[Peace-discuss] Major truth, completed

[C. G. Estabrook]

Yeah, I think the Kauffman book, just out, is important, and not just to get the 
history straight: it broadens the notion of whom we should be trying to talk to 
and organize.

Kauffman's been saying this for a while, as have others, and a site like 
antiwar.com is as good or better than any liberal site in being (as they say) 
antiwar.  (That's why there's a certain trade-off between that site and, say, 
Counterpunch.org -- and why the echt liberal, the awful Eric Alterman, calls 
Alex Cockburn [of Counterpunch] a "Stalinist" and trashes Noam Chomsky in his 
new book with the sad-but-true title "Why We're Liberals"!)

And you're right about Roosevelt, but the last time anyone thought about that 
was during the debate over the Panama Canal, 30 years ago:

	"[In 1903 Roosevelt] engineered a phony 'revolution,' directed from Washington 
and carried out by employees of the American-owned railroads; American warships 
prevented the Colombian government from taking effective action to put down the 
'revolution.'

	"As it turned out, after the 'revolution,' $40 million (shelled out by U.S. 
taxpayers) flowed into the coffers of the French company: except it wasn't 
French anymore. As Murray N. Rothbard pointed out in the December 5, 1977 issue 
of Inquiry, the now defunct weekly put out by the Cato Institute:

	"'its shares had been secretly bought up shortly before by a syndicate of Wall 
Street bankers, headed by J. P. Morgan and Company. The syndicate hired the 
eminent Wall Street lawyer, William Nelson Cromwell, to get the American money, 
and it was Cromwell, sitting in the White House itself, who wrote TR's 
dispatches and orders, and engineered the entire operation. After the syndicate 
got the $40 million, they were able to sell their shares to the U.S. government 
for twice what they had paid.'

	"The chief beneficiary of this largess was Teddy Roosevelt's brother-in-law, 
Douglas E. Robinson, a member of the new syndicate that now owned the formerly 
'French' Panama Canal Company. Aside from falling directly in Robinson's pocket, 
the bulk of the $40 million shelled out by American taxpayers flowed into 
Robinson's New York real estate firm.

	"During the debate over the 1977 treaty, Senator S. I. Hayakawa declared of the 
Canal Zone that 'we stole it fair and square'..."

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/j121099.html


n.dahlheim at mchsi.com wrote:
> Carl,
>     That is a fantastic point about paleo-conservatism.  Much of the foreign interventionist mindset has 
> flowered within ostensibly progressive discourse.  Look at Teddy Roosevelt as a major historical example-
> --the initiator of the Progressive Era oversaw (what was at the time) the largest acceleration of American 
> imperialism in history.  
>       Nick
> 
> 
> ----------------------  Original Message:  ---------------------
> From:    "C. G. Estabrook" <galliher at uiuc.edu>
> To:      Peace Discuss <peace-discuss at anti-war.net>
> Subject: [Peace-discuss] Major truth, completed 
> Date:    Sun, 4 May 2008 05:22:06 +0000
> 
>> "The new expanded secret war required a special appropriation which leading 
>> Democrats secretly approved, after listening to the request in secret session. 
>> They voted $300 million for the covert operations, which are a major escalation 
>> towards open war on Iran..."
>>
>> This news story illustrates the major truth mentioned in passing in Slavoj 
>> Zizek's new book, In Defense of Lost Causes: he writes of the need 
>>
>> "to break the vicious cycle of left-liberal blackmail ('if you do not vote for 
>> us, 
>> the Right will limit abortion, implement racist legislation...'), and to profit 
>> from 
>> old Marx's insight into how intelligent conservatives often see more (and are 
>> more aware of the antagonisms of the existing order) than liberal progressives." 
>>
>> That's why, with few exceptions, we get principled opposition to war in Iran 
>> (and Iraq and Afpak and Palestine) not from Democrats but from paleo-
>> conservatives such as those around the journal American Conservative (and Ron 
>> Paul). A notable recent example is Bill Kauffman's new book, "Ain't My America: 
>> The Long, Noble History of Antiwar Conservatism and Middle-American Anti-
>> Imperialism."  --CGE   
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