Zinn's little history lesson ringing true today

[welshTerrier2]

source: http://historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/zinnempire12.html

just after the Spanish-American War, a Constitutional Convention was held in Cuba ... the Americans refused to withdraw their troops from Cuba until the convention agreed to the "Platt Amendment" ...

This Amendment gave the United States "the right to intervene for the preservation of Cuban independence, the maintenance of a government adequate for the protection of life, property, and individual liberty. . . . " It also provided for the United States to get coaling or naval stations at certain specified points.

where have we heard language like that before ???

in a great response to pressure from the US, a delegate to the Cuban Constitutional Convention wrote the following:

For the United States to reserve to itself the power to determine when this independence was threatened, and when, therefore, it should intervene to preserve it, is equivalent to handing over the keys to our house so that they can enter it at any time, whenever the desire seizes them, day or night, whether with good or evil design.

And:

The only Cuban governments that would live would be those which count on the support and benevolence of the United States, and the clearest result of this situation would be that we would only have feeble and miserable governments . . . condemned to live more attentive to obtaining the blessings of the United States than to serving and defending the interests of Cuba. . . .

The report termed the request for coaling or naval stations "a mutilation of the fatherland." It concluded:

A people occupied militarily is being told that before consulting their own government, before being free in their own territory, they should grant the military occupants who came as friends and allies, rights and powers which would annul the sovereignty of these very people. That is the situation created for us by the method which the United States has just adopted. It could not be more obnoxious and inadmissible

With this report, the Convention overwhelmingly rejected the Platt Amendment.

Unfortunately, Cuba was eventually forced to accept the Platt amendment ... if this history lesson doesn't exactly parallel US abuses in Iraq, nothing does ... we are truly under the command of outlaw imperialists and we have always been ... it is not "left wing" to say so; it's just the truth ...

[enigma000]

1. Where in the Iraqi constitution does a comparable statement read?

And what does it say?

[welshTerrier2]

3. you don't expect them to put it in writing anymore, do you?

the US has already established a puppet government in Iran ... we've already signed, sealed and delivered the PSA's for the oil companies ...

people think bush has failed in Iraq? ho ho ho ho ho ...

and they're not calling the bases we build "permanent" bases; they're calling them "enduring bases" ... isn't that quaint?

[0007]

2. One of my very favorites. Howard Zinn.