[Peace-discuss] Pat Buchanan on imperialism

[C. G. Estabrook]

[Many people on this list are not enamored of aspects of Buchanan's
politics, but in the appended column he says some things more clearly than
many on the soi-disant Left. (I have in mind primarily those who think the
Democrats will save us.)  My praise is not unqualified: native Americans
and others may think the US empire began before 1898; and I'm not happy
with calling either McKinley or Bush "well-intentioned"...  --CGE]

Imperial wars, then & now
Posted: August 13, 2003
1:00 a.m. Eastern

© 2003 Creators Syndicate, Inc.

Having found neither weapons of mass destruction nor a link to 9-11, the
White House has retreated into its fallback position. It now defends
Operation Iraqi Freedom as a necessary war to rid the Middle East of a
brutal dictatorship and replace it with a democracy.

That is, this was a war of democratic imperialism, as some of us said all
along. The neocons exploited America's rage after 9-11 and steered the
president into invading Iraq, in order to reshape its political system and
redirect its foreign policy. Imperialism, pure and simple.

Ahmed Chalabi was the puppet preselected to run the colony.

Now, we are mired in a guerrilla war, with daily dead and wounded, costing
$1 billion a week, with no exit strategy and no end in sight.

Yet, it is not the first time a U.S. president, elected on an
anti-interventionist platform, was steered into an imperial war, after
absorbing a stunning, shocking blow to the nation.

On Feb. 15, 1898, the battleship Maine blew up in Havana harbor, killing
268 sailors. This perceived Spanish atrocity, almost surely an accident,
was seized upon by Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge and Assistant Secretary of the
Navy Theodore Roosevelt to bully President McKinley into calling for a war
with Spain for which they had long planned.

In "First Great Triumph: How Five Americans Made Their Country a World
Power," ex-ambassador Warren Zimmerman tells the compelling story of how
America first became an empire.

Anticipating war, T.R., on the navy secretary's day off, wired Commodore
Dewey, commander of the Pacific squadron, to prepare to attack the Spanish
fleet. As soon as war was declared, Dewey sailed for Manila Bay, caught
the Spanish ships in the harbor and sank or burned all seven, losing but a
single man.

The U.S. North Atlantic Squadron did the same to the Spanish fleet sent to
protect Cuba. The Spanish warships were bottled up in Santiago harbor by
U.S. battleships with superior firepower. In a heroic but doomed breakout
on July 3, 1898, every Spanish ship was scuttled or sunk. Madrid
surrendered.

After our "splendid little war," a ferocious debate erupted. It was
between T.R.-Lodge imperialists -- who believed that for America to be
secure in a world of empires, she must become an empire and annex the
Philippines -- and anti-imperialists, or "goo-goos," who wanted to give
the Filipinos their independence.

Arguments for and against annexation were both strategic and racist. Said
industrialist Andrew Carnegie, "As long as we remain free from distant
possessions, we are impregnable against serious attack."

Added progressive Carl Schurz, "Show me a single instance of the
successful establishment and peaceable maintenance for a respectable
period of republican institutions, based upon popular self-government,
under a tropical sun."

McKinley had promised Schurz, "You may be sure there will be no jingo
nonsense in my administration." But he was won over by the imperialists.
He ordered the Army to occupy Manila and crush Filipino rebels, who were
stunned to discover their liberators had decided to replace their former
colonial masters.

For three years, U.S. soldiers and Marines fought, with 4,000 dying in
combat, several times as many as had been lost in Cuba. Filipino combat
losses were 20,000 with 200,000 civilian dead, many of disease. Yet, a
recent New York Times Almanac does not even list the Filipino insurrection
as a major U.S. conflict.

Was it worth it -- annexing the Philippines?

In the war to secure the islands, atrocities were committed on both sides,
and as a result of that war, we became ensnared in the great power
politics of Asia, out of which came Pearl Harbor, World War II, Korea and
Vietnam. By annexing the islands, writes Zimmermann, America "took on a
security commitment in Asia that it found difficult to defend. In the
Philippine case, the founders of American imperialism may have made a
costly mistake."

One year after the war to avenge the sinking of the Maine in Havana, we
were in an imperial war 10,000 miles away. Now, two years after Sept. 11,
we are fighting a guerrilla war in a nation 6,000 miles away, that had
nothing to do with 9-11.

President Bush was misled about what to expect when Baghdad fell. And
those who misled him now reassure him that our occupation is going well
and we are mopping up the resistance.

Perhaps. But, like William McKinley, George Bush may prove to be a
well-intentioned president who embroiled us in decades of wars in a part
of the world that was never vital to America.

***