Posted on 03/31/2003 12:06:24 PM PST by Ignatz
To the Editor:
Spectator, now for the second time in less than a year, has succeeded to quote me in a remarkably decontextualized and inflammatory manner. In Margaret Hunt Gram's report on the faculty teach-in against the war in Iraq (March 27, 2003), I am quoted as wishing for a million Mogadishus but with no indication whatsoever of the perspective that framed that remark. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that your Staff Editorial in the same issue, denouncing the teach-in for "dogmatism," situates me in particular as the premier example of an academic "launching tirades against anything and everything American."
In my brief presentation, I outlined a long history of U.S. invasions, wars of conquest, military occupations, and colonization in order to establish that imperialism and white supremacy have been constitutive of U.S. nation-state formation and U.S. nationalism. In that context, I stressed the necessity of repudiating all forms of U.S. patriotism. I also emphasized that the disproportionate majority of U.S. troops come from racially subordinated and working-class backgrounds and are in the military largely as a consequence of a treacherous lack of prospects for a decent life. Nonetheless, I emphasized that U.S. troops are indeed confronted with a choice--to perpetrate this war against the Iraqi people or to refuse to fight and contribute toward the defeat of the U.S. war machine.
I also affirmed that Iraqi liberation can only be effected by the Iraqi people themselves, both by resisting and defeating the U.S. invasion as well as overthrowing a regime whose brutality was long sustained by none other than the U.S. Such an anti-colonial struggle for self-determination might involve a million Mogadishus now but would ultimately have to become something more like another Vietnam. Vietnam was a stunning defeat for U.S. imperialism; as such, it was also a victory for the cause of human self-determination.
Is this a tirade against "anything and everything American"? Far from it. First, I hasten to remind you that "American" refers to all of the Americas, not merely to the United States, as U.S. imperial chauvinism would have it. More importantly, my rejection of U.S. nationalism is an appeal to liberate our own political imaginations such that we might usher in a radically different world in which we will not remain the prisoners of U.S. global domination.
Nicholas De Genova
March 21, 2003
The author is an assistant professor of anthropology and latina/o studies.
You know, I typically am rather calm, reserved, and thoughtful in my remarks and rebuttals to Liberals, but this guy just set me off.
Our young people are dying in an effort to remove a ruthless dictator whose atrocities rival Hitler in scope and exceed him in scale, and this Marxist idiot has the nerve to sit there and collect a paycheck partially funded by the patriotic taxpayers of this country while he pukes anti-American drivel into the minds of college students!
I don't just want him out of acadamia, I want him out of the country.
I am sooooooooo tired of this myth. The Iraqis were a Soviet client state for decades. Who made most of the armament we're seeing them use?
We have to stay on this. This individual should not be allowed to teach anywhere in this country and if it were up to me I would revoke his citizenship and deport him to one of his beloved third world countries.
Martin Waldseemüller was the man who named AMERICA.
He named it after the Florence Italy native, Amerigo Vespucci who had written about his travels to the new world. Martin printed a wood block map with his own invention of a name "AMERICA" across what is now called South America. (See Amerigo Vespucci, about.com).
However it is common, historically-established since people had names, and all-in-all quite proper to call the biggest and most influential member of a set of things by the name of that set. In this case, "America" is a perfectfectly fine alternate way of naming the "United States of America".
Marxist alert
Check out this thread for my initial email to them.
My Message to Columbia Professor Nicholas De Genova regarding his death wish for our forces
This man is the crux of the lurking, evil monster behind the anti-war movement. They want the destruction and overthrow of our Republic and Constitution.
1,000 Somalis died in Mogadishu, to 19 Americans. Is deGenova wishing for the death of a billion third world people?
Peace be with you,
-jimbo
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