A Nation Born and Perpetuated in Contradictions

[Time for change]

The proclamation that founded the United States of America in 1776 boldly espoused some of the most liberal sentiments of its day.

First and foremost, it held that since “all men are created equal” they are therefore entitled to certain inalienable rights, including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Furthermore, it stipulated that government derives its legitimacy from the consent of the governed, and therefore it is the primary purpose of government to secure its peoples’ inalienable rights. And therefore, whenever a government becomes destructive of those ends it is the right of its people to alter or abolish their government.

Yet at the same time, the white inhabitants of the then British colonies widely accepted some ideas that belied the idealistic principles of the document that proclaimed their independence.

For one thing it was widely accepted among the white colonists that people with black skin had no right to the “inalienable rights” proclaimed in their Declaration of Independence. Weren’t black people people too? Not according to a good many of the colonists, especially those who required the free labor of black people for their own economic purposes. To many, black people were vastly “inferior” to white people, or they were not people at all, but rather were property. Such beliefs were absolutely necessary to assuage the consciences of those who made their living off the backs of black people.

And then there were the Native Americans, who had lived on the continent for many centuries prior to the arrival of white people. Many or most white people thought of them in a similar manner to how they thought of black people. They were deemed “savages”. Again, it was necessary to think of them in this light in order to justify the use of violence against them, which was necessary in order to take their land from them.

So it was that the new government created by the former British colonists, following their victory over the British Army at Yorktown in 1781, did little or nothing to ensure that the liberal idealistic principles espoused in its five year old Declaration of Independence applied to anyone but white people. Indeed, the constitution created at the Constitutional Convention of 1787 not only failed to abolish or even ameliorate slavery in the United States, but it actually enshrined it in some ways, for example by prohibiting Congress from prohibiting even the importation of new slaves until 1808, and by requiring states to return fugitive slaves to the slaves’ “owner”.

Nevertheless, it must be said that the U.S. Declaration of Independence was only partly hypocritical on that score. In fact, it would be more accurate to say that it was an unavoidable compromise.


Slavery and the Founding Fathers

Many of the Founders were adamantly against slavery. John Jay, co-author of the Federalist Papers, and the first Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, wrote:

It is much to be wished that slavery may be abolished. The honour of the States, as well as justice and humanity, in my opinion, loudly call upon them to emancipate these unhappy people. To contend for our own liberty, and to deny that blessing to others, involves an inconsistency not to be excused.

Patrick Henry wrote: “I believe a time will come when an opportunity will be offered to abolish this lamentable evil…. If not, let us transmit to our descendants, together with our slaves, a pity for their unhappy lot and an abhorrence of slavery.”

But the problem was that there would have been no successful Revolution, no U.S. Constitution, and no United States of America if the anti-slavery Founders had insisted on abolishing slavery. The Southern states would never have agreed to it in a hundred years – maybe not in a thousand years. In fact, Thomas Jefferson, the primary author of the Declaration of Independence, and a slave owner, included a condemnation of slavery in his first draft of the Declaration. But he was persuaded to drop the condemnation because the South never would have participated in the Revolutionary War had it stayed in. Many have condemned Jefferson as hypocritical for owning slaves while writing the Declaration of Independence, but I have to given him credit for trying to condemn slavery nonetheless – unlike so many others who owned slaves and tried to justify slavery throughout all of their lives. Condemnation would be the first step to abolition.

Would the slaves have been better off with no United States at all, rather than a United States with a Constitution that condoned slavery. That seems very doubtful. Without a United States of America, the South would have gone its own way. It is likely that slavery never would have been abolished in the 19th Century without a bloody Civil War. Those of our Founding Fathers who abhorred slavery – and there were plenty of them – did not then have the capability of abolishing it.

In 1807 Congress enacted legislation to abolish the slave trade, which was signed by President Jefferson. But it wasn’t until the 1830s that the anti-slavery movement in the United States began to gather momentum. It is worth commenting that during that time the most forceful opponent of slavery in the U.S. government was Rep. John Quincy Adams (W-MA), son of our second President (and first Vice President) and former U.S. President himself (1825-1829), who made many forceful speeches for the anti-slavery cause on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives. Here is a quote from his diary:

All the devils in hell are arrayed against any man who now in this North American Union shall dare to join the standard of Almighty God to put down the African slave-trade; and what can I, upon the verge of my 74th birthday, with a shaking hand, a darkening eye, a drowsy brain, and with all my faculties dropping from me one by one… what can I do for the progress of human emancipation, for the suppression of the African slave-trade? Yet my conscience presses me on…

The end of slavery

It took a long and bloody Civil War to end slavery in the United States. There are many who say that the Civil War was fought not to end slavery, but to “save the Union”. But that line of thinking neglects many things. In the first place, the main reason that the South seceded from the Union was that they feared what the newly elected President would mean for the future of slavery in the United States. Indeed, Lincoln had voiced strong anti-slavery thoughts all through his career. I think he hit the nail on the head with this quote:

The monstrous injustice of slavery... deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world – enables the enemies of free institutions, with plausibility, to taunt us as hypocrites – causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity, and especially because it forces so many really good men amongst ourselves into an open war with the very fundamental principles of civil liberty.

Lincoln dealt the institution of slavery a near fatal blow with his Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, which ordered the end of slavery in the rebellious states (which included the vast majority of slaves in the U.S.). The Union victory in the Civil War was the first nail in the coffin for slavery. Three more nails were added to the coffin with the 13th through 15th Amendments to our Constitution in the five years following the Civil War: The 13th Amendment in 1865 abolished slavery; the 14th Amendment in 1868 granted citizenship to and provided basic civil rights for the former slaves; and the 15th Amendment in 1870 gave them the right to vote.

Nevertheless, following the end of Reconstruction in 1877, widespread discrimination and violence against the former slaves raised its ugly head and persisted in severe form for nearly another century. The former slave Frederick Douglass described the situation:

The Negro after his emancipation was precisely in this state of destitution. He was free from the individual master but the slave of society. He had neither money, property, nor friends. He was free from the old plantation, but he had nothing but the dusty road under his feet. He was free from the old quarter that once gave him shelter, but a slave to the rains of summer and the frost of winter. He was in a word, literally tuned loose, naked, hungry, and destitute to the open sky.

It was only with the great reforms of the middle of the 20th Century that progress was made: The Brown v. Board of Education U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1954 prohibited segregation in public schools. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 added much needed additional protection.

But we are still a very long way from where we should to be. For example, in the 1990s, one of every 20 black men in the U.S. was in prison – a rate of imprisonment almost ten times as great as that for white men. Today the situation is even worse.


The Indian Wars

Some date the first hostile encounter between the European colonists and the Native North Americans to 1636. Much of the period between then and December 1890 was characterized by intermittent warfare and lesser hostilities, as the European-Americans spread throughout the continent and the population of Native Americans was pushed Westwards, confined to reservations, and decimated – due to their inferior weaponry and high susceptibility to European diseases, especially smallpox. This history is summed up on the book jacket of “North American Indian Wars”, by Richard H. Dillon:

Before the arrival of white settlers in the early 1600s such warfare as there was between tribes existed on a very small scale among Indians in the east…. As the settlers moved in, Indians gave away their lands and moved on. Other tribes, however, were less tolerant of the white man’s encroaching ways and resisted. In the face of massacres of entire Indian villages, broken treaties and continuing greed and aggression over their territories, the fighting between colonists and Indians became increasingly desperate. The wars between white settlers and native Indians… that took place in the 30 years between 1860 and 1890 made these the bloodiest, most violent three decades in American history…

It almost goes without saying that the major motivation for these wars on the part of the European-American colonists prior to 1776, and the United States of America after 1776 was the desire for land. And it also goes without saying that the new Americans had to put favorable spin on their actions. They did so mainly by justifying their aggression on the basis that the Native Americans were “savages”, “uncivilized”, etc. Guenter Lewy describes what happened in similar terms, using somewhat different language:

The new Americans, convinced of their cultural and racial superiority, were unwilling to grant the original inhabitants of the continent the vast preserve of land required by the Indians’ way of life.

I would highly recommend “Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee – An Indian History of the American West”, by Dee Brown. In the last chapter of her book, Brown describes the last major battle of the Indian wars. In late December 1890, the Indians surrendered at Wounded Knee, and the American Colonel told them to disarm. They did so, but the Americans demanded a weapons search. There may have been some miscommunication, and then there followed an altercation between one of the Indian Chiefs and the soldiers. A gun went off, and then a massacre followed:

One estimate placed the final total of dead (Indians) at very nearly three hundred of the original 350 men, women, and children. The soldiers lost 25 dead and 39 wounded, most of them struck by their own bullets…

More wars and hostile actions – 1846-1912

It is widely recognized today in the United States that our nation’s exploitation of slaves and it conquest of Native Americans and their land was immoral. But that was long long ago. Today a persistent and toxic myth pervades our nation – a myth known as American Exceptionalism. That myth says that our country would never do anything immoral.

The myth is embodied in Barack Obama’s repeated explanations as to why he was against our 2003 invasion of Iraq from the beginning. It turns my stomach every times I hear “I am not opposed to ALL wars. I’m opposed to dumb wars”. The problem with our invasion of Iraq was not that it was a “dumb war”. It was an immoral war and an illegal war. We attacked a defenseless nation that posed no threat to us and killed hundreds of thousands of its civilians, created millions of refugees, and ruined its infrastructure. That is immoral, pure and simple. But no politician with presidential aspirations could say such a thing without risking their political future. Most Americans simply don’t like to hear that there country has committed immoral acts. It’s ok to admit “mistakes”. But admitting immorality is considered beyond the pale.

President Obama contributed mightily to the myth of American exceptionalism when he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize, for which he gave a speech that in large part was used to justify his current war in Afghanistan:

To say that force is sometimes necessary is not a call to cynicism – it is a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason.

I raise this point because in many countries there is a deep ambivalence about military action today, no matter the cause. At times, this is joined by a reflexive suspicion of America, the world's sole military superpower.

What the President does here, in the first paragraph above, is attack a straw man, by implying that large numbers of people disagree with the statement that force is sometimes necessary. That implication is ridiculous. Very few people think that force is never necessary. It’s not the use of force per se that the vast majority of peace activists object to. It’s the use of force for immoral purposes.

Then in the second sentence he complains about what he terms a “reflexive suspicion of America”. So let’s consider some of the wars and other hostile and violent actions that our country participated in during the later 19th and early 20th Centuries:

The Mexican War
Like the Indian wars, the Mexican-American War was all about land. President James K. Polk used a border dispute with Mexico to justify sending U.S. troops into the disputed territory. Not surprisingly, the troops were attacked by Mexican forces on April 25, 1846, resulting in the deaths of 11 U.S. soldiers. Polk used that attack as justification to request a declaration of war from Congress, and Congress complied.

As a result of its victory in the war, 1.2 million square miles, which today make up a large portion of our Southwest, were added to U.S. territory.

Hawaii – the first of many overseas conquests by the United States
In January 1993 word got out that Queen Liliuokalani of Hawaii was planning to proclaim a new constitution, one that would place more power in the hands of the Hawaiian people and weaken the power of the wealthy White American landowners who essentially ruled Hawaii. The ruling clique was not pleased about that, and they conspired to overthrow the Queen. They prevailed upon John L. Stevens, the American Minister to Hawaii, to officially proclaim a provisional government for Hawaii, knowing that he had the support of U.S. President Benjamin Harrison, as well as an American gunboat waiting in the harbor and 162 armed American soldiers. Queen Liliuokalani, recognizing the futility of challenging American military power, wrote and signed a document that ceded her country to the United States.

In a rare exception to the doctrine of American exceptionalism, President Clinton apologized for that action in 1993.

The Spanish-American War – 1898-1902
In an action eerily similar to President Polk’s sending of U.S. troops to the territory disputed with Mexico, President William McKinley sent the Battleship Maine to Havana, Cuba, in the midst of the Cuban rebellion against Spain.

The principal excuse for the U.S. declaration of war against Spain, on April 19, 1998, was the blowing up of the Maine on February 15, 1898, which killed 250 American sailors. The incident was blamed on Spain, though the cause of the explosion was never determined. The other excuse for war was to bring “freedom” to Cuba, though Cuba did not want and was very suspicious of our “help” – with very good reason.

Cuba
American forces landed in Cuba in July 1898, and by August 12th the war was over. As a result of that victory, the “Treaty of Paris” was signed on December 10th, 1898, thereby ceding Spain’s three former colonies, Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines, to the United States.

Our relationship with Cuba was finalized for the next several decades on May 22, 1903, with the Platt Amendment treaty. Essentially, it gave Cubans permission to govern themselves as long as they allowed the United States to veto any decision that it so chose.

Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico declared independence from Spain and elected themselves a new government, which began to operate on July 17th, 1898. Eight days later the U.S. marines landed in Puerto Rico and raised the American flag. Before “freeing” the Puerto Ricans from Spanish “oppression”, the American commander made clear the good intentions of his country:

We have not come to make war upon the people of a country that for centuries has been oppressed, but, on the contrary, to bring you protection… This is not a war of devastation, but one to give to all… the advantages and blessings of enlightened civilization.

The Philippines
Taking over Cuba and Puerto Rico was easy. The Filipinos proved much more difficult.
To justify taking the Philippines, President McKinley spoke of the need to civilize and Christianize the Filipinos. (Most Filipinos were Catholic, but few Americans knew that.)
He proclaimed sovereignty over the Philippines on December 11, 1998, the day after the Treaty of Paris was signed. But the Filipinos had declared independence on June 12th. Desiring American imperialistic control over their nation no more than Spanish imperialistic control, the Republic of the Philippines was proclaimed on January 23rd, 1899, and it declared war on the United States occupiers twelve days later.

A vicious guerilla war ensued, lasting three and a half years, from February 1899 until the middle of 1902. It was characterized by widespread torture, rape, pillage, and the frequent refusal of the American military to make a distinction between civilians and the Filipino military. Rationalizations provided for this behavior included the brutal behavior by the Filipino “savages” (true, but who was invading whose country?) and the claim that the American atrocities were the work of a few “bad apples” (not true at all). By the time that the U.S. had “pacified” the Philippines, the dead included 4,374 American soldiers, 16 thousand Filipino guerillas, and 20 thousand Filipino civilians.

Regime change in Nicaragua
The complaints of American business interests against the new nationalist President of Nicaragua, Jose Santos Zelaya, increased when Zelaya began to borrow money from European rather than American banks. That led President Taft to declare that the United States would no longer “tolerate and deal with such a medieval despot”. Consequently, American businessmen formed a conspiracy to overthrow Zelaya. Secretary of State Knox excoriated Zelaya for his attempts to suppress the “rebellion”, and Taft responded by ordering warships to Nicaragua. Zelaya resigned in order to stave off an American attack on his country. But the new Nicaraguan president tried to suppress the “rebellion”, which caused the United States Marines to intervene “to protect American lives”. The “rebellion” was consequently successful, and the United States installed its own puppet president. Thus began American rule over Nicaragua.

Regime change in Honduras
President Taft and Secretary of State Knox disapproved of the President of Honduras in 1911, Miguel Davila. They considered him too liberal and independent, and he borrowed from European banks. So they asked him to transfer his country’s debt to J.P. Morgan, who would then oversee the Honduran treasury.

The banana tycoon, Samuel Zemurray, who owned a good deal of land in Honduras, hired himself four men to organize an insurgency, including Manuel Bonilla, whom Zemurray intended for insertion as his puppet President of Honduras. Zemurray’s mercenary insurgents invaded Honduras in December 1911. With the U.S. military standing by to inhibit retaliation by the Honduran government, by January 25th, 1912, the “rebels” had won some big battles. Continued U.S. military intervention led to the replacement of the Honduran president by Bonilla in February, 1912.


The Cold War

In his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, President Obama justified our many violent actions during the Cold War like this:

Whatever mistakes we have made, the plain fact is this: the United States of America has helped underwrite global security for more than six decades with the blood of our citizens and the strength of our arms… We have borne this burden not because we seek to impose our will. We have done so out of enlightened self-interest – because we seek a better future for our children and grandchildren, and we believe that their lives will be better if other peoples' children and grandchildren can live in freedom and prosperity.

That statement is partly true. But it leaves out a great deal. Let’s consider some of these “mistakes” we made, and how we sought to help “underwrite global security” and help other countries to “live in freedom and prosperity” during the Cold War:

Iran 1953
In 1953 our CIA intervened in Iran to overthrow a popular prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, who had done much to improve the lot of the Iranian people. Here is how Stephen Kinzer describes Mossadegh in his book, “All the Shah’s Men – An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror”:

His achievements were profound and even earth-shattering. He set his people off on what would be a long and difficult voyage toward democracy and self-sufficiency… He dealt a devastating blow to the imperial system and hastened its final collapse. He inspired people around the world who believe that nations can and must struggle for the right to govern themselves in freedom.

In Mossadegh’s place we installed the dictatorship of Mohammad Reza Shah. The stated reason for our overthrow of Mossadegh was that we were concerned that he would open his country to Communist influence. His nationalization of the Iranian oil industry was also undoubtedly part of the reason.

Indonesia 1965
A power struggle in Indonesia in 1965 resulted in the overthrow of Achmad Sukarno and the installment of a military dictatorship. That led to the massacre of up to a million people, mostly civilians, including a substantial portion of women and children – which the New York Times called “one of the most savage mass slayings of modern political history.” With respect to this episode it was later reported by Kathy Kadane that:

The U.S. government played a significant role in one of the worst massacres of the century by supplying the names of thousands of Communist Party leaders to the Indonesian army, which hunted down the leftists and killed them, former U.S. diplomats say…. Nobody cared about the butchery and mass arrests because the victims were Communists, one Washington official told me.

Vietnam 1954-73
The Geneva Conference Agreements, which officially ended the war between France and Vietnam in 1954, provided for general elections which were to bring about the unification of Vietnam. However, the United States, fearing a Communist victory in those elections, intervened to prevent the elections from taking place – and so began our long and bloody involvement in Vietnam, culminating in an eventual Communist victory, but not until two million Vietnamese and 58 thousand Americans were dead.

South and Central America
As described by William Blum in his article, “A Concise History of US Global Interventions, 1945 to the Present”, the United States intervened in eleven different South and Central American countries during the Cold War, including Guatemala, Costa Rica, British Guyana, Ecuador, Brazil, Peru, Chile, Bolivia, Honduras, Nicaragua, and El Salvador. The main purpose of these interventions was to facilitate changes to regimes that were friendlier to the United States (and in almost all cases less friendly to the indigenous populations of those countries). For this purpose, we developed the School of the Americas, which was used to train native personnel in the techniques and ideology of insurgency and counter-insurgency.

An article on reasons to shut down the School of the Americas (SOA) provides a good description of what was involved, and can be summarized as follows: It describes numerous atrocities committed by graduates of SOA, which are consistent with the SOA curriculum. While SOA torture manuals were withdrawn, their content was never repudiated by SOA. In an attempt to disassociate the ignominious reputation of the SOA from the U.S. government, SOA was renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC) in 2001 by the Bush administration.

School of the Americas training was oriented to support the military and political status quo in each country, which placed the U.S. in opposition to any who seek free speech to discuss problems, alternative means to solve problems, or democratic means to change governments. More specifically, the enemy was identified as the poor, those who assist the poor, such as church workers, educators, and unions, and certain ideologies such as “socialism” or “liberation theology”. All of this was done just to make sure that Communists or “leftists” didn’t get a foothold in any of these countries.


The Afghanistan War

Like the good majority of U.S. presidents before him, President Obama seeks to justify our military interventions, past and present. Indeed, a major purpose of his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech was to justify his escalation of our war in Afghanistan. He directly acknowledged this when he said:

And yet I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge the considerable controversy that your generous decision has generated… Perhaps the most profound issue surrounding my receipt of this prize is the fact that I am the Commander-in-Chief of a nation in the midst of two wars…

And to drive home his point, he compared al Qaeda to perhaps the most infamous, violent, and inhumane regime of all time: Adolph Hitler’s Nazi Third Reich:

Evil does exist in the world. A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler's armies. Negotiations cannot convince al Qaeda's leaders to lay down their arms.

Well yes, evil does exist in the world. And it may even be true that al Qaeda is as evil Hitler’s Nazi regime. But that completely misses the main point: Hitler’s Nazis posed a threat to the world that was many orders of magnitude greater than the threat that al Qaeda poses. To equate those threats is ridiculous. “Negotiations cannot convince al Qaeda’s leaders to lay down their arms”? Well, consider this:

On October 1st, 2001, the Taliban agreed to extradite bin Laden to Pakistan – an American ally – to stand trial for charges of participation in 9/11. They agreed that if the court found sufficient evidence, then bin Laden would then be extradited to the United States. And bin Laden even agreed to that. But George W. Bush turned down all Taliban offers, saying “We know he’s guilty. Turn him over”. Bush later elaborated further on that, saying, “When I said no negotiations, I meant no negotiations”. In other words, the whole basis for the war was a fraud – just like so many other American wars and other violent actions. And so is the absurd idea that we need to conduct a war against a whole nation in order to deny a “safe haven” to a minute fraction of its inhabitants. The editors of The Nation summarize the problems with our war in Afghanistan:

The United States and its NATO allies are losing the war in Afghanistan not because we have had too few military forces but because our military presence, along with the corruption of the Hamid Karzai government, has gradually turned the Afghan population against us, swelling the ranks of Taliban recruits. American airstrikes have repeatedly killed innocent civilians. Sending thousands of additional troops will not secure a democratic and stable Afghanistan, because the country is not only deeply divided but also fiercely resistant to outside forces. Indeed, more troops may only engender more anti-American resistance and cause groups in neighboring Pakistan to step up their support for the Taliban in order to stop what they see as a US effort to advance US and Indian interests in the region… Second, securing Afghanistan is not necessary to US security and may actually undermine our goal of defeating Al Qaeda…. American safety thus depends not on eliminating faraway safe havens for Al Qaeda but on common-sense counterterrorist and national security measures…

Our nation’s contradictions in perspective

Are the above litany of actions something that Americans should be proud of? Should we say about them that we have “helped underwrite global security for more than six decades”; that “We have borne this burden not because we seek to impose our will”; or that our many invasions of foreign lands were undertaken so that their inhabitants could “live in freedom and prosperity”, as President Obama tells us? I don’t think so. Rather, many of these actions represent the darkest side of human nature.

Richard J. Walton, in his book, “Henry Wallace, Harry Truman and the Cold War”, summarizes U.S. actions during the Cold War, for example:

Various right wing dictators… were quick to perceive that the United States was supporting them not out of a genuine concern for their people but because they were allies in an anti-Communist crusade that took precedence over all other considerations… It is difficult to think of a single instance where the United States took effective measures to end repressive, undemocratic practices of a regime it claimed to be supporting in the defense of democracy…

The first step in righting our wrongs of the past would be to admit to our nation’s dark history and acknowledge the need to do something to change course. But when our leaders continue to ignore, prettify, and even brag about these things, they impose a great barrier on us to positive meaningful change. Unfortunately, they often win big political points by perpetuating the myth of American exceptionalism. William Kleinknecht, in his book, “The Man Who Sold the World – Ronald Reagan and the Betrayal of Main Street America”, explains what happens when a U.S. President has the temerity to challenge the accepted status quo:

Jimmy Carter… delivered what has become known as the “malaise speech” in 1979. Often mocked as an exercise in hand-wringing that depressed rather than inspired the country, the speech was the last fully honest message that a president ever delivered to the American people, and its diagnosis of our spiritual affliction could not have been more accurate… It was a speech Americans did not want to hear. Ronald Reagan was far more attuned to the public mood….

Of course, the United States of America is not alone in its contradictions and long history of coercion, hypocrisy, violence and general inhumanity to other peoples. History is chock full of similar and worse events. President Obama was correct when he said in his Nobel acceptance speech that “War, in one form or another, appeared with the first man. At the dawn of history, its morality was not questioned”.

But so what? Does the fact that war’s morality was not questioned at the dawn of humankind mean that we shouldn’t question it now? Shouldn’t we seek to improve upon the tragic history of man’s inhumane treatment of his fellow humans rather than ignore or attempt to justify it?

[rtassi]

1. The answers to your last 2 questions ... for me are ... NO .. then YES

We simply can't evolve until we get this ... One of your best!
K&R
rt

[Time for change]

4. Thank you -- If we don't get it soon, I think there's going to be some major catastrophes

Many scientists are beginning to believe that climate change may have gone past the point of no return. The world simply has way too many problems to be wasting our energy on destructive wars.

[puebloknot]

2. 5th rec on "faith" for future reading. We can depend on you ...

... always for inspiring and informational material that we can trust.

Happy Holidays, Dale!

Judy

[Bullet1987]

3. One of the best posts on DU!!

REC!!!

[Time for change]

8. Thank you

[Time for change]

7. Thank you very much Judy

Happy Holidays to you :toast:

[hfojvt]

5. although he has the same name as the first girl I ever dated

Dee Brown is actually a 'him'

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dee_Brown_(writer)

His book is not very good either. Although, if you read carefully it does undermine its own argument.

Take the Wounded Knee Massacre. Brown paints that as a deliberate action intended to subdue the Native Americans, continuing the theme of his book - white settlers = bad.

Yet, this information contradicts that.

"Because of the gathering darkness, Major Whitside decided to wait until morning before disarming his prisoners. He assigned them a camp area immediately to the south of the military camp, issued them rations and as there was a shortage of teepee covers, he furnished them several tents. Whitside ordered a stove placed in Big Foot's tent and sent a regimental surgeon to administer to the sick chief." p. 441

If the intent was to slaughter them, then why bother to feed and shelter them over the night? Why provide a stove and doctor for Big Foot if the whole plan was just to kill him? Instead of a story with bad guys and victims, it seems more of an unfortunate altercation between two sides that did not trust each other.

As for calling the Native Americans 'savages' that was kind of a result of actions like this

"Little Crow began negotiating with other Sioux leaders in the area, hoping to gain their support. He had little success. One reason for their lack of enthusiasm was Little Crow's failure to drive the soldiers from Fort Ridgely. Another reason was the indiscriminate killing of white settlers on the north side of the Minnesota River, a bloody slaughter carried out by marauding bands of undisciplined young men while Little Crow was besieging Fort Ridgely. Several hundred settlers had been trapped in their cabins without warning. Many had been brutally slain. Others had fled to safety, some to the villages of Sioux bands that Little Crow hoped would join his cause." Dee Brown pp. 51-52

rather than part of some propaganda effort to dehumanize the Native Americans. "Many had been brutally slain"

However, settlers and Native Americans often got along well. I did not keep an exact quote, but something jumped at me from the battle of New Ulm. One Indian telling the story said that almost every Indian raced to the town to try and save their friends and were often saddened and shocked to see their friends killed by other Indians. That struck me that so many Indians had friends among the settlers, and that so many settlers had friends among the Indians, but those friendships were not enough to stop the winds of war and prevent a lot of pointless bloodshed.

[Time for change]

6. On what basis do you say that Brown implies that the Wounded Knee massacre was deliberately planned?

I don't interpret him as saying that.

Rather, the point is that so much racism and hatred towards Native Americans existed that a small incident could and often did result in massacres. Planned or not, I don't see how a massacre of 350 virtually defenseless men, women and children can be justified. And certainly many of the massacres were planned.

[hfojvt]

24. it depends on who you believe

Brown's account, like much of his book, paints the Indians as peaceful and innocent, although often amazing warriors who strike back after endless provocations. Their hatred, their violence is always justified. The massacre at Little Big Horn is called a 'battle'. When Sherman says "the only good Indian is a dead Indian" that is evidence of white bigotry and hatred. When Sitting Bull says "I hate white people" or when the Ghost Dancers dream of a day when all the white people are dead and gone, that is understandable, even funny, because Sitting Bull said it in Sioux to a crowd of cheering and clueless white people, and the Ghost Dance religion was really just Christianity "Although he was a practicing Catholic, McLaughlin, like most other agents, failed to recognize the Ghost Dance as being entirely Christian. Except for a difference in rituals, its tenets were the same as those of any Christian church." p 435

I cannot know what happened at Wounded Knee any more than Brown did, but he paints it as entirely the fault of the white soldiers as if he KNOWS that this account is fabricated

http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/knee.htm

so 'defenseless'?

"I saw five or six young warriors cast off their blankets and pull guns out from under them and brandish them in the air. One of the warriors shot into the soldiers, "

"Troop 'K' was drawn up between the tents of the women and children and the main body of the Indians, who had been summoned to deliver their arms. The Indians began firing into 'Troop K' to gain the canyon of Wounded Knee creek. In doing so they exposed their women and children to their own fire."


It makes sense to me that there might have been some in the tribe who did not want to surrender. Who had suffered enough and were quite willing to fight to their last breath.

"During this time a medicine man, gaudily dressed and fantastically painted, executed the maneuvers of the ghost dance, raising and throwing dust into the air. He exclaimed 'Ha! Ha!' as he did so, meaning he was about to do something terrible, and said, 'I have lived long enough,' meaning he would fight until he died. Turning to the young warriors who were squatted together, he said 'Do not fear, but let your hearts be strong..."

Unfortuntely, if some chose battle, others answered with overwhelming firepower.

Of course, Brown admits to telling the history from the Indian point of view, but that is no excuse for dishonesty, for painting a simplistic black and white picture. It's one thing to tell another side of the story, it's another thing to accept fabrication and bias as truth. Ironically enough when doing research on this, I found this book "King Phillip's War" by George william Ellis and John Emery Morris 1906. Funny thing is that this book, which I believe is by two white people, does not try to paint the white settlers as good and the Indians as bad, but generally gives a more balanced account. Sometimes even when I tell my side of the story I have to admit that I may have crossed some lines or lost my temper or otherwise gotten carried away. Brown admits to no such ambiguity.

[Time for change]

26. I didn't interpret Brown's book as painting a picture of anything so simple as

"White man bad, red man good". It dealt with the systematic decimation of the Native Americans in the United States and its territories. In that respect, the main theme was quite similar to a number of other books I've read on the subject. But his book was one of my favorites because it was very well written, it had lots of meticulously described details in it, and I thought it treated the subject comprehensively. I certainly didn't get the impression that he was dishonest about the subject, but I can't argue the details of that with you because I read it a long time ago. I don't think that just the fact that his account differs in some respects from the one that you provided means that he was dishonest.

More important, it seems to me that when we talk of racism and its tragically destructive effects, it makes sense to focus on the majority or the victorious party rather than on the victims. Racism in American history has had terribly tragic consequences. I really don't see the point in discussing the "racism" of black slaves, for example, towards their persecutors. Of course they will hate those who persecute them and those who have tortured or killed their loved ones. But that doesn't mean that its fair to equate the racism of the persecutors with that of the persecutor's victims.

I'm white. Do you think that I like the idea that white Americans have committed so many atrocities throughout American history? I write about it because I think it's necessary for Americans to come to grips with the atrocities of their past. Until they do those atrocities will continue to be repeated, as they were in Iraq, for instance, and few will notice.

[hfojvt]

27. Native Americans and slaves are not in the same category

if two people fight, one is not necessarily a 'victim' just because the other guy won.

"Although such raids (by Indians) were by no means constant, when they occurred they were terrifying to the inhabitants of New France, and the colonists initially felt helpless to prevent them." from Wiki about the "Beaver Wars"

there were at least two paths

"In 1805, a religious revival led by Tenskwatawa (Tecumseh's little brother) emerged. Tenskwatawa urged natives to reject the ways of the whites, and to refrain from ceding any more lands to the United States. Opposing Tenskwatawa was the Shawnee leader Black Hoof, who was working to maintain a peaceful relationship with the United States."

"Several hundred settlers had been trapped in their cabins without warning. Many had been brutally slain." p. 51

Often, conflicts would expand Group A attacks settlers who retaliate on Group B which then retaliates against a different group

"Sioux warriors, aroused by General Sully's punitive expeditions of 1863 and 1864 into Dakota, swarmed down from the north to raid wagon trains, stagecoach stations, and settlers along the Platte route. For these actions the southern Cheyennes and Arapahos received much of the blame, and most of the attention from the Colorado soldiers. William Bent's half-breed son George, who was with a large band of Cheyennes on the Solomon River in July, said they were attacked again and again by the troops without any cause, until they began retaliating in the only way they knew how - burning the stage stations, chasing the coaches, running off stock, and forcing the freighters to corral their trains and fight." 74-75

"In January 1865, the alliance of Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Sioux launched a series of raids along the South Platte. They attacked wagon trains, stage stations, and small military outposts. They burned the town of Julesburg, scalping the white defenders in revenge for scalping of Indians at Sand Creek. They ripped out miles of telegraph wire. They raided and plundered up and down the Platte route, halting all communications and supplies. In Denver there was panic as food shortages began to grow." 94-96

Most of the people of Julesburg had nothing to do with Sand Creek, but they were attacked and brutalized because of it.

"From that day all through the summer of 1866, the Little
White Chief was engaged in a relentless guerilla war. None of
the numerous wagon trains, civilian or military, that moved
along the Bozeman road was safe from surprise attacks. Mounted
escorts were spread thin, and the soldiers soon learned to expect
deadly ambushes. Soldiers assigned to cut logs a few miles from
Fort Phil Kearny were under constant and deadly harrassment." p 132

Although the Sioux were hereditary enemies of the Crows and had
driven them from their rich hunting grounds, Red Cloud himself
had recently made a conciliatory visit in hopes of persuading them
to join his Indian alliance. 'We want you to aid us in destroying
the whites' Red Cloud was reported to have said. The Sioux leader
then boasted that he would cut off the soldiers' supplies when the
snows came and would starve them out of the forts and kill them all.
p. 133

"Rhode Island, alarmed at the state of affairs, made ineffectual attempts to compromise the
matter an bring Philip to an agreement. Deputy Governor Easton of that colony, and five others,
including Samuel Gorton, met Philip and his chiefs at Bristol Neck Point on the 17th of June, and
(1673) proposed that the quarrel and all matters in contention should be arbitrated. It might be
well, was the reply, but that all the English agreed against them. Many square miles of land
were taken from them by English arbitrators." King Phillip's War p. 50


Note the words describing how the white settlers felt - alarmed, terrified, helpless, etc.

Here's a guy just peacefully farming in Minnesota

On Sunday, August 17, 1862 four young Dakota Sioux were out hunting. What happened next, according to Big Eagle, a Dakota chief (pictured at right), follows

"You know how the war started -- by the killing of some white people near Acton, in Meeker county. I will tell you how this was done, as it was told me by all of the four young men who did the killing. These young fellows all belonged to Shakopee's band. Their names were Sungigidan ("Brown Wing"), Ka-om-de-i-ye-ye-dan ("Breaking Up'), Nagi-we-cak-te ("Killing Ghost"), and Pa-zo-i-yo-pa ('Runs against Something when Crawling'). I do not think their names have ever before been printed. One of them is yet living. They told me they did not go out to kill white people. They said they went over to the Big Woods to hunt: that on Sunday, Aug. 17, they came to a settler's fence, and here they found a hen's nest with some eggs in it. One of them took the eggs, when another said: "Don't take them, for they belong to a white man and we may get into trouble." The other was angry, for he was very hungry and wanted to eat the eggs, and he dashed them to the ground and replied: "You are a coward. You are afraid of the white man. You are afraid to take even an egg from him, though you are half-starved. Yes, you are a coward, and I will tell everybody so." The other replied. "I am not a coward. I am not afraid of the white man, and to show you that I am not I will go to the house and shoot him. Are you brave enough to go with me?" The one who had called him a coward said: "Yes, I will go with you, and we will see who is the braver of us two." Their companions then said: "We will go with you, and we will be brave, too." They all went to the house of the white man (Mr. Robinson Jones), but he got alarmed and went to another house (that of his son-in-law, Howard Baker where were some other white men and women (Jones, Baker, a Mr. Webster, Mrs. Jones and a girl of fourteen).

The four went into the Baker house (shown in the sketch above), killed the occupants, took a wagon and team of horses, and went back to their village where they told what they had done. Big Eagle continued: ..."

Yet, you write of the Indians as if they are just victims, as I am sure Brown noted about this story

"December 26, 1862 - The thirty-eight are hanged in Mankato. It is the largest mass execution in American history."

Never mind that

"Total of some 300-800 settlers were killed."


I don't think it does justice to the facts, to look at that history as something that happened because of the racism of white people, and that it was all white people = racist murderers and thieves and Indians = victims (who sometimes fought back).

"I'm white. Do you think that I like the idea that white Americans have committed so many atrocities throughout American history?"

I do think there are some white people who take a certain perverse pleasure in "knowing (or strongly believing) the truth about our inglorious past". It allows them to feel intellectually and morally superior to people like hfojvt and teabaggers and Native American Holocaust deniers and such wilfully ignorant ilk.

[dusmcj]

9. and yet those well-observed principles were ultimately applied to those once excluded /nt

[PufPuf23]

10. Thank you again. Best to you and yours for ther holidays, nt

[Time for change]

13. Happy Holidays to you PufPuf

[bertman]

11. Recommend highly. The sad part is that we humans, for the most part, are herd animals and are

easily spooked if we think there are predators nearby. Hence, the ease with which we (and not just Americans, for sure) are ramped up to a fever pitch when our overlords use the fear propaganda--terrorists, communists, foreigners--take your pick.

You are correct that we have much bigger fish to fry than whether al Qaeda might set up another basecamp in Afghanistan. But, the power and the money demand blood sacrifice, so our resources will go to war instead of planetary peace and survival.

[Time for change]

17. Thank you -- You're right, there are many factors that contribute to the problem

I think that the one that should be easiest to deal with, if we ever get to expose them for what they are before our planet goes up in flames, is the war profiteers.

Once people understand who they are and what they're up to it will be much harder for them to draw us into wars.

[bertman]

20. Unfortunately, the War Profiteers have the guns AND the money--and the White House and Congress.

It's gonna be an uphill climb convincing We the People that they are our enemy when the corporate media has honed their America-Must-Save-The-World-By-Force propaganda stream to a fine edge.

Your attempts to educate us are highly appreciated, Time for change. I wish you had a larger viewing audience.

[cliffordu]

12. Skimmed and a K&R - I'll read it more closely when I wake up....

It looks to be excellent....

[Demeter]

14. We Would Have Been a Better Nation Without the South, IMO

and could have taken them over at a later date. Clearly, had a slave-free United States been formed, the New England slavers would have been driven out of business and/or out of the new country, wouldn't have amassed their fortunes, and then gone into other business (war profiteering) and put a stranglehold on the government during the Civil War that wiped out their primary source on income...

Yes, insisting on keeping North Carolina in the deal was a big tactical error. Damn you, Mr. Dickerson!

[Time for change]

18. I agree, however

without the South there appeared to be no likelihood whatever of winning the Revolutionary War. So without the South it is unlikely that there would have been any United States, period -- at least at that time.

But it's interesting to contemplate what we would be like today without the South. Minus the 13 states of the Confederacy, the composition of the Senate would be 56 Dems (including the two Is) vs 18 Rs -- a Senate that really would be filibuster proof. And we'd be rid of a few blue dog Democratic Senators as well.

And would there still be slavery? Probably not, but at best it would be like the old Jim Crowe days down there.

[H2O Man]

15. Recommended.

One of the easiest ways to explain the relationships between the red, black, and white peoples of the colonial and early US history that I use in public presentations is this: whites as a group viewed blacks as domestic animals, to be used in agricultural labor, yet restricted from proper society; and they viewed Indians as wild animals, who required force to bring into society proper.

[Time for change]

19. Yes, that pretty well sums it up. They had to justify their actions somehow

I think that Noam Chomsky put the issue in excellent perspective:

When you conquer somebody and suppress them, you have to have a reason. You can’t just say, “I’m a son of a bitch and I want to rob them.” You have to say it’s for their good, they deserve it, or they actually benefit from it. We’re helping them. That was the attitude of slave owners. Most of them didn’t say, “Look, I’m enslaving these people because I want easily exploitable, cheap labor for my own benefit.” They said, “We’re doing them a favor. They need it.”

[JohnyCanuck]

16. kick n/t

[butterfly77]

21. K&R!

[northamericancitizen]

22. K & R

[DemReadingDU]

23. Bookmarking, this is a great history lesson, thanks!

As I'm reading thru your essay, it also appears that wars and treatment of people have a lot to do with money, profits, and class (rich vs poor). Throughout history, wealthy white men (sometimes ladies) seem they want to be better than anybody else manipulating who and what they want, and enacting law to benefit them such that they would become even wealthier.

Even today we still have classes of people. There are the very very very wealthy (maybe 1%) and everybody else. I do fear a future uprising between the classes, especially as the economy turns worse with more jobless people, while our hard earned money is stealthly transferred from us to the fatcat banksters. There are not yet enough people to do this, but the anger is building. I doubt this will come in my lifetime, maybe my children, surely during my little grandbabies lifetime.

[Time for change]

25. Yes, it certainly does have to do with money, profits and class