Slavery: Bush won't say sorry

Bush should apologize for slavery when black america apologizes for destroying practically every major city by subsidizing the drug trade and creating crime rates that make most urban areas intolerable and unlivable.

Trace

P.S. I'm not really serious, but my idea is about as sensical as the notion of forcing all Americans to apologize for what other people did hundreds of years ago.

The USA is the only country, to my knowledge, to officially rebuke and legislate against slavery.

I am an American Indian. I suppose if I were a Liberal I would ask President Bush to apologize for taking my country. But hey, I'm a conservative so lets get on with life. I'm sure Bush didn't kill any Indians nor did he own any slaves. I'm sure if he did it would have been in the N.Y. Times.

America did invent the end to slavery.

That's a bit of a stretch. Western civilization put an end to slavery. America wasn't exactly in the vanguard, but we were part of the fight against slavery, and have nothing to apologize for.

For those who know their history, expecting President Bush to apologise for slavery in Africa is hilarious.

Yes, but I believe we are the only nation ever to wage war for slavery's abolition

Actually that's not true

Dozens of countries, including the possessions of British, French, and Spanish empires ended slavery peacefully during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Only in the United States was warfare associated with emancipation. There was violence in some other countries during the abolition of slavery, but as Fogel and Engerman point out,"In countries such as Colombia and Venezuela the emancipation of slaves became an instrument of the revolutionaries who sought state power"; it was not motivated by a desire for emancipation per se.--The Real Lincoln, DiLorenzo

Columbia and Venezuela went through the same thing, however in their cases, it was seen as an attempt by revolutionaries to gain power and change the direction of the nation.

Well, it could be in the N.Y. Times even if Bush didn't do it! lol

Oh thank you Mr. President!!!!!

...to Brazil, and to Spanish, French and British colonies?

Of course...thank you.

Excellent.

I'm sure if he did it would have been in the N.Y. Times.

And you know that the entire Bush family tree has gotten the media anal exam on that issue.

On 29 August, the British Parliament passed the Abolition of Slavery Act to become effective a year later on 1 August 1834. The Act introduced an "apprenticeship" system. Any freed slave over 6 years of age was to work without pay for 4 years for their former owner. In return the former owners were to feed and clothe them, as well as paying them a wage for any work over 45 hours per week. But. The details of the implementation of this act was left to the local government on each colony.

British Abolition of Slavery

The greatest achievement of the 1848 revolution for the colonies was the abolition of slavery. Slavery, the foundation of economic and social life in the vieilles colonies of Martinique, Guad eloupe, Guyane and RŽunion, had been abolished by the Convention in 1794 but was reinstituted by Napoleon. The anti-slavery campaign grew stronger in dissident and republican circles in the early 1800s and triumphed in the February revolution of 1848. On March 4, the assembly agreed to the principle of emancipation. A definitive decree followed on April 27, 1848. Declaring that `slavery is an attack on human dignity', it `destroys the principal of natural law and duty . . . it is a flagrant violation of republican dogma," and that great unrest could erupt in the colonies if slavery were not ended, the law abolished slavery in all French colonies and possessions.

French Abolition of Slavery

No, but thank you for playing....

Bill, it's late. Let's play later.

The U.S. apologized for this in the 90's. Once is enough.

I know you are; and you know there are other things I don't particularly agree with him on, but I never thought HE would agree with everything I believe in.

Nat Hentoff

Freedom for Sudan's Slaves?

'Our Work Isn't Done. It's Just Begun.'

November 8th, 2002

There is perhaps no greater tragedy on the face of the earth today than the tragedy that is unfolding in the Sudan. —Secretary of State Colin Powell, May 7, 2001

When the president of the United States officially found Sudan's National Islamic Front government in Khartoum guilty of genocide on October 21, I naively expected there would be significant press play. The New York Times had a photograph of the signing of the Sudan Peace Act the next day on page A18 with only a two-line caption and no mention of the key word genocide.

The name of that internationally recognized crime was also omitted from The Washington Post's brief story on page A7 and in a longer Associated Press report. Jon Sawyer of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch got it right in a substantial story on October 22. From what I was able to see on television—broadcast and cable—that medium was clueless. But then, both television and much of the print press have also been clueless about state terrorism against Africans in Zimbabwe and Liberia, among other tyrannies on that continent.

Ted Koppel's Nightline did do an exemplary week-long series on the Congo last year. And this October, PBS broadcast WGBH-TV's Liberia: America's Stepchild, on that country's maximum leader, Charles Taylor, and the atrocities he and some of his predecessors have inflicted on the people of that blood-soaked land. Otherwise, Africa, to the media, is usually the heart of darkness.

As for the Sudan Peace Act, imagine how the media would have covered an American declaration of genocide on a white country that for years had enslaved many thousands of its white citizens, gang-raping the women during slave raids.

The provisions of the law, signed by George W. Bush after years of pressure, have been summarized by Nina Shea of Freedom House, who has long been one of the pivotal anti-slavery forces in Washington:

"[The law] immediately authorizes aid to the south, with or without Khartoum's approval, in the amount of $300 million over the next three years. . . . [It] requires the president to certify every six months that Khartoum and the rebel Sudanese People's Liberation Army are negotiating in good faith [and] specifies four sanctions against Khartoum if the president certifies that Khartoum is not negotiating in good faith, or has 'unreasonably interfered with humanitarian efforts.'

"The sanctions include: opposing international loans and credits to Khartoum; downgrading diplomatic relations; denying Khartoum access to oil revenues; and seeking a UN Security Council resolution to impose an arms embargo on Khartoum. [The act] also requires the administration to report on oil financing [of the government by foreign corporations], acts of genocide, and on the obstruction of aid delivery by Khartoum."

Not reported by the media was what George W. Bush said at the signing as he turned to the New Abolitionists around him: "There are times when the government has to be prodded. I know that if we don't do what we're supposed to [now], you'll be out there prodding us again."

A principal prodder of Bush, and of Clinton before him, is Joe Madison ("the Black Eagle"), host of a syndicated radio show out of WOL in Washington. For years a member of the NAACP's national board, Joe participated twice in the redeeming of black slaves in Sudan, and was also arrested while handcuffed to the door of the Sudanese consulate in Washington, along with longtime civil rights leader Walter Fauntroy and influential Washington insider Michael Horowitz of the Hudson Institute. (Their attorneys were Kenneth Starr and Johnnie Cochran.) Joe also prodded Jesse Jackson to break his long silence on slavery in Sudan.

After the signing of the Sudan Peace Act, Joe Madison told me that Colin Powell had played a major role in moving Congress and the White House to finally take action. (But as reported on the Fox Television News Channel on October 21, Jesse Jackson said, "Colin Powell is not on our team." Many former slaves in Sudan would not agree with the reverend, who traveled through Africa with President Bill Clinton without mentioning slavery in Sudan.)

"Our work isn't done," Joe says. "It's just begun. We must keep pressure on the State Department and on Bush, and may need to go to civil disobedience and mass demonstrations to ensure that they do what they say they'll do." (Joe was deeply involved in ending apartheid in South Africa.)

I have been informed by one of my fellow members of the Sudan Coalition that the assistant secretary of state for Africa, Walter Kansteiner, has "unambivalently advised me that State intends to fully comply with the terms of the act, and asked me to convey this message to all members of the coalition."

Kansteiner and the president can be assured that we are watching. So is Bishop Paride Taban, whose Catholic diocese in Sudan is bordered by Uganda, Kenya, and Ethiopia. When he was in New York recently, the bishop told me of how close he came to being obliterated by the Khartoum government: "On July 5 of this year, there was talk of peace, of negotiations, and I was in Kapoeta, a big town in my diocese. Suddenly, the government's army helicopters came. As I went for the bomb shelter, nine people were killed in front of me."

The bishop and I spoke after the signing of the Sudan Peace Act. "Up to now," he said, "we in Sudan have been forgotten. At least now something is on paper. But we need more than words. Many agreements have been broken. We must see that the pledges are carried out and that we are no longer treated as property by the Arabs of the north."

And Professor Eric Reeves of Smith College—a major prodder of Bush and Clinton about Sudan—emphasizes: "There is no need to wait to seek a United Nations Security Council resolution to impose an arms embargo on the government of Sudan. . . . Such a resolution should be sought immediately, since we know all too well how the Khartoum regime relentlessly uses oil-funded weapons against civilians in southern Sudan."

But don't wait for The New York Times, The Washington Post, or the broadcast and cable television networks to report the need for that Security Council resolution. The call for further action will come, and keep coming, from Joe Madison, Michael Horowitz, Eric Reeves, and other members of the Sudan Coalition—along with Bishop Taban on the front lines.

Slavery was the worst thing ever imported from Africa. Although it was disgusting and abhorrent to have it on these shores for a couple of centuries, the true guilt and shame rests with the African slave traders who exported it to here (and who still practice slavery today).

Besides, didn't Clinton already apologize? Are we supposed to have every US President until eternity go and apologize for it, while handing them billions of US $$$ to help them? Who are the real hypocrits here?

Maybe Bush should offer they can have either an apology or $$$. They would shut up in a hurry.