America taking on new role: Global cop

sacbee.com ^ | Monday, August 4, 2003 | David Westphal

[comnet]

Today, the commander in chief faces the prospect of deploying more than 100,000 troops in Iraq and Afghanistan for months -- and perhaps even years -- to come. And that's only a start to the revolution that's occurring in the U.S. military. The president has sent troops to Africa, a continent candidate Bush said was outside the United States' sphere of "national strategic interests." He's investigating opening new U.S. bases in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Asia. And he's putting the rulers of Iran and North Korea on notice that he's not afraid to unleash the military's big guns again.

[Semper Paratus]

New? That was Clinton's legacy.

[steve50]

I'd like to see their definition of "military intervention".

[dead]

That graphic is asinine, as it supposes that our reason for each of those military interventions was to establish a working democracy.

Sometimes we just go to war to kill some people that need killing.

[caltrop]

While an argument can be made that the US should be prepared to provide humanitarian aid in the event of natural disasters, the idea that we can positively intervene militarily in ethnic and religious disputes - some going back for thousands of years - is really bucking the odds. The far more likely outcome is resentment of our efforts and migration of the conflict to the US homeland.

The situation in Japan and Germany are not, IMHO, comparable to our current nation building efforts. In the aftermath of WWII both Japan and Germany had lost a huge number of young men and were completely defeated - physically and emotionally. Both Japan and Germany had obedient populations and in Japan the Emporer, both their ruler and religious leader, ordered them to surrender.

[Burkeman1]

Ughhh- Hom many times must I hear the absolutley stupid comparison of the occupation of Post WWII Germany and Japan to Iraq or Afghanistan. There is nothing simliar about them at all.

1)Both Germany and Japan are Western countries. Japan had just gone trhough 100 years of intense (and voluntary) westernization and industrialization before WWII and had even had a generation of indigenous democratic government before militerists took over. Germany was the leading industrial and scientific country of the age. It was at the heart of western civiliazation for 1000 years and had rich traditions in local democracy and later on a national level. This is not the case in either Iraq (which is not even a real friggin nation as it was cobbled together by the brits) or Afghanistan. They are still on the tribal level of politics for Godsakes!

2) Both countries were UTTERLY defeated both physically and apiritually after WWII. As Caltop had pointed out both had suffered MILLIONS of dead young men. On half of Germany was occupied by a raping murdering Red Army and the other was totally complient and resigned to US occupation. Japan likewise was resigned to occupation. Iraq hasn't suffered millions of combat dead in this war and it's different tribes and groups vary widely on the opinion of US occupation. And the same goes for Afghanistan whose people have at war for 30 years and show no signs of tiring. The puppets we have installed in Afghanistan are hardly considered legitimate or even acknowledged as authority by most of the country. And the authority of the Afghan government barely extends beyond the buildings it meets in (which are of course heavily protected by US forces.

So- please- enough with the idiotic comparison of post WWII occupations to present day situations. Besides- that brilliant historian, Donald Rumsfeld, prefers to compare post colonial America to Iraq!

[<1/1,000,000th%]

I don't see Haiti, Kosovo or Croatia here.

[<1/1,000,000th%]

OOOPS! I see Haiti.

[Ohioan]

Germany was as Democratic in the 1920s as she is today. It was precisely by understanding how to use a combination of Democratic institutions, and Marxist street tactics--the Nazis were better at Marxist tactics than the actual Communists--that Hitler gained power. And before anyone suggests that Germany today is a model of Democracy, they had better look a little closer at Hitler's current replacement, Herr Schroeder--also a dedicated Socialist.

Whether or not Democracy is at all suitable for any land has to do with the characteristics of that land's population. It is pathetic to the point of being moronic to set a goal of promoting Democracy in the Third World--see Democracy In The Third World--Destructive Egalitarian Myth.

We have sufficient weaponry, with ever better being developed, that we hardly need intervening in any nation's internal affairs to keep America safe. To understand who is who in the article, one needs to remember the long history of the Carnegie Endowment in promoting Leftist values in Africa & Asia. To understand their approach, you need to understand the mindset that was exemplified by Dean Rusk & Robert McNamara during the Kennedy Johnson years.

William Flax

[Ohioan]

So- please- enough with the idiotic comparison of post WWII occupations to present day situations. Besides- that brilliant historian, Donald Rumsfeld, prefers to compare post colonial America to Iraq!

Has Rumsfeld actually done that?! I have considered him one of the better cabinet officers, up till now. But I have not followed his utterances very carefully. If he said that, his resignation would certainly be in order. We have suffered enough of a confustion as to the American heritage under Clinton. One has to demand better from a Republican administration.

All of our free institutions, philosophical, social, economic, etc., reflect the peculiar characteristics of very particular populations, at the time of Independence. Anyone who does not understand that, is doomed to failure in any effort premised upon preserving that heritage. It simply is not a heritage that most of humanity has ever been able to fully relate to.

William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site

[Burkeman1]

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/19/opinion/19NORT.html?ex=1060142400&en=8d8bbe644080ef62&ei=5070

[Burkeman1]

From an editorial Rumsfeld wrote for the Wall Street Journal on May 27th:

"The years after our war of independence involved a good deal of chaos and confusion. There were uprisings such as Shays' Rebellion, with mobs attacking courthouses and government buildings. There was rampant inflation caused by the lack of a stable currency and the issue of competing paper monies by the various states. There were regional tensions between mercantile New England and the agrarian south. There was looting and crime and a lack of an organized police force. There were supporters of the former regime whose fate had to be determined. Our first effort at a governing charter--the Articles of Confederation--failed miserably, and it took eight years of contentious debate before we finally adopted our Constitution and inaugurated our first president. And, unlike the people of Iraq, we did not face the added challenge of recovering from the trauma of decades of brutal rule by a dictator like Saddam Hussein."

He has since made the comparison a couple of times verbally.

[Ohioan]

Interesting, but shouldn't we obtain a transcript of what exactly Rumsfeld has said, in context. I am not sure that I completely trust the lady Professor's paraphrase.

Do not get me wrong. While there may have been justification for the War with Iraq--that issue is still not at all clear, and may never be--there can be no justification for anything so stupid as trying to impose an alien system on the Iraqi people, something which will only breed future hatred, in place of what might have been good will, from a people liberated from a cruel despot.

If Rumsfeld really believes that we can impose Democracy on others, he needs to be awakened to reality. If he has not yet studied the American Society of 1781, he might start by doing so. A people's culture reflects those who create it, not the other way around.

William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site

[Ohioan]

I just responded to your #11, before I saw #12.

Thank you. You have put the remarks into context. He does indeed seem oblivious to the actual dynamics of American Societies in 1781. One might start with the fact, that Britain did not stay, after the war, to teach us how to do what we already knew how to do. Had she done so, the ensuing hatred and sniping would have made Shay's rebellion look like a picnic in the park.

Of course, wherever one might start to refute the Secretary, the essential point is this:

Regardless of their widespread differences, the citizens of the respective States had all witnessed within a relatively short time span, the developmment of new societies from the ground up, by a process of settlement, which had drawn a higher than average type from certain fairly compatible countries in Western Europe, weeding out those who were less suitable, and developing in all a self-confidence that few in any of the human species could match.

These diverse communities had developed a common sense of Americanism, in the fight against the Mother Country, which had acted in a manner intended to take away some of the independence of action, that they had already enjoyed; and in their common sense of a commonality of interest, they understood that they had to tolerate the very extreme differences in religious and other philosophic values, among themselves, etc..

There is plenty of evidence--from the demonstrated intellectual powers of their leaders--just how intelligent those people were. But enough. Rumsfeld is looking in the wrong direction, if he is seeking to understand the Iraqi future. It was not any sorting out, that was necessary after the Revolutionary War that is instructive; but the raw human talents and acquired knowledge & understanding of those who managed that sorting out.

Among other errors, Rumsfeld confuses cause and effect.

William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site

[Burkeman1]

A people's culture reflects those who create it, not the other way around.

It really can't be put any better than that. And that is why our "nation" building in Iraq is doomed to failure.

[Ohioan]

And that is why our "nation" building in Iraq is doomed to failure.

And what is at stake is far more serious than failed "idealism." The past examples of these attempts, under the same fallacious notions, have produced some incredibly barbaric cruelty, inflicted upon peoples who simply wanted to maintain their ancestral heritage. (See the examples I cite under An American Foreign Policy--particularly those discussed in terms of the Dean Rusk foreign policy under Kennedy & Johnson; a policy, tragically, continued under Nixon, and not really terminated until Reagan.

William Flax