[Peace-discuss] Fwd: [Illinois4Kucinich] Racism, War and Occupation

[Linda Evans]

Forwarded email from a Kucinich list...

> 
> The story of American occupation is the story of
> America,
> starting with Columbus in 1492, who built a fort on
> an
> island which he named Hispaniola (latter day
> Haiti/Dominican
> Republic), which he visited after kidnapping Arawak
> communalists from the Bahamas because they made the
> mistake
> of not having iron age weapons, being friendly, and
> wearing
> gold earrings.  they led him first to Cuba, then to 
> a chief
> on Hispaniola who gave him a gold mask.  Navidad
> (named
> after the birthday of the Prince of Peace) was the
> first
> European military base in the Western Hemisphere. 
> Columbus
> thought he had reached Asia, and reported to King
> Ferdinand
> and Queen Isabella that he had discovered the ocean
> route to
> China (which most educated men in the 15th century
> believed
> exists on a spherical Earth), and "many wide rivers
> the
> majority of which contain gold."  He returned to the
> New
> World with 17  ships and 1,200 men to obtain slaves
> and
> gold.  The men left at Fort Navidad had already
> gotten
> themselves killed by formerly friendly natives.  
> This
> handful of European invaders had forced the Arawaks
> to
> defend themselves against brutal, wanton expeditions
> of rape
> and plunder.  Within 2 years, half of the 250.000
> aboriginal
> inhabitants of Hispaniola were dead.  By 1650, none
> of them,
> or their descendants were left on the island.  Their
> story
> was told by a missionary priest named Las Casas, who
> arrived
> in 1508 to write his "History of the Indies."  The
> Aztecs of
> Mexico, the Incas of Peru, and the Powhatans and
> Pequots of
> Virginia and Massachusetts met with the same fate.
> 
> Columbus, Cortez and Pizarro were early
> practitioners of
> modern state terrorism, which is the mass murder of
> defenseless populations to strike terror into their
> hearts
> and minds, thereby paralyzing their will to resist
> through
> the perpetration of random frightful, profoundly
> immoral,
> unspeakable deeds, while at the same time
> exterminating them
> to prepare the way for civilization.  Occupation is
> often
> accompanied by genocide, and always by racism, to
> ensure
> that the victims are not really human and therefore
> expendable.  Unlike the Spaniards, who often
> intermarried
> with the natives, eventually to establish a balance
> of
> Settler/Native domination, the Pilgrims of New
> England and
> the Virginia settlers brought their own women with
> them, or
> sent for them later, and were therefore determined
> to remove
> the natives entirely from the face of the earth.  In
> doing
> so, they established their original "Civil Rights"
> to the
> occupied territory, precisely because they had
> conquered and
> subdued it.  The conquest of the west was always
> preceded by
> military occupation.  America was occupied by
> millions of
> people prior to the advent of the white man, in some
> places
> as densely populated as Europe.  The Puritans were
> fleeing
> religious persecution.  Many of the people who came
> to the
> new world were dumped directly out of overcrowded
> European
> prisons, where they had been incarcerated for debts
> or
> simply for poverty.  Many more came as indentured
> servants,
> to work under the most brutal conditions imaginable
> for many
> years to pay off the price of their voyage.  The
> vast
> majority of Americans were fleeing from the brutal
> aristocracy of Europe, which also transplanted
> itself to the
> New World.  Millions were kidnapped from Africa,
> brought to
> the land of the free on slave ships, then sold into
> slavery
> to plant cotton, tobacco, and other crops suitable
> to slave
> labor.  "Go West, young man, go west!" cried Horatio
> Algier,
> and west they went, all who could escape, because
> their
> condition under the transplanted aristocrats was
> more
> frightening than doing battle with the Indians, at
> 10 to 1
> odds and with reluctant help from the rulers of the
> Eastern
> States, who were forced to pay for the military
> occupation.
> In return, the bosses back East received almost
> total access
> to the land and natural resources of the occupied
> territories, beginning with the "Louisiana Purchase"
> of
> Thomas Jefferson, which extended the military
> occupation of
> North America all the way to the Rocky Mountains.
> Ostensibly purchased from France, this territory
> remained
> yet to be seized from the Native Americans through
> military
> occupation, whereas the French had merely traded
> with the
> Indians.
> 
> The War of 1812, which was primarily fought for the
> purpose
> of occupying Florida, Canada, and Indian Territory
> (all of
> which the American federal government had promised
> to the
> aborigines, to live in unmolested for "as long as
> the grass
> grows and the water runs.)  Andrew Jackson, who
> murdered so
> many Indians they gave him the name "Sharp Knife,"
> emerged
> from the Battle of Horseshoe Bend a national
> military hero,
> and immediately dictated a treaty which gave him
> personal
> ownership of huge tracts of Creek Indian land, and
> spent the
> next ten years (1814-1824) conducting the military
> occupation of Alabama (a Creek name meaning "here we
> rest"),
> Florida (over which he became governor), Tennessee,
> Georgia,
> Mississippi, Kentucky and North Carolina.  Elected
> President
> in 1828, Jackson initiated the Indian Removal Bill,
> which
> forced 70,000 Native Americans to move west of the
> Mississippi.  The Sac and Fox Indians were forcibly
> removed
> by the military from Illinois, thereby providing the
> "Land
> of Lincoln"  for industrialization and commerce,
> population
> growth, commerce, farming, railroads, land
> speculation, in
> short, for civilization.  Indians and settlers, who
> otherwise might strike up friendly relationships,
> had to be
> kept separated from each other to permit the
> occupation to
> proceed unchecked.  Even the Cherokees, who had
> adapted to
> the white man's ways by inventing their own written
> language, taking up agriculture and becoming
> artisans and
> tradesmen, manufacturers and entrepreneurs,  buying
> and
> selling with the best, were forced onto the "Trail
> of Tears"
> in 1838 by four thousand militia and five regiments
> of
> soldiers.  On the march westward, four thousand
> Cherokees
> died from exposure, cholera, and starvation.
> 
> In 1846, President James Polk ordered General
> Zachary Taylor
> (who later succeeded Polk as President) to proceed
> immediately with the occupation of Mexico.  Taylor
> proceeded
> immediately with his entire command to occupy
> positions
> along the Rio Grande river all the way to the
> western border
> of Texas.  The border of Mexico officially
> recognized under
> treaty by the United States was the Nueces River,
> 150 miles
> north of Taylor's occupation troops.  This
> occupation, which
> provoked the Mexican/American War, led to the
> conquest of
> half of Mexico's territory, and the acquisition of
> New
> Mexico and California, along with the southern chunk
> of
> Texas.  It is particularly instructive because it
> was widely
> recognized as simple conquest, although presented by
> President Polk as "self defense," as though Mexico
> had been
> the aggressor.  Of course, President Polk's
> Democratic
> majority in the House immediately rubber stamped his
> claim
> that Mexico had started the war, as President Bush's
> Republican majority in the House rubber stamped his
> claims
> that Saddam Hussein had provoked an American
> invasion of
> Iraq.  As the Democrats did for Mr. Bush, so did the
> Whigs
> for Mr. Polk, accepting a massive compilation of
> outright
> lies and prevarication without even examining the
> documentation.  When Abraham Lincoln was elected  to
> the
> House in 1846, he challenged Polk to specify the
> exact spot
> where American blood was shed by belligerent Mexican
> armed
> force on American soil.  Today, Representative
> Dennis
> Kucinich still challenges the Bush Administration to
> provide
> one shred of evidence that Saddam Hussein was
> harboring any
> massive weapons of mass destruction program.
> 
> Andrew "Sharp Knife" Jackson was the first American
> President to master the language of Liberal reform.
> Americans were beginning to rebel, demanding that
> poor white
> men be allowed to vote, and organizing conspiracies
> in
> restraint of manufacture and trade, otherwise known
> as labor
> unions, which invaded the right of an individual
> working man
> to contract freely with his employer, thereby
> selling
> himself into wage slavery.  Above all, unions
> violated the
> iron rule of private property which had been
> established by
> the founding fathers.  Workers were crowding their
> entire
> families into one room apartments, in neighborhoods
> without
> garbage collection or sewage.  Whole families down
> to the
> youngest children worked from dawn until dusk, seven
> days
> per week, 12 or more hours per day, merely to earn
> enough
> money to pay for the barest possible sustenance. 
> Today, we
> face a ruling elite which looks fondly back on the
> days when
> we could be forced to work under such conditions,
> and at any
> rate has access to workers who will work like that
> throughout the world.  The military occupation of
> South
> Korea is a modern example, where American troops
> still
> defend the demilitarized zone while the South Korean
> Army
> can easily be called upon to crush strikes and
> student
> rebellions.  When faced with rebellious workers or
> slaves,
> it is always necessary for the rulers to start
> another war,
> begin another occupation, or provide barely enough
> reform to
> buy off some of the people while pacifying the rest.
> Jackson clearly defined the modern two-party system,
> which
> provides a "lesser of two evils" choice in terms of
> minimal
> reforms whenever the potential for rebellion makes
> it
> necessary.  Both parties always support the proposed
> war and
> occupation, thereby destroying internal dissent
> through
> patriotism, repression, and distributing some of the
> acquired booty to American workers, although the
> primary
> benefactors are American corporations.
> 
> The closing of the frontier ushered in the age of
> imperialism (after internal squabbles regarding who
> would
> control slave labor in what fashion were settled in
> terms of
> Civil War), and the U.S. waged unprovoked warfare to
> conquer
> Cuba.  The war against Spain was actually fought to
> establish American military dominance over the
> Caribbean,
> Puerto Rico, Central and South Americas, (originally
> known
> as ""The Monroe Doctrine, but later subsumed under
> "The Open
> Door Policy"), Hawaii, Wake Island, Guam, and the
> Philippines.  This established a far flung forward
> presence
> of American military bases (which is exactly what is
> currently sought through the American occupation if
> Iraq)
> which enabled most of the 103 military incursions of
> by
> American Troops throughout the 19th Century. 
> American
> troops landed in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1852; in
> Japan,
> Ryukyu, Okinawa and Bonin Islands in 1853; San Juan
> del
> Norte, Nicaragua in 1854; Montevideo, Uruguay in
> 1859;
> Shanghai, China in 1859; Kissembo, Angola in 1860;
> Hawaii in
> 1883; and Bluefields, Nicaragua in 1894.  Always,
> American
> armed forces are used to protect American commercial
> or
> manufacturing interests, or the control of American
> companies over the natural resources of other
> countries such
> as oil, natural gas, bauxite, gold or diamonds. 
> Usually,
> these interests are threatened by rebellious
> workers,
> slaves, or nationalists who want control over their
> own
> country.
> 
> However, throughout the 19th Century Great Britain
> had
> dominated the seas, and "the sun never set on the
> British
> Empire."  This was largely accomplished through
> direct
> military occupation, over such countries as China
> and India,
> although Imperialism has many forms and has never
> been a
> conspiracy, as such.  Just prior to World War I
> America
> faced the largest internal rebellion of Socialists,
> workers,
> farmers, muckrakers, and reformers in its history.
> Theodore
> Roosevelt (another Indian fighter turned Populist
> President,
> like Andrew Jackson) had commented, "What we really
> need is
> a good war."  That war was fought to determine how
> European
> Imperialists would divide and conquer the world,
> which is
> precisely the subject over which they had fallen
> out.  Who
> would get what in Africa was a large part of it. 
> The world
> powers took a short break to replenish their
> depleted
> manpower, then resumed fighting with World War II. 
> Emerging
> almost unscathed from World War II, but once again
> facing a
> massive potential for unrest if American fighting
> men came
> home to high unemployment and another Depression,
> America
> undertook to rebuild Europe, provide free college
> education
> to the G.I.'s, and inherited the former British
> Empire.  We
> then experienced an extended period of prosperity,
> during
> which our military continued occupying other
> countries
> whenever American business interests were
> threatened, while
> our bosses continued to throw some of the wealth
> they were
> stealing to the rest of us.
> 
> The American occupation of Iraq is designed to
> continue
> these policies indefinitely into the future,
> providing
> uninterrupted access to Middle East Oil.  This is
> the real
> reason the Islamic fundamentalists hate us, although
> this
> hatred is brought to a white heat by the propaganda
> of their
> rulers, who also must deal with millions of homeless
> Palestinians with whom they are also unwilling to
> share
> anything.  Because of the continued American
> occupation of
> Iraq, the world is beginning to slide down the
> slippery
> slope into nuclear war.  At some point, the trend
> will
> become irreversible.  America and the world need an
> American
> President who will use our brains, wealth, and
> influence to
> seek peace.  Kucinich is the only peace candidate. 
> All of
> the others vow to continue the occupation of Iraq. 
> As in
> all of our other wars, they only pretend to do it in
> the
> name of peace and democracy.
> 
> "Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory
> for
> humanity"
>                                               Horace
> Mann
> 
> Timothy Beushausen
> http://kucinich.us


=====
"There are some things you need just to stay alive:  food, water, a place to live, clothes to keep warm, help when you are ill or injured... Peace is having the things you need."  (Peace Begins with You by Katherine Scholes, children's book)






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