Anti-American or Anti-White?
By • 7/31/07 |
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Whatever its outcome on the battlefield, the War on Terror has had at least one beneficial result: a large share of the American public has realized that their elites are biased. Ever since 2002, we have been subjected to a welter of hysterical and inflated complaints about imperialism, the treatment of enemy combatants, wiretapping, and so forth, coming from academics, celebrities, politicians, and the news media. This hateful din has convinced Americans that the perspective of their ruling class is fundamentally skewed.
The bias that Americans are perceiving is the “whites as cancer” myth. As defined in the inaugural article of this site, this myth consists of the belief that:
- Whites are the only “racist” race. That is, they are the only race that has historically believed itself superior to other races; this belief has led whites to treat other races in a uniquely cruel manner.
- White racism and imperialism are the primary explanation for the failings of non-whites.
According to the myth, the Nazis expressed the essence and natural endpoint of Western culture. Accordingly, the elites think America is little better than Nazi Germany and desperately search for parallels. They view America as a country that persecutes minorities, represses freedom of expression, and treats non-whites abroad with the callous cruelty of a master race.
The majority of white Americans can see how crazed this fantasy is. While there are perfectly good reasons to oppose the continuation of the Iraq War and other aspects of the War on Terror, there is no parallel at all between Nazi Germany and a country where airlines can be sued for refusing to let Arabs board and enemy detainees can challenge their detention in the courts. The magnitude of the distortion has led to a whole conservative industry exposing bias in the news media, the entertainment industry, and the academy.
The conservative critique of bias has not yet, however, gone to the heart of the matter. Although the conservatives expose bias everywhere, they call it anti-Americanism without recognizing its racial basis.
Lt. Col. Robert “Buzz” Patterson’s War Crimes: The Left’s Campaign to Destroy the Military and Lose the War on Terror is a perfect illustration of the strengths and weaknesses of the conservative critique of bias. He gives copious evidence of the elites’ routine and mindless misrepresentations of the U.S. military and the War on Terror. However, he characterizes the anti-war movement as “anti-American and antimilitary”1 while his own examples make clear that it is American whites and the West as a whole that is really under attack. The very word “imperialism,” constantly on the lips of anti-war liberals, places the War on Terror in a distinctively Western tradition.
One of the key fallacies that Patterson exposes is the belief that American non-whites suffer a disproportionate share of casualties in wartime. The implication is that the American military is the product of a racist society that has no concern for minority lives.
The claim has been a liberal stand-by ever since Vietnam. John Kerry in his 1971 testimony before the Senate alleged that “blacks provided the highest percentage of our casualties.” Patterson makes clear that this canard is still beloved of television talking heads.2
The allegation continues to be made about the military. For example, Charles Rangel said, “the disproportionately high representation of the poor and minorities in the enlisted ranks has been documented.” Michael Moore in Fahrenheit 9/11 portrays military recruiters targeting minority areas.3 Such beliefs are one of the bedrock tenets of the campus-protesting crowd: “Our military is racist, homophobic, sexist and screwing people,” said one protester in 2005 at San Francisco State University.4
This piece of conventional wisdom has never been true. Blacks were 13.5 percent of the draft-eligible population during the Vietnam War, but represented just 10.6 percent of soldiers. Today, the racial makeup of new recruits to the military is almost exactly the same as that of the country as a whole.5 Furthermore, blacks and Hispanics are underrepresented among war casualties. Blacks and Hispanics make up 9.5 and 10.5 percent, respectively, of casualties in Iraq, but 15 and 14 percent of the adult population.6
Liberals also view the War on Terror as a white supremacist war in the tradition of Western imperialism. Columbia University professor Nicholas de Genova said at an anti-Iraq War teach-in in 2003:
U. S. patriotism is inseparable from imperial warfare and white supremacy. U. S. flags are the emblem of the invading war machine in Iraq today… . The only true heroes are those who find ways to defeat the U.S. military.7
MIT professor Noam Chomsky, the guru of the anti-war left, also sees the war this way. In Imperial Ambitions, a collection of interviews with Chomsky, the interviewer asks whether the Iraq War is a continuation of Western imperialist policies based on the ideas “of the Herrenvolk and the Master Race.” Chomsky consents without reservation: “Racism is inherent in imperial rule—it’s almost invariable.”8 Columbia professor Edward Said also made the link between the War on Terror and Nazism. U.S. policy, he said, was the work of a “small cabal … avenging the Judeo-Christian god of war.” America was guilty of “reducing whole peoples, countries and even continents to ruin by nothing short of a holocaust.”9
Some of the most shameless slanders of the U.S. have concerned its treatment of enemy detainees. Here too comparisons to Nazis abound, and not just among marginal figures, but among the high and mighty. For example, Senator Dick Durbin said, on the basis of uncorroborated e-mail on activities at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp:
If I read this [e-mail] to you and did not tell you that it was … describing what Americans have done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by the Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime—Pol Pot or others—that had no concern for human beings.10
Durbin’s is only one voice in the chorus of lamentation over Guantanamo Bay. Jimmy Carter has said that the “torture” of prisoners there proves that Americans believe the enemy to be “subhuman.”11
Patterson shows how mild military interrogation techniques actually are. They include horrors like poking detainees in the chest in a “mild, noninjurious” fashion, “light pushing,” and repeating the same question. Even the notorious waterboarding merely consists of pouring water over a detainee to induce a drowning sensation. U.S. soldiers go through the same and worse as part of their training.12
Patterson also documents the news media’s negativity towards the Iraq War. For example, a survey conducted in January 2005 found 1,992 stories on suicide bombings and other terrorist attacks and 887 stories about the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by British soldiers, but only 16 about success in the fight against terrorists and seven relating to positive developments relating to the upcoming Iraqi elections. When Iraqi voters ratified the new constitution in October 2005, the Washington Post put the story on page A13 with the disconsolate headline: “Sunnis Failed to Defeat Iraq Constitution: Arab Minority Came Close.” The stories on the front page were “Military Has Lost 2,000 in Iraq,” “Bigger, Stronger Homemade Bombs Now to Blame for Half of U.S. Deaths,” and “Bush Aides Brace for Charges.”13
This negativity is clearly also based in the “whites as cancer” myth. The news media focus on events like Abu Ghraib that make American troops seem like imperialist oppressors. The New York Times ran no fewer than 50 above-the-fold articles on this troubling, but insignificant, event while burying stories about bravery in battle deep in the paper.14
Patterson illustrates the skewed perspective that underlies such coverage through the example of Eason Jordan, former Chief News Executive for CNN. In 2004, the man told a group of journalists that he “knew of about 12 journalists who had not only been killed by American troops, but had been targeted as a matter of policy.”15 There was never any evidence for this view, and Jordan resigned his post shortly after. However, that a man who believed such things could rise so high in his profession is evidence that journalists are prone to take seriously any kind of slander against the American military.
Anti-war liberals’ insults against their own people have been accompanied by an eagerness to apologize for the other side of the War on Terror. In 2002, Washington Senator Patty Murray defended Osama bin Laden with these words:
He’s been out in these countries for decades building schools, building infrastructure, building day care facilities …, and people are extremely grateful. He’s made their lives better. We have not done that.16
Such absurdities also stem from the “whites as cancer” myth, whose partisans believe non-whites are morally superior to whites, and inevitably blame the latter for the former’s troubles.
It may seem odd to criticize anti-war liberals for bias against whites when so many of them are white themselves. A political ideology supported people with names like Durbin, Carter, Murray, Moore, and Kerry can hardly be explained as a minority attack on majority America. Rather, the motivation behind this movement is anti-ethnocentric snobbery, discussed here and here. Snobs of this variety slander their own people in order to make themselves appear broad-minded and intelligent.
Such snobbery is illustrated perfectly by the views of film and television celebrities, who have regularly stigmatized war supporters as ignorant and parochial, in contrast to their own enlightened cosmopolitanism. Michael Moore said in an interview with a British news paper that Americans were “possibly the dumbest people on the planet.”17 Larry Hagman, who played J. R. on Dallas, called Bush “a sad figure—not too well-educated, who doesn’t get out of America much. He’s leading the country towards fascism.”18
Conservative critics of anti-American bias have accomplished the crucial task of demonstrating to a large share of the public that we live in an Inverted World. They have proved that our elites view America, a country that is shamefully and dangerously indulgent towards non-whites, as the new Third Reich, and at the same time look eagerly for the redeeming virtues of figures like Osama bin Laden. However, the critics of bias have not yet understood the nature of the bias that they are attacking: it is not anti-American, but anti-white. The “whites as cancer” myth still exerts such a powerful sway over the Western mind that the conservatives cannot name it outright and can only denounce it in a mystified form. Hopefully, however, the intense anger provoked by the anti-war movement will eventually force whites to recognize its real motive.
- Robert Patterson, War Crimes: The Left’s Campaign to Destroy the Military and Lose the War on Terror (New York: Crown Forum, 2007), 47. ↑
- Ibid., pp. 27-28. ↑
- Ibid., pp. 28-29. ↑
- Ibid., p. 55. ↑
- Ibid., pp. 35-36. ↑
- Ibid., p. 36-37. ↑
- Quoted in David Horowitz, The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America (Washington, DC: Regnery, 2006), p. 123. ↑
- Noam Chomsky, Imperial Ambitions: Conversations on the Post-9/11 World (New York: Holt, 2005), p. 48. ↑
- Patterson, p. 67. ↑
- Ibid., p. 162. ↑
- Quoted in Patterson, p. 164. ↑
- Ibid., pp. 166-67. ↑
- Ibid., pp. 95-96. ↑
- Ibid., p. 102. ↑
- Quoted in Patterson, p. 89. ↑
- Quoted in Patterson, p. 146. ↑
- Quoted in Patterson, p. 128. ↑
- Quoted in Patterson, p. 140. ↑
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As Fonzi would say, “Exactamundo.” I do take issue with the “elites” acting as if we are like Nazi Germany. They know what is up. They are pandering to and in essence co-opting the fools and buffoons who really do feel this way. If we had less diversity in this country we could get a much better consensus on the war on terror. Right now many whites just don’t see the point of fighting for a cause that doesn’t benefit them for a bunch of people who seem bent on selling their birthright to a bunch of illeterate Mexican peasants.
A little manifest destiny propoganda is in order. Let the genetic detritus complain. Because after 40 years of ethnic revolution and intimidation, these losers have expended any political “guilt” capital they once had. Most whites would embrace such a vision, leftists be damned.
Here is an idea: Instead of segregating based on race, let’s do it with IQ. Problem solved. Anyone with an IQ under 100 must be fenced into the hellish slums they create. Every morning they could be bused in to work in hotels, pick up garbage, etc. Then they get bused back into their horrid neighborhoods. Suspend the constitution in these segregated communities and let the good people take out the trouble makers themselves. Problem solved for everyone.
I shit you not, a black cop once told me that the government just needs to let the good blacks take the gloves off and implement swift justice to the trouble makers in their community. He said he is convinced that the only way the blacks will regain control of their communities is with “jungle justice.” Just let the white man step aside and in one year there will be order restored. Same goes for the Hispanics. For as much as we want a solution to black and hispanic crime, plenty of them do to.
“They have proved that our elites view America, a country that is shamefully and dangerously indulgent towards non-whites, as the new Third Reich, and at the same time look eagerly for the redeeming virtues of figures like Osama bin Laden.”
Now you’re stretching things a bit, don’t you think? Most liberals don’t, in fact, have any love for Al-Qaeda. Additionally, while Michael Moore may have mad some stupid remarks, and I certainly don’t seek to defend such comments, I don’t think he is really anti-American.
I agree there is an anti-white bias generally on the Left. But there is a very different view of America between the moderate-Left and the far-Left. For instance, Columbia University professor Nicholas de Genova is hardly a liberal. He is of the far-Left.
These are not always easy or clear lines, of course, but there is a moderate Left, there is a far-Left, and they have never particularly got along all that well. In fact, there is intense distrust and antipathy, as many Democratic conventions have demonstrated.
I wish you would differentiate. Painting far-Leftists as liberals is simply not accurate.
“Such snobbery is illustrated perfectly by the views of film and television celebrities, who have regularly stigmatized war supporters as ignorant and parochial, in contrast to their own enlightened cosmopolitanism. Michael Moore said in an interview with a British news paper that Americans were ‘possibly the dumbest people on the planet.’ Larry Hagman, who played J. R. on Dallas, called Bush ‘a sad figure—not too well-educated, who doesn’t get out of America much. He’s leading the country towards fascism.’”
Actually that fool Comrade Hagman is correct, El Presidente is leading the country toward Fascism or Marxist “utopia” but not because of this war. Well, at least not in tactical terms; it is the endemic “politically correct” nature of “packaging” this war, that has been the highest failure of this Neo Con administration and its lickspittles in the “conservative” press. It is from this point, that they yield to the anti-white, anti-reason, and anti-American dogmas of the lunatic Left in this country. However, they do this because Neo Cons hold as much contempt for whites, as do almost all Democrats and other Neo Marxist “liberals.” If they did not, they would never have encouraged the presently failed amnesty bill that is currently slumbering like a vampire, waiting for its chance to revive in the dark.
Moreover, the constant droning about “building democracy” in Iraq and “the religion of peace,” continues what is at best this administration’s disconnect from the reality of how a real War on Terror should be engaged. Islam is at war with the West and with we in the “Great Satan” in particular; yet, we are continually told by these sideshow freaks (with Bush being the primary two headed bearded lady) that “most” Muslims are our “friends” and that we need to accommodate them and such countries as Saudi Arabia as best we can. And it is exactly from here that Curious George, has continually failed his country in this war and ever since the 9/11 Attacks.
When those acts of terrorism occurred, it should have been openly acknowledged by El Presidente and Co. that this was a clash of civilizations and religions. The war should have been from its opening salvos, one characterized as the Judeo-Christian West against the barbaric Muslim Middle East and North Africa. To drive the point home all mosques and all sects of Islam (including the Nation of Islam) should have been outlawed as potential terrorist breeding grounds. This of course should have occurred only after the 9/12/2001 destruction of the cities of Mecca and Medina by way of Hydrogen bombs in response to the WTC, and Tehran and Baghdad for the downed plane in Pennsylvania and the Pentagon. Then perhaps, we could hold some respect for Curious George who did not do these logical and just acts on the part of his people, in deference to “proving” his and “our” responsibilities as “global” citizens.
That is where the path to American Multicultural Fascism or Marxism lies here, in our integration into the “global” community. A reverse imperialism of colonization and enslavement of the West by its “elites” and the Third World hoards. And it is that Neo Con ideology in tandem with its Neo Marxist “opponents” tactics, that is defeating this country in this war abroad and at home economically, socially, and politically.
As always, God help us all!
norowski,
I don’t think that I’m speaking alone when I claim to have absolutely no natural sense of bond or kinsmanship with folks who share a similar intelligence percentile. You’re suggesting some sort of caste system that segregates brother from brother and mother from daughter. Not only is it logistically unworkable, it’s immoral.
Brave New World is a dystopian cautionary fable, not an instruction manual.
I believe that the IQ aspect of human differences has received an excessive amount of focus because it is so quantitative and so intuitive. People with more problem solving ability are more able to solve problems. If you’re not smart enough to read, you’re not smart enough to lead. These are ideas so obvious that disbelieving them requires a sort of willful idiocy.
There are, however, as The Realist explains in a previous article, profound differences in hormone levels, gratification delay, temperament, and personality between the races. It is a deep organic dividing line. I work and live around East Asians daily and, while I have nothing but admiration and respect for them, they are fundamentally “other”. They are not “my people”.
“The conservative critique of bias has not yet, however, gone to the heart of the matter. Although the conservatives expose bias everywhere, they call it anti-Americanism without recognizing its racial basis.”
Yes, I believe conservatives such as Rush Limbaugh, Hannity, Bill Bennet, Robert Bork, Ann Coulter, et al who critique bias everywhere, certainly recognize it’s racial basis but they have enough sense not to cross the line and call it what it really is. They know if they go against the ruling elite, they will be banished to the outer darkness of society. So instead, they play it safe and call it anti-Americanism.
“It may seem odd to criticize anti-war liberals for bias against whites when so many of them are white themselves. A political ideology supported people with names like Durbin, Carter, Murray, Moore, and Kerry can hardly be explained as a minority attack on majority America. Rather, the motivation behind this movement is anti-ethnocentric snobbery, discussed here and here. Snobs of this variety slander their own people in order to make themselves appear broad-minded and intelligent.”
It seems to be a paradox of sort because the ruling elites are White, but they persecute people who promote the White-race and openly celebrate their accomplishments. Conversely, they praise and reward Whites who actively and aggressively denigrate and defame Whites and their accomplishments. How perverse is that? What’s so frustrating is that this anti-White sentiment/pathology—has over the last 50 years—metastasized and spread into every white social class.
Of course the non-Whites are taking full advantage of the vulnerability Anti-White sentiment has provided them. They will exploit it for all it’s worth, and then exploit it some more.
Wikitopian,
Your view of the Iraq conflict is contradicted by the facts. The U.S. isn’t imposing democracy on Iraqis against their will. According to a BBC poll, in 2005, a majority of Iraqis supported democracy, and the plurality still do.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6451841.stm
Support for democracy is also demonstrated by the 80 percent turnout in the January 2005 elections for the Council of Representatives.
According to the same BBC poll, a majority of Iraqis also want U.S. troops to remain in the country until security is restored and the government is stronger.
There are strong arguments for a pullout from Iraq. However, your crude anti-Americanism obfuscates the situation rather than illuminating it.
More response to the comments above soon.
Realist,
The next time you lament about how your intellectual journey seems to accomplish nothing but angering people, you may wish to consider the fact that you belittle and insult folks who have civil differences in opinion with you. Even folks with ivy league degrees and decades of good works and enlightened commentary who have devoted their lives to race realism are beneath contempt to you if they have a minor difference in opinion on the Middle East conflict or the Jewish issue.
The plurality of Iraqis support democracy? Is that a peculiar way of saying that the minority support democracy? The 80% turnout was no more an endorsement of democracy than a gladiator’s struggle with a lion is an endorsement of the gladiatorial games. As has been made plain with facts time and again, as in Turkey last month, democracy is to the Muslim little more than a contest to see who gets to be the Islamic despot.
On a side note, I didn’t even argue for a troop withdrawal. I argued that we are engaging in imperialism and compromising their sovereignty. Welcoming Christian missionaries from throughout the world to minister in Iraq and Afghanistan is wrong. Rubbing a Miss Afghanistan in Afghanistan’s traditionalist face is wrong. Imposing a secular regime on a population that wishes for an explicitly Islamic regime is wrong.
After such an explicit display of your contempt for my perspective, I’ll respectfully cease participating in here. I appreciate the opportunity that I have had to post what I have and I apologize to anybody else who was offended by my positions. I apologize for not getting a hint sooner.
It’s been a pleasure, Wikitopian
Wikitopian wrote: “I hope we lose the war on Islam in Arabia. I hope we leave Iraq with a welp of humiliation severe enough to dissuade us from any similar adventures.”
Wait a minute there! Think about this: You must consider the reason we’re in Iraq in the first place. It’s simple to understand. Ultimately we’re there to make sure there is free flow of oil at market prices. Since the middle-east has most of the known oil reserves, it is absolutely necessary—for economic reasons—we have an American friendly government in Iraq. Without free flow of oil at market prices, the American economy will be crippled. We all know oil is the linchpin of our economy. We can’t afford to let a bunch of radical Islamics take over those oil fields and derail our economy, therefore, military intervention is necessary.
It’s easy to predict the consequences of our losing in Iraq. It would ultimately be disastrous to our economy. If our economy crashes, that would cause all kinds of negative effects to cascade throughout the Western World. Only a nihilist or an anti-White radical would want that to happen.
Sorry, Wikitopian, but I can’t see how losing in Iraq would benefit White preservation in any way.
So Pat Buchanan and Justin Raimondo are anti-white? Far from it. They are both Republicans who switched to reform. Even Cindy Sheehan is hardly a “leftist” as she met with David Duke. Even Chomsky isn’t as bad as some other liberals, and he is anti-communist. In the 1930s, the biggest anti-war group, in addition to leftists like Gore Vidal, was the right. They believed in non-interventionist conservative principles and did not want to ally with the Soviets. It’s only during the cold war that the right became involved in wars. As it is, the neocons today aren’t interested in enriching the US as much as going on democratic campaigns. True race realists should know that those will fail.
Realist, I can’t believe you are buying into this nonsense that Iraqis have proven they want a democracy. 80% showed up at least in part because they felt something was at stake. Not because they prefer that system.
I’m gratified to hear that a “plurality” of Iraqis still favours democracy. Unfortunately, a majority still favours stoning Christians.
50-100 yrs ago western values were (historically) progressive and widely shared in Euro-dominated communities — hence, democracy could reasonably be expected to contain certain ideaological pathologies. Euro-dominated populations were broadly rational and characterized by respect for the rights of dissenters, minorities & women. You could quibble about how bad the Kaiser’s Germany was and whether it was truly a democracy —and George Will has done so at indescribably tedious length, which at least keeps him off the topic of baseball — but early 20th century Germany was paradaisically Periclean compared to the contemporary middle east.
Insane values are regnant in Afghanistan and Iraq. U.S. advisory panels have put both countries on watch lists for abusing human rights and religious freedoms and Afghan “moderates” (including government ministers) famously cried for the blood of a Christian convert in 2006. They manage to behave this badly under the equivalent of American military occupation. It’s as if the Germans were still rallying at Nuremberg in 1948!
In short, if the majority of the electorate is psychotic, democracy is a prescription for lunacy.
So why are our finest southern white boys bleeding and dying in Iraq & Afghanistan? I’ll give you a hint: it has a high degree of consanguinity to the weltanshauung behind affirmative action. The federal government has declared that ethnicity is entirely unpredictive of virtue (though interestingly, whiteness is associated with certain dangerous vices). The federal government insists that blacks are good at math and that Iraqis are good at democracy. And the federal government will spend our dollars and bleed our sons until it proves its case.
I disagree with Wiktopian because Muslim society is primitive, corrupt & vicious and hence the anti-American resistance would necessarily be defending barbarism. It doesn’t matter that we’re “over there”. They’re the Evil Resistance. They have no right to impose evil even in their own backyard.
I disagree with realist because Bush’s messianic enterprise in the middle east is driven by the same deluded hubris that has restricted the choice of whites in this country to deracination (worse, emasculation) or deep alienation.
On this point I find myself most closely in agreement with Derbyshire. We should have rained down death in the aftermath of 9/11. Any Muslim “democracy” is a multicultural monument and a mockery of what this country once stood for.
There is so much to respond to in these comments that I’m overwhelmed. I’ll try to get to the other comments soon, but for now, I’ll just state more fully my counter-arguments to Wikitopian, as well as DK and ajo.
My point is that, given that the Iraqi majority wanted democracy until 2005, it is wrong to say that the US was trying to impose democracy on an unwilling people. I got my evidence for Iraqis’ support of democracy from a poll by a respected news organization, so I don’t see why I shouldn’t believe it. If you have any better information on the subject, tell me what it is.
The reason for declining support for democracy I take to be the current Iraqi government’s failure to provide security. Iraqis have, quite reasonably, started abandoning their ideals and looking for an easier path out of the current chaos.
Democracy is a complex subject. I take it most of us are, at best, highly suspicious of this system and resent its present sanctification as mankind’s highest achievement. If that’s what you think, I agree with you. Preserving democracy and rights ought not to be the ultimate goal of a state; rather, inculcating civilization and advancing the interests of an ethnic group ought to be. If democracy conflicts with these goals, it is legitimate to suspend it.
However tired we may grow of politicians droning on about democracy, though, we have to admit it is a desirable thing if it can be reconciled with the main duties of the state. People naturally want to have some say in how their government is run, and they don’t want to have to submit to the rule of lunatics like Saddam. So I don’t see why people would be surprised that Iraqis wanted democracy.
People like Wikitopian, as well as the activists and writers ajo champions, want to cast the US as dark imperialist overlords in Iraq. However, this view is untenable. The worst that the US can be accused of in this war is naïve idealism, for it is naïve to believe that all races are capable of democracy. But a country that puts its soldiers on trial for taking reasonable steps to defend themselves in guerilla combat and produces counter-insurgency manuals that state, “The best weapons do not shoot” cannot be compared to the Persian empire, and making that comparison is, indeed, crude anti-Americanism.
My more noble instincts left me, and I will respond to the second assertion that I am crude and anti-American. After this one last clarifying response, I will respectfully bow out.
Iraq does not exist in a vacuum. It is part of a larger Arab/Islamic World. Democracy has a very poor record of success there, and both studies and experiments have shown the futility of grafting our White and Western models of government on them. You know democracy is a lost cause in a nation when you can barely get the majority to even agree that democracy is a legitimate method of governing.
Sociocultural imperialism isn’t as obvious as economic or military imperialism. I agree with you that we are being militarily quite restrained. I disagree with people who believe this war was started for money and I disagree with people who believe that our strategic oil interests were threatened by Iraq. Sociocultural imperialism is a less obvious thing. In fact, it looks to the imperialist like people just doing the correct thing and behaving the correct way.
I believe it is morally appropriate and correct for beautiful and confident women to dress in sexy bikinis and participate in beauty contests. I believe it’s empowering for women. Indo-European people were always relatively feminist, with a significant interlude of Middle Eastern influence with Christianity. But, if I were in a position of power in Afghanistan, I would be defying a very traditional and cherished set of customs that predate Islam and civilization itself.
I would be a hapless villain. The Koreans in Afghanistan who are being mercilessly killed as we speak receive my unqualified sympathy and I wish the best for them. They were, however, with the best of intentions and the softest of manners, committing a grave act of sociocultural imperialism on a nation ruled by a generally secular puppet.
As for ‘1 or 2’s point about our economic interests in Iraq - I have a principled respect for the sovereignty of ethnic nationality. I demand that my nationality - White American, be sovereign and independent, to enjoy its way of life and pursue its destiny. With the same principle in hand, no pile of coins makes it right to compromise the sovereignty of others, even if we can get away with it, and even if we have good intentions.
There are times when it’s appropriate to violate this sovereignty. It’s right to stop genocide. It’s right to help depose dictators who instigate multiple wars against their neighboring states (Saddam). I’m not going to hesitate to claim that America is being wrong when it’s imposing Western values in the Middle East (and not just democracy, either).
This is my nation. I am loyal to it until the death. I will not, however, condone, abide, or “respect” a foreign policy that is socioculturally imperialist. I can’t tell if I’m crude or not, because of the subjective nature of that insult. I thought I was being pretty principled, respectful, and grammatically neat. I can tell you that I was not being anti-American, that I deserve an apology for being accused of being anti-American, and that I as a former soldier in the United States Army have our national interests and our national security foremost in my thoughts and (secular) prayers.
I find myself in broad agreement with Realist about the quality of American moral culpability in Iraq (negligent to reckless). I think Japan is a useful paradigm for the problem of democracy in Iraq in the limited sense that it helps us begin to think clearly about the problem. As we shall see the problem is as much an American vacuum of values as it is a febrile Islamic psychosis.
Indigenous populist values in Japan in 1945 would not have supported a western style democracy. The allies brought Japan to its knees militarily and then proceeded with a unique pedagougically-enriched occupation that ambitiously and transparently sought to impose superior western values. (The Japanese, having been beaten to a geopolitical pulp, were in a mood to listen).
MacArthur introduced the Japanese to the rights of labor, the rights of women, and the rudiments of due process. The Japanese, not being Muslims, took copious notes, did diligent homework, and internalized these values acceptably if not invaraibly enthusiastically (Taylor reports that women are still commonly groped on subways signaling limits to MacArthur’s success). In 1945 America was a self-confident white society. No reasonable man in striking distance of high civil or military authority would have questioned for a moment that we were in possession of truths that that Japanese needed to absorb, at bayonet point if necessary.
Thus, my objection to Bush is that his hubris is hollow. Democracy is an effective hedge against certain forms of parasitism and is usually structurally preferable to the known alternatives. But democracy as such is value-neutral. To impose western structures without inculcating core western values is to throw away the lives of our soldiers. The problem is that our world is, to coin a phrase, inverted. 60 years after MacArthur no man (or woman, or hybrid) within striking distance of high civil authority would dare to dream that we are in possession of truths we should impose or that western values are in fact superior.
Israel is nothing if not a value-rich democracy—and I will nod in the direction of the apartheid issue, saving it for another debate. The monstrocity we have created in Iraq (and in Afghanistan) is: rule of the crazy many. We have created these monstrocities because we no longer retain the confidence to distinguish sanity from insanity and we have not yet attained the humility to forbear interference. In policy we are as aggressive as our grandfathers (out of habit and momentum) yet without the sense of purpose that justified—even occasionally sanctified—their aggressiveness.
Out cheerleader-in-chief has launched a war on the bedrock principle of “up with people”. The incoherent leads the spineless into the serbonian bog.
“My more noble instincts left me, and I will respond to the second assertion that I am crude and anti-American. After this one last clarifying response, I will respectfully bow out.”
Suck it up Wik! Heck, if I ran away every time someone challenged my beliefs or called me a name, I’d have to hide myself in a closet. I work construction and enduring daily verbal attacks are part of the job. If Realist called me a crude anti-American and I knew, in fact, I wasn’t, I’d be mildly amused, not personally offended!
As for the reason we’re in Iraq, I still believe it’s all about oil. After no WMD was found, Bush and his handlers had to come up with another phony reason to continue the military campaign. So they started to chant: we are trying to spead democracy in the middle east! LOL! That is only propaganda designed to disguise the real reason. If Bush came out and told the truth and said: we need to invade Iraq because Saddam and his regime are a threat to our economy, it wouldn’t sell politically….the anti-White leftists would have a field day with that reason. But he instead proclaims: it’s for the benevolent reason to depose a brutal dictator and spead democracy to the oppressed CHILDREN of Iraq. That way, he sells it as morally justifiable. This sales pitch is driving the anti-White leftists crazy.
That said, it IS imperative that America clean out that rat nest in the middle-east or we will surly live to regret it.
The bottom line is: if we don’t have strong influence on the politics in the middle east…China, Russia, or the radical Islamists will. Take your pick.
To The Realist, regarding:
“However tired we may grow of politicians droning on about democracy, though, we have to admit it is a desirable thing if it can be reconciled with the main duties of the state. People naturally want to have some say in how their government is run, and they don’t want to have to submit to the rule of lunatics like Saddam. So I don’t see why people would be surprised that Iraqis wanted democracy.”
I agree with you here almost in totality, in fact any disagreements I might have with your well reasoned positions here, are so minor that they are not worth mentioning. It would be akin to arguing with you about the positives and negatives, of Pepsi and Coke.
Democracy isn’t without its problems but as you wisely point out, it does offer people an alternative to total tyranny. As many problems as the USA has, particularly through our own elected political “elites,” how much worse would the situation be if they did not have to face us every: 2, 4, and 6 years? Just imagine the insane hellhole this country would be, if someone like El Presidente or Comrade Clinton had the job for life once “elected,” along with the same deal for the US Senators and Congressmen currently holding office; just think about an entire government that ran as the US Supreme Court does in its own Constitutionally mandated bailiwick? It would not be a question of decades or even years as to when we became a white minority country, but of months at best. In all honesty, we would probably already have 500 million or a billion nonwhites in this country, if the “elites” were totally unchecked! That is the saving grace of democracy for all its faults, it does allow “the people” to have some say when election time hits, even if it’s a choice between simply being “screwed” over a harsh sandpaper sodomizing.
That however, is a flaw in the “two party democracy” we have, not in this form of government in general; moreover, “the people” themselves are in a great part responsible for this. Elections in the USA, have become something akin to a cross between football games and popularity contests. Is it my “team” or yours; is it time to switch “teams” now that my team is apparently going to the dogs and not “delivering?” Heck, at best that analogy is crudely optimistic, since most Americans care more about their favorite sports teams and show more loyalty to them, then they do to any particular socioeconomic or political position. Or put another way, America’s socioeconomic and political problems, have more to do with angry apathy becoming enraged apathy periodically, depending on how the price of gas or other consumer items’ availability is seen as being impacted in the moment. The “big picture,” often is rarely thoughtfully considered by more than a tiny minority, regardless of political orientation.
That is in a large part why Iraqi “democracy” is most likely doomed to fail; as a “country” they may want it and passionately so, but as: Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds, they want “democracy” only for themselves. As was the case with South Africa, American style “democracy” by way of “one man, one vote” will never work in Iraq. Too many grudges, power concerns, and all the other myths ignored by multiculturalism as “conceptualized” by Western elitists to be overcome, period.
I bring South Africa up here for two reasons, but both of these reasons revolve around a single word, Apartheid. South Africa was run successfully through Apartheid from the end of World War II up to the 1990s. A country approximately 18% white, sustained a country as recognizably Western and thriving, through admitting that a majority of nonwhites (approximately 82%) were in need of social controls and political limitations. Yes, in many a way “repressive” to nonwhites, but certainly better for all concerned than the failed “model” of the “decolonized” continent it hung at the south end of. Yet today, we are to believe that, the “New South Africa” is a better place because “democracy” that is “nonracial” has been imposed there through one party “governance” by the ANC; this all of course being brought into being by the stupidity of Americans and other Europeans/Westerners insisting on “democracy” as a “social justice” entry into a social “welfare” model of government, as being universally “acceptable.”
That is not how the world works, and a country such as Iraq is never going to be a “model democracy” regardless of what we do there. The 60% Shiites, will dominate the system and “legally” restrict and rob from the 30% Sunni as best they can and we leave them able to do? If not, perhaps, the Sunnis will “democratically” regain control of the country?
Either way, I would not want to be a Kurd!
Yep, under Saddam Apartheid and worse ran Iraq, but they at least “got it.”
So what of the USA, with its “democracy” of 200 million whites and 100 million nonwhites?
Where are we going?
Apartheid at best!
As you note Realist:
“Preserving democracy and rights ought not to be the ultimate goal of a state; rather, inculcating civilization and advancing the interests of an ethnic group ought to be. If democracy conflicts with these goals, it is legitimate to suspend it.”
I agree with that 100%, under the wise methods and goals of Apartheid. Total separation as best can be achieved between the races in hierarchy, while being enforced through a Western dominated construct of peaceful coexistence. That would be without, the absurd constructs of either “equality” or “egalitarianism” racially.
If not, God help us all?
1 or 2,
While I admire your courage and am enthralled by your bold take-no-prisoners approach to co-worker communications, it’s not about my feelings. It’s about respecting his forum and realizing that I’m debating against what he’s trying to accomplish. I wish him the best of luck in what appears to be a spirited attempt to mainstream white racial consciousness.
Wikitopian,
Now that you have explained what you meant in more detail, I no longer think you’re crudely anti-American. I will always be grateful for thoughtful comments like your last two. I haven’t responded to your comment of yesterday yet because your point is so powerful that I really want to think before I do so. Also, I just moved to a new condo and am busy with getting settled there. I hope to find time later today for further comments on this thread.
Wikitopian,
You talk about the US imposing the Western way of life on the Middle East through sociocultural imperialism. I wonder the extent to which that’s true. Surely, the US army isn’t forcing the Afghans to hold beauty pageants—if they’re doing that, how can you blame it on the US imperialism rather than the Afghans’ voluntary embrace of Western values? So I think you should be clearer about what you mean by sociocultural imperialism and give better evidence why you think Western values are being imposed on the Middle East, instead of chosen by Middle Easterners themselves.
I understand why a reasonable person would support, in the abstract, those who resist the spread of Western values—there is certainly much to dislike about them. However, at the same time you say you support US military action to depose dictators who instigate wars and genocide. If the Iraqi insurgents succeed in overthrowing the current government, what do you think you’re going to get? Probably someone like Ahmadinejad, who is highly favorable to wars and genocide. So while the abstract ideal of resistance to the West is attractive, the reality will likely not prove to be so.
By the way, your own words on the conditions under which US military action is justified suggest that you would be favorable to deposing the Iranian government before they make good on their threats to wipe Israel off the map. Is that your view?
Ajo,
Noam Chomsky has said that every American president since WWII should be impeached because “they’ve all been either outright war criminals or involved in serious war crimes.” He’s also called America “the world’s greatest terrorist state.” (The quotes come from David Horowitz’s The Professors, pp. 84-88.) As I demonstrated in the article, he has no problem equating the US with Nazi Germany.
Cindy Sheehan has said that everyone who has died in Iraq has been “murdered by the Bush crime family” and that “Our country has been overtaken by murderous thugs … gangsters who lust after fortunes and power” (much more here at The Quotable Cindy Sheehan).
And Justin Raimondo is one of the primary purveyors of the theory that Israel was behind 9/11:
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=7127
Is there really anything to be gained from defending these ranters?
Buchanan is a more complex case, whom I hope to deal with soon.
Realist -
Your specific points to ajo are well taken.
I will be interested in your take on Buchanan, a brilliant & fearless race realist who has risen to closely advise two U.S. Presidents. (Brilliance & fearlessness are not to be equated with infallibility on faith & morals). A unique & complex case indeed.
Here’s what I find to be interesting about the debate: 30-40 years ago the left was profoundly alienated by American policy & society and reflexively opposed the projection of US power. Many on the right, possibly including Wiktopian, certainly including Buchanan, now find themselves in a position of even deeper alienation. American power domestically is often exercised unwisely & unjustly (I do not include routine operations such as the enforcement of traffic laws which were tolerably administered in Nazi Germany). American society appears to elevate debased values. It might be rationally regarded as distasteful to see oppressive power and debased values projected around the globe. There has been an ideological role reversal. The American Spectator (though they deployed a rightist vocabulary) preferred bloodthirsty Serbs to Clinton, much in the way generations of leftists romanticized Castro. The centre of gravity on the race-realist right has been moving against the projection of American power ever since.
Here’s the challenge to Realist: he conscientously documents the fact that racial policy has been at the centre of a dramatic decline in the practical quality of life for middle class whites over the last 50 years. Whites have been raped, robbed, displaced & denounced. White heritage has been despoiled. Black depravity pollutes popular culture. This didn’t happen because blacks won a war with whites; it didn’t happen because whites voluntarily accepted black values and abandoned their own. It happened because of the massive intervention of federal power. That power has been democratically unaccountable (nested in the judiciary as well as the bureaucracy). It has been unprecedented in its reach and in its ruthlessness. It has trampled objective standards, free speech, the rights of property and the rights of labour.
On the issue of racial policy (and immigration) it is tempting to conclude that something more sinister than “misplaced idealism” explains a consistently anti-white agenda. How does one convincingly make the case that such a pervasively corrupt government is a responsible global steward?
I don’t think US troops are occupying Nazis, or insurgents are wolverines. But I think the United States government is fundementally corrupt. I don’t see Realist avoiding or evading that conclusion and I am forced ultimately to respect the views of small “r” realists like Wiktopian. Why should the corruption stop at our borders?
A brilliant piece.
And regardless of later qualifications or evasions, if someone who eagerly advocates a humiliating and shattering defeat for his own nation at war is not unpatriotic, than the word “unpatriotic” is meaningless.
“Patriots” were American men and women who turned against their imperial government that no longer represented their country and their nationality. The word you’re thinking of is “jingoism”, Irish. The jingoist defines PATRIOT as Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism. The jingoist defines a just war as any war our government happens to be engaged in.
Perhaps, Irish, you should watch the 2000 movie The Patriot in which a terrorist insurgent played by Mel Gibson engages in the 18th century equivalent of planting IEDs against his own government!
The tagline of the movie is actually a bit haunting, Irish, and it fills me with dread for our men and women in uniform who may soon be deployed to Iran…
“What would you do if they destroyed your home, threatened your family. Where would you draw the line?”
To Realist regarding Iran: If we know where they are creating nuclear weaponry, then we can engage in special operations to debilitate that particular operation. We can’t afford to invade another nation-state larger than Texas on a prospecting mission for weaponry. The best way to disable their military technology is to disable their military technology. The best way to stop demagogues from capitalizing on anxiety about American imperialism is to stop being imperialist.
P.S. I have a passionate love of America, Americans, and our brave men and women in uniform - and nobody has the right to deny me that because I have a different position on geopolitics.
Wikitopian, not even von Stauffenberg, revered by modern-day Germans as a patriot, and who planted an “IED” against his own nation’s head of state and head of government, was eagerly rooting for his country’s defeat and for it to be “taught a lesson” by its enemies, even though he believed that the war it was embroiled in was a catastrophic error.
Irish,
I believe we are engaging in imperialism and I hope we fail at that exercise. Rather than engaging the merit or lack of merit of that position, you accuse me of being unpatriotic. When I offer one of countless examples of patriotism existing independently of obedience and fealty to the governing body, you seem to imply that von Stauffenberg wanted Hitler’s ideological and imperialist objectives to continue unabated. I’m sorry, but I missed the point.
At what point does it stop for you, Irish? Sure, there’s plenty of room for discussion in this war. But what about if they trump up WMD accusations in Iran and invade? If America sets the objective of conquering Iran and deposing Ahmadinejad, will you hope we accomplish that objective merely because it is our objective? According to your logic, you will. According to your logic, if the Commander in Chief made an executive decision to slap an old lady, it would be unpatriotic to stop his hand.
Yeah. That’s pretty silly. It’s also pretty silly for adults engaged in a debate to resort to name-calling when they disagree with their opponent.
Wikitopian, in response to your gross and slanderous comparison of our government and our system with that of the Nazis, one that is at the heart of the anti-white myth, I pointed out that even then, the great anti-Nazi hero did not wish a humiliating and crushing defeat on his own country. You continue to obfuscate, filibuster, and rationalize your lack of patriotism, and thus I lose interest in continued engagement.
To Wikitopian, regarding:
“To Realist regarding Iran: If we know where they are creating nuclear weaponry, then we can engage in special operations to debilitate that particular operation. We can’t afford to invade another nation-state larger than Texas on a prospecting mission for weaponry. The best way to disable their military technology is to disable their military technology. The best way to stop demagogues from capitalizing on anxiety about American imperialism is to stop being imperialist.”
Indeed and amen from me!
If the kooks in Iran want to play this game, why not give them what we gave Japan in 1945? For that matter, an irradiated example of what comes of “messing with the West,” would serve the whole region well, in the long run. Mecca and Medina as hostages against terrorism from that point on, would be more than “real” to the backward bastards.
If not, then let logic take you to the next point!
If Mecca and Medina are suddenly radioactive craters, what are they fighting for afterwards?
Certainly not “paradise” and “72 virgins,” to be sure!
Not to distract the conversation from the important debate about whether or not I’m a patriot, but I think I failed to draw a distinction early on that would have probably saved me a lot of the grief I’ve brought on myself by being unclear.
I agree with Realist that the Left has reached their anti-war position from the same vile “Whites as Cancer” anti-authoritarian social Marxist Frankfurt School cauldron that the Vietnamese anti-war movement slithered out of. I feel compelled to support this war just to oppose Kennedy, Pelosi, and Moore.
But national sovereignty is a lodestar of my geopolitical and public policy perspective. Social Marxists contend that national identity, race, and even gender identity are social constructs - impediments to appreciating the equality of every human in the eyes of God(or self-appointed social engineering demigods). While nobody can believe the gender nonsense anymore and fewer people are (actually) believing the racial equality nonsense, we still are largely captivated by their denial of nationality as a natural and important determinant of human behavior.
Iraq was an affront to nationalism from the beginning, a chimera fused together by the British. Saddam Hussein not only defied the national sovereignty of the Kurds and Shiites, he threatened the sovereignty of his Arab, Turkish, and Persian neighbors as well. Deposing him was the right thing to do, for a panoply of reasons. But if we’re just going to replace Saddam’s oppressive police state straddling competing nationalities with our own Western-themed police state straddling competing nationalities then we’ve lost sight of our mission.
It appears that people are starting to take the tri-state confederation proposal seriously. National identity is a powerful dividing force AND a powerful uniting force. The success of an Iraqi partition will be nothing short of magic. The Kurds, Shiites, and Sunnis all governed by themselves in their homeland would be a beautiful sight, and we would truly be liberators if we ever get around to facilitating that proposal.
Maybe some White Americans will see the rejoicing Kurds and remember how nice it was when they had sovereign control of their own government and way of life. Maybe we’ll have a government that I can be indubitably “patriotic” about.
“If Mecca and Medina are suddenly radioactive craters, what are they fighting for afterwards?
Certainly not “paradise” and “72 virgins,” to be sure!”
By John PM on 8/15/07 at 6:34 am
72 virgins? Not so!
Abu al-Zarqawi died,
George Washington met him at the Pearly Gates. He slapped him across the face and yelled, “How dare you try to destroy the nation I helped conceive!”
Patrick Henry approached, punched him in the nose and shouted, “You wanted to end our liberties but you failed!”
James Madison followed, kicked him in the groin and said, “This is why I allowed our government to provide for the common defense!”
Thomas Jefferson was next, beat al-Zarqawi with a long cane and snarled “It was Evil men like you who inspired me to write the Declaration of Independence.”
The beatings and thrashings continued as George Mason, James Monroe and 66 other early Americans unleashed their anger on the terrorist Leader.
As al-Zarqawi lay bleeding and in pain, an Angel appeared. Al-Zarqawi wept and said, “This is not what you promised me.”
The Angel replied, “I told you there would be 72 Virginians waiting for you in Heaven. What did you think I said?”
To 1 or 2, regarding:
“As al-Zarqawi lay bleeding and in pain, an Angel appeared. Al-Zarqawi wept and said,
‘This is not what you promised me.’
The Angel replied, ‘I told you there would be 72 Virginians waiting for you in Heaven. What did you think I said?’”
Good one, thank you sincerely for a much needed and appreciated burst of laughter,
John PM!!!
If the Left is campaigning to destroy our military and lose the War on Terror with a whirlwind of rhetoric, criticism, and biased coverage - then they’re behind the curve. The best way to destroy our military is to shamelessly exploit the Guard and Reserves in a quixotic campaign that long ago expanded from merely deposing a rogue dictator to one of imposing democracy, secularism, gender equity, and corporate franchises on Muslim civilians.
I watched the movie “Red Dawn” recently, a movie I had enjoyed long before. For all of my respect for our soldiers, the Iraqi insurgents really are the Wolverines. If the USSR or Iran invaded America and was establishing a puppet regime, I would blend with civilians. I would set up roadside bombs for the Soviets. I would dance and laugh if one of my comrades flew a plane into the Kremlin.
Watch the movie “300” and ask yourself whether our American military looks more like the Trojans or the Persians. We are the Persians. We are the sinister multinational multicultural empire expanding its reach over fiesty and fiercely nationalist populations. It’s enough to genuinely make me wretch how far America has strayed from its nationalist, isolationist, and racial ideals.
I hope we lose the war on Islam in Arabia. I hope we leave Iraq with a welp of humiliation severe enough to dissuade us from any similar adventures. The only lasting solution for conflicting Arab and Western Worlds is a “two world” solution in which we genuinely and sincerely respect their national identity and sovereignty - and expect them to respect ours.