General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsAfter centuries of patriotic defense of self-determination, will the U.S. now surrender?
Last edited Sun Apr 26, 2015, 12:17 PM - Edit history (1)
My family history goes way-back in American history...we've been here since the summer of 1628. So I have ancestral ties to the great conflicts of the colonial, revolutionary and post-revolutionary periods.
There has been a lot of war. War with the indigenous people, wars with other colonial powers, wars with neighboring nations, wars against the threats of distant nations, and wars and rebellion among ourselves. In many ways it is a remarkably bellicose history, and it begs the question of what is it in our character that brings us so often to warring? Is it something wrong with our Y-chromosomes? Is it something innate in the behavior of the great apes? Or is it, perhaps driven by a powerful belief? A belief that as a people we -must- have self-determination?
It seems an argument can be made for the later. True or myth, Americans see the colonization of N America as told in the Thanksgiving story as a matter of a group of people seeking 'freedom to practice religious lives according to the dictates of their collective conscious.' If we jump forward over a century we find the signers of the Declaration of Independence making similar claims to inalienable rights of self-determination, that resulted in two wars against England. Variously, Shay's Rebellion, the Whiskey Rebellion and the Civil War were fought because a group of people rallied to shared causes -and- took up arms under the claim of the right of self-determination. Leaping forward again to WWII, perhaps the most justifiable war of the 20th century, American's involvement was a matter of defending our nation (in the Pacific) and our allies (in Europe and the Pacific) from the assault of nations which would impose their will upon us and our allies...which is to say, we were fighting an international war based on protecting the right to self-determination.
All our nation's Great Patriotic Wars seem to share that common thread: justification upon the alter of defense of self-determination especially for ourselves. It's a grand concept of the Enlightenment, promoted by thinkers like Rousseau...that government should be established through the will of the people to act for the people, to collectively lift them toward objectives called the common good.
In this same way our not so great Cold and Un-Wars of the 20th century were undertaken with the justification of defending our choice of government and our choice of economic system against ideological competitors and their threat of domino like geographic expansion. Which is to say the right to our self-determination. When the nation is told that it's young people are once again being mustered to 'defend our rights', what is mostly being said is that the deaths and wounds and treasure spent will be to protect our right to have a society whose rules and laws are our choice
Across our storied history, we have required the death of a million or so young people in pursuit of governance "of, by, and for the people". We've asked millions more to suffer grievous wounds. All because we place such a high value on national self-determination.
And now, as an member of a family that has engaged in nearly all the belligerence over centuries including my own in the fight against the domino effect, I find my nation in what is an historically quite awkward position...it is preparing to trade away the meaning of 2,717,913 casualties for trade deals that would subvert the will of the people to self-determination via local, state and national law and regulations, to the will of lawyers through the investor state dispute processes.
The radical boldness of this abandonment of this nation's historic raison d'etre leaves me drowned in gob-smack.
The great American Experiment, the most cherished and hard-won of our treasures, the implementation of the most progressive of western civilizations ideas that government exists to serve the common good of defending the people from the marauding depravities of selfish human nature, nears it's end. It would be a surrender that would mock the notion that a pen is mightier than a sword.
I have a real fear that it be written that when THEY came to strip of us our noblest pursuit, and most important accomplishments, they did not march boldly wrapped in our flag, but came secretly whispering a promise of corporate profit.
SamKnause
(13,110 posts)rogerashton
(3,920 posts)cali
(114,904 posts)ongoing for a quarter century plus.
HereSince1628
(36,063 posts)the breaking of the wave after it's long journey.
The goal is to enable similar imposition on Europe and then the world.
cali
(114,904 posts)Again, there is a long history here.
HereSince1628
(36,063 posts)And of course the justifications are intended to be coercive to rally people to destructive acts.
The coercion works because it appeals to our deep and common value.
Warren Stupidity
(48,181 posts)1. conquest of native peoples, 1775 - 1924.
2. Mexican War 1846
3. Utah War 1857
4. Samoan Civil War 1898
5. Spanish American War 1889
6. Philippine War 1899
7. Moro Rebellion 1899
8. Boxer Rebellion 1899
9. Border War 1910
10. Banana Wars 1912 - Occupation of Nicaragua
11. Banana Wars 1915 - Occupation of Haiti
12. Banana Wars 1916 - Occupation of Dominican Republic
13. WWI. 1917.
14. Russian Civil War 1918.
15. Intervention in Lebanon 1958
16. Bay of Pigs 1961
17. Dominican Civil War 1965
18. Vietnam 1965
19. Lebanon 1982
20. Grenada 1983
21. Panama 1989
22. Gulf War 1990
23. Somali Civil War 1992
24. Haiti again 1994
25. Bosnian Civil War 1994
26. Kosovo 1998.
27. Afghanistan 2001
28. Iraq 2003
29. Pakistan drone war 2004
30. Libya 2011
31. War on ISIL 2014
Our history is not what you seem to think it is.
IDemo
(16,926 posts)which includes military actions such as individual strikes, alerts, occupations, and suppression of domestic unrest:
http://academic.evergreen.edu/g/grossmaz/interventions.html
Warren Stupidity
(48,181 posts)My list was simply an attempt to point out that "self determination" was impossible as a justification for almost all the wars we have fought, and that we have fought just an appalling number of wars in our brief history. Starting with the Spanish American War, our imperial adventures have been the rule, not the exception, and only WWII can be put aside as a "just war" where we fought alongside those seeking to defend self determination and democratic institutions (ignoring of course that our ally the USSR was just as totalitarian as the fascists we were at war with).
HereSince1628
(36,063 posts)I said the justifications given for the war were mostly based in the ideal of self-determination.
As Gen Butler said, war is a racket. But it is a racket that must be marketed with justifications that have appeal.
The justifications have appeal because we acquire shared values. The shared value make such hacking exploits possible.
The casualties of many of the conflicts on your list are referred to as heroes that fought to protect American Rights, which is to say, in defense of American self-determination. Additional related justifications also are common in your list, including the defense and propagation/imposition of our form of governance--based on self-determination-- in foreign lands and our chosen (sometimes colonial and now neocolonial) economic system.
Warren Stupidity
(48,181 posts)"the justifications given for the war were mostly based in the ideal of self-determination".
I don't think that is remotely accurate.
HereSince1628
(36,063 posts)Trillo
(9,154 posts)Nope. This sentence of yours means there is no separation of church and state.
HereSince1628
(36,063 posts)At the time of the founding of the United States, a number of the colonies -did- have "Established Churches". As you might want to familiarize yourself with that history, here is a link...
http://www.americanbar.org/groups/public_education/initiatives_awards/students_in_action/colonial.html
Trillo
(9,154 posts)"Collective conscious or collective conscience (French: conscience collective) is the set of shared beliefs, ideas and moral attitudes which operate as a unifying force within society.[1]"
It is used your way at times, but it's essentially a misuse. It's a little matter, thanks for the read.
HereSince1628
(36,063 posts)Trillo
(9,154 posts)Like I said it was a little matter of what I perceived as a misuse of the term "collective conscious". I'm sorry I said anything, I didn't mean to accuse you of anything.
bbgrunt
(5,281 posts)basically very cynical these days. I don't think it is so hidden--at least to those of us who are still awake. But they really don't care if we thrash and scream because they already have the media and enforcement powers to just run right over us.
randome
(34,845 posts)I still think it is. And it is better than everyone going their own way, pulling different oars at different speeds.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Stop looking for heroes. BE one.[/center][/font][hr]
HereSince1628
(36,063 posts)Progressive government is government that increasingly represents the will and consent of the governed to lift the common good by protecting and moving the governed away from the depredations of brutish human nature.
Generally this has meant maximizing participation in as local control of government as is feasible. It also means government spending a lot of time on regulating and policing exploitative and otherwise bad behaviors between people.
The TPP is designed to let a few elites to decide for all with little input, and the goal of the corporate input seems to be avoidance of regulation that constrains the bad effects they (the corporations) are otherwise inclined to produce.
Slaves chained to benches can be trained to row to the beat of a drum. Roman galleys weren't models of progressive government. An entire fleet of slave driven ships can maneuver under disciplined control. That alone says little for progress of human kind.
hunter
(38,326 posts)Always has been.
The only people who don't seem to recognize this are "successful" white males, mostly of Protestant origins.
My ancestors escaped Europe. They were not especially welcomed here, except one mail order bride to Salt Lake City who later ran away because she didn't like sharing a husband with other women.
So far as I can tell, all my other European immigrant ancestors jumped ship and swam and ran beyond the reach of "authority" just as fast as they could, deep into the American wilderness. Some went so far as to create false genealogies to prove their White Protestant Credentials, even though they were culturally Wild West Catholic and Jewish and draft dodging Pacifists. Such was easily accomplished in the days before computerized records.
My own grandfather had several birthdates, one on his California Drivers License, one his Social Security records, and finally his Army Air Force military records, leaving a fine mess for my dad to untangle when my grandfather passed away in his 'nineties. The Army Air Force account is probably the accurate one, otherwise he wouldn't have been a captain for most of World War II and been honorably discharged as a major when the war ended to continue working as an engineer with security clearances in the Southern California aerospace industry.
My grandfather didn't talk about the war. So far as I know he never got shot at. He was more involved with picking through the wreckage of the war and supervising people deemed essential to the war effort who were far more eccentric than he was. He was the handsome captain with a big black government car and enlisted driver carrying a "Get Out of Jail Free" card whenever some hick town police department nabbed a bright contributor to the war effort in a gay bar or whorehouse.
My wife's family is U.S.A. Native American, Mexican, and Irish. They'd cross the boarder into Catholic Mexico or Canada whenever things got too hot in the U.S.A..
Anyone who is not a properly straight white male U.S. American, or a well-kept smiling and nodding lackey of that class, knows the U.S.A. has never been what it claims to be.