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What
Price the American Empire?
By
Patrick J. Buchanan
Last
week, Vice President Cheney and Secretary Rumsfeld warned that more
terror attacks are a certainty and may involve the detonation of an
atomic weapon on American soil. They have concentrated the mind
wonderfully. Even a small, crude nuclear device, exploded in a U.S. port
or city, could kill many thousands more than died on Sept. 11.
Rightly, the U.S. government is focused on how to anticipate such an
attack, prevent it, prepare for it. But there has been no debate over
the most critical question. Why? Why do these Islamic radicals so hate
us they are willing to commit suicide, if they can take hundreds or
thousands of us with them?
They don't know us. They cannot defeat or destroy the United States,
even with an atom bomb. What can they hope to accomplish? Are they
simply madmen?
In our focus on improved intelligence, preemptive strikes,
color-coded alerts and evacuation plans, have we overlooked a course of
action that could end the threat of cataclysmic terror? Like Poe's
"Purloined Letter," is a way out right there on the
mantelpiece in front of us?
Consider: While no Western nation has endured an act of terror on the
scale of 9-11, all have known terror. Brits were ambushed by the Irish
in the war of independence from 1919 to 1921. British civilians were
blown up by Zionists in the King David Hotel in 1946. Settlers were
murdered by Mau Mau in Kenya. French were massacred in movie theaters
and cafes by the Algerian FLN until 1962. U.S. Marines were blown up in
Beirut in 1983. From Netanya to Jerusalem to Tel Aviv, Israelis today
die in terror attacks and suicide bombings.
In all these atrocities, terror was a weapon of the weak and
stateless against Western powers they could not defeat with arms. In
each case, terror was used to expel an imperial power or drive out
foreign troops. In each case but one, terror ended when the Western
power went home.
The dynamiting of the King David Hotel convinced the British to
accelerate their departure from Palestine. Zionist terror ended. Mau Mau
terror ended when the Brits left Kenya. When De Gaulle cut Algeria
loose, FLN terror ended. When Reagan withdrew his Marines from Beirut,
anti-American terror ended in Lebanon.
Lesson? The price of empire is terror. The price of occupation is
terror. The price of interventionism is terror. As Barry Goldwater used
to say, it is as simple as that. When Israel departed Lebanon,
Hezbollah's attacks fell off almost to nothing. But as long as Israelis
occupy the West Bank, which Prime Minister Barak conceded belongs at
least 95 percent to the Palestinians, Israel will be hit by terror
attacks.
Either Israel gets out, or it pays the price of staying in:
terrorism.
But this column is not about Israel -- it is about us. It is about
why we are being told by our leaders, in tones of resignation and
fatalism, that it is not a question of whether, but of when, the next
act of cataclysmic terror occurs here, and why we must accept the
possibility that a nuclear weapon will be exploded here.
But when Americans ask, "Why do they hate us?" and
"Why do these Islamic radicals on the other side of the earth want
to come over here and commit hara-kiri killing us?" we get
responses that ought not to satisfy a second-grader. They hate us, we
are told, because we are democratic and free and good, and we have low
tax rates.
Well that is no longer enough. Before, not after, the next terror
attack on this country, America's leaders should start telling the
truth: Evil though they may be, Islamic killers are over here because we
are over there. They are not trying to kill us because they dislike our
domestic politics, but because they detest our foreign policy.
Fifteen of the 19 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia. They did not fly
into those twin towers to protest universal suffrage or to advance
self-determination for the Palestinian people. As Osama bin Laden said,
they want us to stop propping up the Saudi regime they hate, and to get
off the sacred Saudi soil on which sit the holiest shrines of Islam.
They want our troops out of Saudi Arabia – and if we don't get out,
they are coming over here to kill us any way they can.
That is reality. Now while America should use every weapon in her
arsenal, from intelligence to diplomacy to war, to prevent terror and to
punish terror, we must address the central issue: Terror on American
soil, and eventual cataclysmic and atomic terror on American soil, is
the price of American empire.
Is the empire worth it? French, Brits, even Soviets said no. They
went home. And nothing over there – not oil, not bases in Saudi
Arabia, not global hegemony – is worth risking nuclear terror over
here. I may be the only right-winger in America who loves D.C., but then
I grew up here. Washington is my hometown. It comes first, and empire
isn't even a close second.
© 2002 Creators
Syndicate, Inc.
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Ataturk: Lessons in Leadership
from the Greatest General of the Ottoman
Empire
by Austin Bay
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk was a Muslim
visionary, revolutionary statesman, and
founder of the Republic of Turkey. The
West knows him best as the leading
Ottoman officer in World War I’s Battle
of Gallipoli—a defeat for the Allies,
and the Ottoman empire’s greatest
victory. Gaining fame as an exemplary
military officer, he went on to lead his
people in the Turkish War of
Independence, abolishing the Ottoman
Sultanate, emancipating women, and
adopting western dress. Deeply
influenced by the Enlightenment, Atatürk
sought to transform the empire into a
modern and secular nation-state, and
during his presidency, embarked upon a
program of impressive political,
economic, and cultural reforms.
Militarily and politically he excelled
at all levels of conflict, from the
tactical, through the operational, to
the strategic, and into the rarified
realm of grand strategy. His ability to
integrate the immediate with the
ultimate serves as an important lesson
for leaders engaged in the twenty-first
century’s great military struggles. He
became the only leader in history to
successfully turn a Muslim nation into a
Western parliamentary democracy and
secular state, leaving behind a legacy
of modernization and military and
political leadership. |
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Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in
America
By Melissa V.
Harris-Perry
According to the
author, this society has historically exerted
considerable pressure on black females to fit into one
of a handful of stereotypes, primarily, the Mammy, the
Matriarch or the Jezebel. The selfless
Mammy’s behavior is marked by a slavish devotion to
white folks’ domestic concerns, often at the expense of
those of her own family’s needs. By contrast, the
relatively-hedonistic Jezebel is a sexually-insatiable
temptress. And the Matriarch is generally thought of as
an emasculating figure who denigrates black men, ala the
characters Sapphire and Aunt Esther on the television
shows Amos and Andy and Sanford and Son, respectively.
Professor Perry
points out how the propagation of these harmful myths
have served the mainstream culture well. For instance,
the Mammy suggests that it is almost second nature for
black females to feel a maternal instinct towards
Caucasian babies.
As for the source
of the Jezebel, black women had no control over their
own bodies during slavery given that they were being
auctioned off and bred to maximize profits. Nonetheless,
it was in the interest of plantation owners to propagate
the lie that sisters were sluts inclined to mate
indiscriminately.
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The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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If you like this page consider making a donation
* * * * *
Negro Digest /
Black World
Browse all issues
1950
1960
1965
1970
1975
1980
1985
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____ 2005
Enjoy!
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
/
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
/
Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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posted 29 May2002 / updated 11 June 2008
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