. The most notable yellow journalist of the time, William Randolph Hearst, not only covered the Spanish atrocities against the Cubans, he even went so far as to make some of them up. When the USS Maine mysteriously blew up off the coast of Cuba, the war was on. Even today no one is sure what caused the ship to explode, but it was enough to warrant a declaration of war. After we won the war, the famous Treaty of Paris was signed, and the US started its empire. Spain agreed to cede Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines to the US for $20 million.
As time has passed and the justification for that war has become doubtful, but new and better justifications can always be made. Regardless of the mystery surrounding the USS Maine, we can always justify the Spanish-American War simply by mentioning freedom. For the first time in our history, we took part in a conflict that had nothing to do with preserving our freedom, and we instead took it upon ourselves to secure the freedom of the people of another country. We "liberated" the Cubans by militarily occupying their country and forcing them to accept indefinite US domination. We bullied dissenters, distorted facts, and generally lied the whole time. Does this sound familiar yet? Can this possibly be compared to Iraq?
Not too many months after the Spanish-American War, we got ourselves into another one. The Philippines had declared independence from the colonial rule of Spain in June of 1898, after Spain was defeated in the Battle of Manila Bay during the war. But both Spain and the US did not recognize the declaration. That's right; we didn't recognize a country's declaration of independence from the rule of a tyrannical government. How quickly we forgot the history of our forefathers. Instead, we formed the Philippine Commission and determined that they weren't "ready" for independence, as if it was our business anyway. In June of 1899, the Filipinos declared war against the US.
The first shot fired came from a US soldier, who admittedly was probably in some pretty imminent danger. After he shot the first Filipino, it became apparent that many others were already there and ready to fight. However, it seems to me that any country that declares war against another country would naturally want to expel the enemy soldiers from their land. The US defeated the independence minded Filipinos by killing or otherwise causing the deaths of around a million of them. Any independence the Filipinos enjoyed after the war was appropriated to them by the US government. In a rationalization of our tyrannical imperialism toward the Philippines, Jacob Schurman, head of the first Philippine Commission, rationalized our tyrannical imperialism toward the Philippines by saying, "We cannot from any point of view escape the responsibilities of government which our sovereignty entails; and the commission is strongly persuaded that the performance of our national duty will prove the greatest blessing to the peoples of the Philippine Islands." I'm sure the Filipinos felt blessed when their population was reduced by 1 million.
Iraq is a continuation of American imperialism, and this policy always has a high cost in lives. Iraqi losses are estimated to be as high as 1 million, and as low as 400,000. Regardless of which number is accurate, the cost is too high. To sell imperialism, the government almost always suggests it is making an occupied country into a success story on the American model, whether it refers to economic freedom, political freedom, or both. This appeals to nave Americans who long to see a moral goal in our wars. Once the moral imperative is established, the government then has a vast army of war apologists who pretend to have the moral high ground over war protestors. In almost any debate over the Iraq war, supporters of the war want nothing to do with the Constitution or any arguments concerning it. They instead ignore all of the Constitutional problems, and the crux of their argument rests either on the assumption that we were in imminent danger of attack, or that the spread of democracy in Iraq justifies the conflict.
The Constitution gives Congress the power to declare war, and it gives the President authority over the troops once war is declared. The last time we declared war was in 1941. Every other use of our military on foreign soil since then has been unconstitutional. At least in our wars with the Spanish and the Filipinos we had war declarations, although the circumstances behind those wars were deplorable. As long as the American people can be made to believe that the US can commit any evils so long as they are less than those done by the enemy, our downward spiral into tyranny will continue and our freedom will ever be in danger. To take the place of our freedom, a new thing called government freedom will emerge, which really isn't freedom at all. As the military state grows and we see our soldiers doing things that go beyond the limits of the Constitution, I think it is only proper that we all join together and shout, "All hail King George!". We have almost come full circle since 1776. We got rid of one tyrant named George, and have replaced him with another tyrant named George. The sad thing is that this time around we chose the tyrant twice in a row.
Mr. C July 2008
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