Posted on 10/08/2001 4:22:21 PM PDT by 4Freedom
I knew I would touch a raw nerve. In my most recent Sept. 23 column, "P.R.'s potential role in possible WWIII," I posed the critical question: "Are you willing to die for the United States?" The question was predicated on our colonial condition, in which we do not have any power to participate or be consulted in the unleashing of World War III by George W. Bush. Reaction was swift and passionate, forgetting the colonial issue. Seven letters were promptly posted to viewpoint attacking my position. Six more, equally irate, came the next week. I was called ignorant, doomsayer, deaf, irresponsible, arrogant, pompous, self-righteous, disdainful, xenophobic, racist, prejudiced, blind, insensitive, vicious, self-serving, churlish, un-American, ridiculous, silly, oriental, irresponsible, selfish, inhumane, cowardly, alienated, and disloyal - by such wonderful Puerto Rican(?) last names as Ezratty, Hitt, Greenia and Sparco, among others. The insults broke the record since I started writing for the STAR in 1969. I have come to understand in these 32 years all about it: Some of my readers want me to be American, and I am not.
All I did, consonant with being a Puerto Rican who was granted American citizenship without taxes without ever asking for it, was to say that "World War III is not my war." It isn't.
Well, the jingoistic response in Viewpoint has now to face the excellent editorial in the STAR on Sept. 29. It says that President George W. Bush has "taken a step back from the brink." It looks like World War III is not for him, either.
As we say in Spanish (brother Eddie Lopez, how I miss you) "suck on that orange while I peel you the next one!"
I quote from the guest editorial: "There is not going to be a D-Day" Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Tuesday. His deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, told reporters Wednesday that "everyone who is waiting" for military action . . . needs to rethink this thing." Well, I don't have to rethink anything. The day after the bombings in the United States, on my morning radio show on Notiuno I said that it would not be my war, and it isn't.
What this experience in the pages of the STAR tells you is that "the best angels in the American nature" (the term used by Hans Morgenthau for Adlai Stevenson) are prevailing over its overblown, devilish, "military-industrial complex" (the term used to advise us against it by President Dwight D. Eisenhower). OK?
I have good friends among the best angels in the American nature. Since my early days as the first Puerto Rican to be admitted to the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, then as an advisor on U.S.-P.R. relations to Luis Munoz Marin and Roberto Sanchez Vilella, then as an advisor to the National Security Council's Robert Pastor on the Caribbean, and finally as the first Puerto Rican to be nominated to the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, I have represented in the "bowels of the monster" (the phrase is Jose Marti's) the staunch opposition to those Americans like the letter writers to the STAR, and it seems those of us who are more intelligent are beginning to win. On Monday, we learned the United States will not invade Afghanistan, to avoid a blood war" (STAR, page 23).
I restate my position, with vigor. I am a Puerto Rican, not an American. I was given American citizenship without taxes as a gift from the Americans and I do not return gifts unless asked. I am not, and do not want to be part of the "American homeland," much less a sponsor of its "Agency for Homeland Defense." I said that very clearly at the Council on Foreign Relations in May when we discussed the imminent attack. "Homeland" was the favorite term of Adolph Hitler, and I just don't like it, its implications, or its implementation. Defend America, yes, but defend it with its ideals, not its bombs," was and is my position, and is now the position of Washington. Good!
If any of my jingoistic readers want to know more about my position, they (if, of course, they are capable of reading Spanish, the language of their host country) can read my most recent book, that has been in all local bookstores since Monday.
Read, yes: "Afirmation Nacional: Verdadera Historia de los Puertorriquenos" (Editorial Cultural, Rio Piedras, 2001, $20).
In it, I explain to you all how Puerto Rico has been a nation since 1511, when Spain gave us a seal, different from that of the Spanish Crown. Different, yes, because we were already different. Then, I take you through six expressions of that nation in a history of 500 years: the origins of the mulatto nation/people in the seventeenth century, the expression of the creole/country in the Grito de Lares, the written/historic nation in most of our intellectuals in the nineteenth century, the political nation in our nationalist movement, the refuge nation during the infamous gag laws of the United States, and the proud nation of Tito Trinidad, Denise Quinones and Vieques protesters.
It is so easy to understand it, if you can read Spanish!
Carter could really pick them. I wonder what security clearance level this putrid, pusillanimous piece of Marxist excrement had while he was attached ("in the bowels of the beast") to the White House?
I'll be running out to spend $20.00 on a book written by this ungrateful puke. Not!
I hereby request all Puerto Ricans to return their US Passports immediately. In return we will be willing to recognize them as an independent nation and we will immediately cease sending the BILLIONS in subsidies they currently receive from American Taxpayers.
Ok, what would the fact that the island has about 1 million beautiful women, including the present, reigning Miss Universe, Denise Quinones, have to do with the fact that we've given Puerto Rico billions of dollars that they don't have the cash to pay us back? Hmmm? LOL.
Let us move the course of discussion to more pleasent
things. Such as, which country has the hottest women?
Below, you will find my picks.
Enjoy! 1. Iceland (Quality not quantity...it's a tiny country!)
2. (tie) Arizona (ASU or U of A)
2. (tie) Puerto Rico
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.