Posted on 05/02/2005 9:01:49 AM PDT by quidnunc
An entire industry has arisen to account for the recent anti-Americanism. In the case of the Europeans, the end of the Cold War lessened the need for subsidized American protection, emboldening them to caricature Americans as fat and materialistic.
Did envy arise because the world's sole superpower ignored weaker Europeans' efforts to tie up the U.S. with multilateral strings? Did the Cold War make us forget that we were always different peoples — Americans the freer, richer, more religious, fertile, and optimistic? Perhaps George W. Bush — drawling, Christian, and Texan — earned us their fury, so unlike French-speaking John Kerry or obsequious Bill Clinton?
The Middle East was spoon-fed this European anti-Americanism. Twenty-one autocratic governments also deflected popular outrage onto us through state-run media. The bogeymen Israel and America were responsible for everything from stealing oil, even when it was sold to us at sky-high prices, to killing a few hundred Palestinian terrorists, when hundreds of thousands of Arab civilians were butchered by the Husseins and Assads.
But mostly anti-Americanism was a boutique enterprise, revealed as such when the U.S. was the most desirable destination of the world's migrating poor and its popular culture had swept the globe. It is always surreal to read Mexico City elites slurring the United States as millions of illegal aliens risk their lives to cross our borders and escape the corruption and racism of their home country.
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at taemag.com ...
I never heard that about their leaders. Have any examples or documentation about that?
"Americans are finally beginning to wonder whether all these ungrateful folks are worth the toil and treasure."
Yeah...like this American. Right on as usual Victor Davis Hanson.
Not really. Just various things I've read over the years about them. They were in more or less continuous existence for almost a thousand years. For most of this time, they had approximate equivalents on the Christian side, the Knights of Malta or Rhodes, various Venetian and Genoese groups. Both sides used POWs as galley slaves.
The difference is that the "Christian" countries moved past piracy and the corsairs stuck with it well into the 19th century, until eventually putting up with them became more of a hassle than going in and squashing them, which the French finally handled, starting in the 1830s if I remember the dates correctly.
There are obvious parallels to today's terrorists, who mistake our unwillingness to use all the force available to us for weakness. Of course, the corsairs never had a chance of getting hold of a nuke!
Thanks
D'oh.
Man I hope there's not a Marine ping list and one of them sees this.
I think you may be referring to the "janissary" who were employed by the Turks as corsairs operating primarily along the barbary coast. Many of these janissary were recruited from Christian portions of the Turkish empire like Greece and the Balkans. Barbarosa was the most famous of these.
The janissaries were, at least originally, Christian slaves levied from the Turkish lands in the Balkans. They were converted to Islam and composed for a couple of centuries the most efficient army units in Europe or the Middle East.
They gradually became corrupt and even hereditary, eventually winding up as a sort of armed mob that deposed deys, beys and sultans as they chose.
But what I was talking about were actual adult Christian men who chose to join the corsairs, either after being captured or out of ambition. For the last couple of centuries of the corsairs' existence these men dominated the corsairs, as the natives slipped farther and farther behind technologically.
Barbarossa was the son of a janissary, but he was raised a Muslim rather than being "drafted" as a child from the Christian natives.
The Janissaries (or janizaries; in Turkish: Yeniçeri, meaning New Troops) comprised infantry units that formed the Ottoman sultan's household troops and bodyguard. The force originated in the 14th century; it was abolished (and massacred) by Sultan Mahmud II in 1826.
The first janissary units comprised war captives and slaves. After the 1380s Sultan Selim I filled their ranks with the results of taxation in human form called devshirmeh. The sultan’s men would conscript a number of non-Muslim, usually Christian, boys – at first at random, later by strict selection – and take them to be trained. In later centuries they seem to have preferred Greeks, Serbs and Bulgarians. Usually they would select about 1 in 5 boys of ages 7-14 but the numbers could be changed to correspond with the need for soldiers. Later they would extend the devshirmeh to Greece and Hungary. Of course, residents could hardly appreciate the custom.
Janissaries trained under strict discipline with hard labour and in practically monastic conditions in acemi oglan schools, where they were expected to remain celibate and were at least encouraged to convert to Islam. Most did. For all practical purposes, janissaries belonged to the sultan. Unlike free Muslims, they were expressly forbidden to wear beards, only a moustache. Janissaries were taught to consider the corps as their home and family and the sultan as their de facto father. Only those who proved strong enough earned the rank of a true janissary at the age of 24 - 25. The regiment inherited the property of dead janissaries.
Janissaries also learned to follow the dictates of the dervish saint Haji Bektash who had blessed the first troops. Bektashi served as a kind of chaplain for janissaries. In this and in their secluded life, janissaries resembled Christian knightly orders like the Johannites of Rhodes.
I am reading a book involving them.
A rather direct approach to abolition!
Oh Oh! I may have learned something new. shudder
Title please. Thanks
Racism?
"The Confusion"
Neal Stephenson
I just took a quick look at Amazon, looks interesting. Thanks
Thanks for all the VDH pings!
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