Timothy Garton Ash (The Guardian): Stagger on, weary Titan

[Jack Rabbit]

From The Guardian Unlimited (London)
Dated Thursday August 25

Stagger on, weary Titan
The US is reeling, like imperial Britain after the Boer war - but don't gloat
By Timothy Garton Ash in Stanford

If you want to know what London was like in 1905, come to Washington in 2005. Imperial gravitas and massive self-importance. That sense of being the centre of the world, and of needing to know what happens in every corner of the world because you might be called on - or at least feel called upon - to intervene there. Hyperpower. Top dog. And yet, gnawing away beneath the surface, the nagging fear that your global supremacy is not half so secure as you would wish. As Joseph Chamberlain, the British colonial secretary, put it in 1902: "The weary Titan staggers under the too vast orb of his fate."

The United States is now that weary Titan. In the British case, the angst was a result of the unexpectedly protracted, bloody and costly Boer war, in which a small group of foreign insurgents defied the mightiest military the world had seen; concern about the rising economic power of Germany and the United States; and a combination of imperial overstretch with socio-economic problems at home. In the American case, it's a result of the unexpectedly protracted, bloody and costly Iraq war, in which a small group of foreign insurgents defies the mightiest military the world has seen; concern about the rising economic power of China and India; and a combination of imperial overstretch with socio-economic problems at home.

Iraq is America's Boer war. Remember that after the British had declared the end of major combat operations in the summer of 1900, the Boers launched a campaign of guerrilla warfare that kept British troops on the run for another two years. The British won only by a ruthlessness of which, I'm glad to say, the democratic, squeamish and still basically anti-colonialist United States appears incapable. In the end, the British had 450,000 British and colonial troops there (compared with some 150,000 US troops in Iraq), and herded roughly a quarter of the Boer population into concentration camps, where many died.

In a recent CNN/Gallup poll, 54% of those asked said it was a mistake to send American troops into Iraq, and 57% said the Iraq war has made the US less safe from terrorism. The protest camp outside President Bush's ranch in Crawford, which grew around the mother of a soldier who died in Iraq, exemplifies the pain. CNN last Sunday aired a documentary with top-level sources explaining in detail how the intelligence on Saddam's weapons of mass destruction was distorted, abused, sexed up and, as the programme was entitled, Dead Wrong. This will hardly be news for British or European readers, but the facts have not been so widely aired in the US. In another poll, the number of those who rated the president as "honest" fell below 50% for the first time. This week, he has again attempted to bolster support for his administration and his war. It doesn't seem to be working.

Read more.

[BurgherHoldtheLies]

1. thanks for sharing that. EXCELLENT and nominated.

[bpilgrim]

2. that is an excellent summary of our (US) current position and trajectory

we must do that politically AND alternative fuel.

those 2 issues MUST stay at the top of 'our' agenda if we hope for a better future.

though, as noted in the above article, in transitions of great power (and RESOURCES/ENVIO) horrific suffering is often endured and i have tremendous fear about where the neoCONs are taking us.


http://media.globalfreepress.com

thanks for sharing JR :toast:
nominated

peace

[pberq]

3. Leave it to the foreign press to tell it like it is. Nominated!

[hvn_nbr_2]

7. This will hardly be news for British or European readers

Exactly.
This will hardly be news for British or European readers, but the facts have not been so widely aired in the US.

[bemildred]

4. It's worse than he says, but still a good analogy. nt

[DavidDvorkin]

5. Excellent perspective

The reports of conditions and deaths in those concentration camps horrified the British public and contributed to a public rejection of the war. The feeling of the government was that if they didn't win the Boer War quickly, the public would force them to withdraw or at least make some kind of peace.

But Britain had a press that was happy to give the public information that made it impossible for the government to put on a happy face. The closest we have to that here nowadays is the Web.

[electropop]

6. More and more people get their news from the Web

because they have given up waiting for truth from the MSM.

Also, the concentration camps seem a good analogy for Gitmo/Abu Graib troubles.

[teryang]

8. Pie in the sky

I buy the analogy. It is not original. Kevin Phillips book, Wealth and Democracy lays out the analogy with decline of prior hegemonic states in great detail and the British analogy is the closest.

The pie in the sky part is that this administration is interested in democracy. The ruling class of this country, the capital accumulators, the financial class, have deliberately exported our productive capital enterprise overseas. This is what the Netherlands did before they were eclipsed by Britain. This is what we are doing now in China.

Anyone who doesn't realize that China will surpass us in the next 30 years, economically and militarily doesn't understand the sell out of American national interests which has been occuring in the last thiry years by our corporate and financial elites. The early lack of public support for the current wars is indicative of a public which understands that the political leadership has absolutely no interest in democracy nor the nation's security and well being.

[glitch]

9. Excellent point which cannot be made enough.

Keep repeating it until more people get it:

"The pie in the sky part is that this administration is interested in democracy"

[long_green]

10. my only objection is the author's characterization of

the Boers and the Iraqi insurgents as "foreign insurgents." It's their country, not ours.

[bobbieinok]

11. TG Ash---a student of German history

one of his more interesting books The File at amazon.com

From Kirkus Reviews
A British historian has the eerie experience of reading the secret file kept on him by the Stasi, the East German secret police, and meeting with those who informed on him and the police who were responsible. After the unification of Germany, the government made the unprecedented decision to open the secret police records to every person who is in them. It was an appallingly comprehensive archive. Ash (History/Oxford; The Polish Revolution, 1984) states that one out of every fifty adult East Germans had a direct connection with the secret police. The Stasi tracked him from the time that he first crossed the border as a young student. His file was 325 pages and included copies of his notes, photographed during a secret search of his luggage, and even copies of references written by his Oxford tutors. Those who informed on him included ``Michaela,'' who was also informing on her own stepdaughter; ``Schuldt,'' a middle-aged lecturer who made homosexual advances to his students; ``Doktor,'' an Englishman who was told falsely that he was suspected of being a Western spy; and a once-brave woman, a Communist who had set out ``to fight for a better world'' and ended as an informer. His confrontations with these figures are difficult (some are abashed, some defiant), fascinating, but rarely satisfying for Ash. He fares little better with the police he tracks down, including a ``perfect textbook example of the petty bureaucratic executor of evil'' and an unrepentant colonel, reeking of ``alcohol, cigarette smoke, boredom and emptiness.'' Few it seems, can face what they have done. In the files, writes Ash, is ``a vast anthology of human weakness,'' reflecting less deliberate dishonesty ``than our almost infinite capacity for self-deception.'' Sensitive, subtle, and illuminating, as a fine historian explores those infinitely complicated choices made by human beings confronted by the issue of collaboration or resistance.