Posted on 09/14/2007 10:53:26 AM PDT by neverdem
The ethnic origins of General David Petraeus are apparently Dutch, which is a shame because there’s something sonorously classical about the family name of the commander of the US forces in Iraq. When you discover that his father was christened Sixtus, the fantasy really takes flight. Somewhere in the recesses of the brain, where memory mingles hazily with imagination, I fancy I can recall toiling through a schoolboy Latin textbook that documented the progress of one Petraeus Sixtus as he triumphantly extended the imperium romanum across some dusty plain in Asia Minor.
The fantasy is not wholly inapt, of course. General Petraeus was the star turn in Washington this week, testifying before Congress about the progress of the surge by US forces in Iraq. Some evidently see America’s wearying detention in the quagmire of Mesopotamia as a classic example of imperial overreach of the kind that is thought to have doomed Rome. Who knows? Perhaps 1,500 years ago one of the forebears of General Petraeus was hauled before the Senate to explain the progress of some surge of Roman forces to defeat the insurgents in Germania.
The US is indeed in the middle of another gloomy ride around the “America as Rome” theme park of half-understood history lessons. The pessimists, equipped with their Fodor’s guidebooks, their summer school diplomas, and their DVD collection of Cecil B. DeMille movies, are convinced it’s all up for the people who march today under the standard of the eagle, just as it was for their predecessors. They see military defeat abroad and political decay at home; they watch as far-flung peoples chafe at the dictates of imperial rule and as the plebs at home grow metaphorically hungry from misgovernment. The only real uncertainty in their minds is who will play the Vandals and lay waste to Washington?
It’s a familiar and very tired analogy, of course. From the moment that America became top nation in the middle of the last century, people have been racing to be contemporary Gibbons, chronicling the decline and fall even as it was supposedly happening. Not the least of the objections to their efforts is that Rome’s domination of the known world lasted about 500 years, and survived more than the odd thrashing or two at the hands of barbarian tribes. In modern America, it’s always the same. Every lost battle or turbulent day on the foreign exchanges and the obituary writers are sharpening their pencils.
The bigger objection is that America is not much of an empire after all. No one pays tribute, no one declares allegiance to Caesar, and what kind of empire is it that owes its foreign subjects a couple of trillion dollars? Still, as Gibbon himself noted in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: “There exists in human nature a strong propensity to depreciate the advantages, and to magnify the evils, of the present times.” Which brings us back neatly to General Petraeus and the Iraq war.
The antiwar crowd’s efforts to depreciate America’s efforts in the Middle East hit a new low on the first day of the long-awaited congressional testimony, when MoveOn.org, the self-appointed leftwing base of the Democratic Party, took out a full-page advertisement in The New York Times that called the commander “General Betray Us” and accused him of lying about the progress of the surge. As stunts go, it was as startlingly offensive as it was politically self-defeating.
Not many Americans – not even those who oppose the war – like the idea of calling their generals traitors. They have a vaguely disconcerting sense that they know where that leads – and it’s not Rome but a rather shorter-lived empire of the 20th century that springs to mind. And so it had the signal effect this week of forcing Democrats to distance themselves from the antiwar movement. Most of them – especially those who harbour presidential ambitions – had to go out of their way during the hearings to emphasise their admiration for the general and his soldiers.
This is good. You can argue about the surge. The evidence is encouraging that the increased US military effort, together with a change in tactics, has reduced the violence in Iraq. On the other hand there are legitimate questions about the long-term viability of the strategy. But if America is to emerge from Iraq with a renewed sense of its global role, you shouldn’t really debase the motives of those who lead US forces there. Because in the end what they are doing is deeply honourable – fighting to destroy an enemy that delights in killing women and children; rebuilding a nation ruined by rapine and savagery; trying to bridge sectarian divides that have caused more misery in the world than the US could manage if it lasted a thousand years.
It is helpful to think about Iraq this way. Imagine if the US had never been there; and that this sectarian strife had broken out in any case – as, one day it surely would, given the hatreds engendered by a thousand years of Muslim history and the efforts of Saddam Hussein.
What would we in the West think about it? What would we think of as our responsibilities? There would be some who would want to wash their hands of it. There would be others who would think that UN resolutions and diplomatic initiatives would be enough to salve our consciences if not to stop the slaughter.
But many of us surely would think we should do something about it – as we did in the Balkans more than a decade ago – and as, infamously, we failed to do in Africa at the same time. And we would know that, for all our high ideals and our soaring rhetoric, there would be only one country with the historical commitment to make massive sacrifices in the defence of the lives and liberty of others, the leadership to mobilise efforts to relieve the suffering and, above all, the economic and military wherewithal to make it happen.
That’s the only really workable analogy between the US and Rome. When Rome fell, the world went dark for the best part of a millennium. America may not be an empire. But whatever it is, for the sake of humanity, pray it lasts at least as long as Rome.
Thanks again.
This personality type thrives where there is a substantial part of the population that is parasitical, that does not have to produce anything in order to live comfortably, the idle rich, as it were.
Re: Acts, I always thought, it referred to temple sacrifices.
One of the best arguments I’ve ever read on the Iraq war.
The Philippines was granted independence after the United States was unwilling to grant the territory statehood and make a bunch of little brown brethren American citizens.That's a poor expression of the American intention in the Philippines. McKinley had no intention of holding the Philippines other than to rid it of the Spanish. Colonization of Cuba was forbidden by law, but no such law applied to the Philippines. On the contrary, McKinley actively recruited his leadership for the Philippine post-war occupation among people who believed in the power of self-government. They saw the Philippines as a test-case for American ideals.
Unfortunately, those asses, Woodrow Wilson and W.J. Bryan, cut short the McKinley program, which had been upheld by Roosevelt and Taft, and the Philippines degraded into a renewed dependency on U.S. occuptation into the 1920s/30s.
Puerto Rico (I love the old anglo spelling "Porto Rico") was a different baby. There just wasn't enough infrastructure of local powers to anchor working self-government. Sadly, Cuba lost it, too.
“Unfortunately, those asses, Woodrow Wilson and W.J. Bryan, cut short the McKinley program, which had been upheld by Roosevelt and Taft, and the Philippines degraded into a renewed dependency on U.S. occuptation into the 1920s/30s. “
Not quite. What Wilson et. al. did was accelerate the transfer of bureaucratic authority to the Filipinos, which increased the power (and corruption) of Filipino politicians.
What happened next was much more interesting - the Filipinos, specifically Manuel Quezon and Sergio Osmena, very quickly discovered that they could lobby in Washington, and that this was a highly effective venue for Filipino politicians, given that Washington really had no idea what to do about the Philippines.
So Washington essentially handed over policy control to the Filipinos, almost at once. In fact the real argument over Philippine independence was not Fil-American, but a matter of Filipino internal politics. They could have had independence anytime they wanted. Quezon was actually picking his American governors.
The only area that the Filipinos could not affect was American military and foreign policy.
“The Philippines was granted independence after the United States was unwilling to grant the territory statehood and make a bunch of little brown brethren American citizens. “
This was never in the cards, except in the very, very beginning, and only among certain Filipinos, when Philippine politics was in the hands of certain liberal Manila politicians like Pedro Paterno. But these visionaries were soon trumped by the landowners of the countryside, who wanted independence.
As far as I know, no US government ever seriously contemplated fully annexing the Philippines a la Hawaii. Perhaps that had a lot to do with a distaste for little brown brothers.
Later on after the relative failures of independence, by the 1960’s there was a substantial grass-roots statehood movement. I think they managed to sign up just about every Manila taxi driver. But it was a completely Quixotic idea by that point.
From the Times? Really? Is this a joke?
You know, your statement gave me an idea...a make believe scenario, rather!
What/How the World will look like in 2007 without the USofA ?
Just click on the source, and you'll get the provenance of the URL. If there was no URL, then it's a vanity, or someone forgot to include it. In the case of the latter, search for the title with Yahoo, Google, etc.
I clicked. I just didn’t think they were a source for anything pro-USA...
Bookmarking.
A lot of freepers have the same idea as you. Sort of reluctant to restart eating meat though, and still looking for more freepers' opinions, such as yours.
| McKinley was not the American government any more than George W. Bush is. Even less, considering how the executive branch has amassed more and more power. There were many Americans, government/military officials and otherwise, who wanted to hold the Philippines as long as they could, with little intention of turning the Filipinos into citizens (in contrast to early inhabitants of American territories, Filipinos were not automatically made American citizens, and their immigration to the United States was greatly limited). The French living in Louisiana (Greater Louisiana, if you will) were made American citizens upon the United States purchasing that territory. Spaniards in Florida, the same. Mexicans in the Mexican Cessation and Gadsen Purchase, the same. The Filipinos did initially push for independence from both the Spanish and the Americans (so did the Cubans and the Puerto Ricans), but a full independence movement was greatly boosted when Filipinos realized that the United States was not about to let them become either American citizens or let the Philippines become a state. The other wishy-washy point made by Americans was that the Philippines was too far away to be made a state--and yet they were willing to keep the Philippines in territorial status for as long as they could, and even today the Northern Marianas, Guam, and American Samoa are still under American rule. If the United States expected to hold on to the territory, then the territory had the right to push for statehood. And look at the last two states to enter the Union, Alaska and Hawaii. Hawaii tried for statehood starting 1919 (the Philippines also made at least one push for statehood--which led to the territory becoming a Commonwealth, which also conveniently allowed for the United States to imposed stricter immigration quotas on Filipino immigrants), made at least three attempts (three attempts passed the House of Representatives) before finally becoming a state. Alaska tried starting in 1916, about 3 years before Hawaiians but with less indigenous support--both didn't get much support from the United States, and again with the Alaska Statehood Act in 1958, and became a state one year later (to be fair, the groundwork for the Alaska Statehood Act began in 1946), cutting off Hawaii to become the forty-ninth state. It is a very fair statement to declare that the Philippines did not become a state because of American (particularly Southern--that's the history, tough; don't shoot the messenger) ambivalence to letting a huge population of people of non-European descent become Americans. Look around freeperdom today, in 2007. While in a minority--hopefully--that sentiment still exists. |
| McKinley was not the American government any more than George W. Bush is. Even less, considering how the executive branch has amassed more and more power. There were many Americans, government/military officials and otherwise, who wanted to hold the Philippines as long as they could, with little intention of turning the Filipinos into citizens (in contrast to early inhabitants of American territories, Filipinos were not automatically made American citizens, and their immigration to the United States was greatly limited). The French living in Louisiana (Greater Louisiana, if you will) were made American citizens upon the United States purchasing that territory. Spaniards in Florida, the same. Mexicans in the Mexican Cessation and Gadsen Purchase, the same. The Filipinos did initially push for independence from both the Spanish and the Americans (so did the Cubans and the Puerto Ricans), but a full independence movement was greatly boosted when Filipinos realized that the United States was not about to let them become either American citizens or let the Philippines become a state. The other wishy-washy point made by Americans was that the Philippines was too far away to be made a state--and yet they were willing to keep the Philippines in territorial status for as long as they could, and even today the Northern Marianas, Guam, and American Samoa are still under American rule. If the United States expected to hold on to the territory, then the territory had the right to push for statehood. And look at the last two states to enter the Union, Alaska and Hawaii. Hawaii tried for statehood starting 1919 (the Philippines also made at least one push for statehood--which led to the territory becoming a Commonwealth, which also conveniently allowed for the United States to imposed stricter immigration quotas on Filipino immigrants), made at least three attempts (three attempts passed the House of Representatives) before finally becoming a state. Alaska tried starting in 1916, about 3 years before Hawaiians but with less indigenous support--both didn't get much support from the United States, and again with the Alaska Statehood Act in 1958, and became a state one year later (to be fair, the groundwork for the Alaska Statehood Act began in 1946), cutting off Hawaii to become the forty-ninth state. It is a very fair statement to declare that the Philippines did not become a state because of American (particularly Southern--that's the history, tough; don't shoot the messenger) ambivalence to letting a huge population of people of non-European descent become Americans. Look around freeperdom today, in 2007. While in a minority--hopefully--that sentiment still exists. |
| McKinley was not the American government any more than George W. Bush is. Even less, considering how the executive branch has amassed more and more power. There were many Americans, government/military officials and otherwise, who wanted to hold the Philippines as long as they could, with little intention of turning the Filipinos into citizens (in contrast to early inhabitants of American territories, Filipinos were not automatically made American citizens, and their immigration to the United States was greatly limited). The French living in Louisiana (Greater Louisiana, if you will) were made American citizens upon the United States purchasing that territory. Spaniards in Florida, the same. Mexicans in the Mexican Cessation and Gadsen Purchase, the same. The Filipinos did initially push for independence from both the Spanish and the Americans (so did the Cubans and the Puerto Ricans), but a full independence movement was greatly boosted when Filipinos realized that the United States was not about to let them become either American citizens or let the Philippines become a state. The other wishy-washy point made by Americans was that the Philippines was too far away to be made a state--and yet they were willing to keep the Philippines in territorial status for as long as they could, and even today the Northern Marianas, Guam, and American Samoa are still under American rule. If the United States expected to hold on to the territory, then the territory had the right to push for statehood. And look at the last two states to enter the Union, Alaska and Hawaii. Hawaii tried for statehood starting 1919 (the Philippines also made at least one push for statehood--which led to the territory becoming a Commonwealth, which also conveniently allowed for the United States to imposed stricter immigration quotas on Filipino immigrants), made at least three attempts (three attempts passed the House of Representatives) before finally becoming a state. Alaska tried starting in 1916, about 3 years before Hawaiians but with less indigenous support--both didn't get much support from the United States, and again with the Alaska Statehood Act in 1958, and became a state one year later (to be fair, the groundwork for the Alaska Statehood Act began in 1946), cutting off Hawaii to become the forty-ninth state. It is a very fair statement to declare that the Philippines did not become a state because of American (particularly Southern--that's the history, tough; don't shoot the messenger) ambivalence to letting a huge population of people of non-European descent become Americans. Look around freeperdom today, in 2007. While in a minority--hopefully--that sentiment still exists. |
| McKinley was not the American government any more than George W. Bush is. Even less, considering how the executive branch has amassed more and more power. There were many Americans, government/military officials and otherwise, who wanted to hold the Philippines as long as they could, with little intention of turning the Filipinos into citizens (in contrast to early inhabitants of American territories, Filipinos were not automatically made American citizens, and their immigration to the United States was greatly limited). The French living in Louisiana (Greater Louisiana, if you will) were made American citizens upon the United States purchasing that territory. Spaniards in Florida, the same. Mexicans in the Mexican Cessation and Gadsen Purchase, the same. The Filipinos did initially push for independence from both the Spanish and the Americans (so did the Cubans and the Puerto Ricans), but a full independence movement was greatly boosted when Filipinos realized that the United States was not about to let them become either American citizens or let the Philippines become a state. The other wishy-washy point made by Americans was that the Philippines was too far away to be made a state--and yet they were willing to keep the Philippines in territorial status for as long as they could, and even today the Northern Marianas, Guam, and American Samoa are still under American rule. If the United States expected to hold on to the territory, then the territory had the right to push for statehood. And look at the last two states to enter the Union, Alaska and Hawaii. Hawaii tried for statehood starting 1919 (the Philippines also made at least one push for statehood--which led to the territory becoming a Commonwealth, which also conveniently allowed for the United States to imposed stricter immigration quotas on Filipino immigrants), made at least three attempts (three attempts passed the House of Representatives) before finally becoming a state. Alaska tried starting in 1916, about 3 years before Hawaiians but with less indigenous support--both didn't get much support from the United States, and again with the Alaska Statehood Act in 1958, and became a state one year later (to be fair, the groundwork for the Alaska Statehood Act began in 1946), cutting off Hawaii to become the forty-ninth state. It is a very fair statement to declare that the Philippines did not become a state because of American (particularly Southern--that's the history, tough; don't shoot the messenger) ambivalence to letting a huge population of people of non-European descent become Americans. Look around freeperdom today, in 2007. While in a minority--hopefully--that sentiment still exists. |
You’d a better off using the example of Puerto Rico. Luzon is what we wanted. We had to take the whole chain in order to keep the Germans/Japanese from moving in. No way could the Filipinos have maintained their independence in that political climate. As to the racism, the blunt truth is that the more racially homogenous the population, the easier it is to maintain
a common government. The Chinese Exclusion Act was probably a good thing(except that it kept the Chinese men from bringing in wives; an unhappy group they were). China was undergoing a population explosion at the time, and we were in danger of being flooded by a large number of virtual slaves. It was bad enough when “contractors” brought in large numbers of Bohemians” into the Pennsylvania mines in the midst of a depression. But the cultural gap between Americans and Bohemians was small compared with the gaps between Americans and the Chinese.
Yes, and thank God Gore was not president on 9/11.
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