Donnachaidh
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Wed Jul-18-07 09:47 PM
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The cost and consequence of U.S. foreign policy
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Tom Joad
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Wed Jul-18-07 09:56 PM
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1. imperialism, a bipartisan tradition... listen to Mark Twain... |
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I left these shores, at Vancouver, a red-hot imperialist. I wanted the American eagle to go screaming into the Pacific. It seemed tiresome and tame for it to content itself with the Rockies. Why not spread its wings over the Philippines, I asked myself? And I thought it would be a real good thing to do.
I said to myself, here are a people who have suffered for three centuries. We can make them as free as ourselves, give them a government and country of their own, put a miniature of the American constitution afloat in the Pacific, start a brand new republic to take its place among the free nations of the world. It seemed to me a great task to which we had addressed ourselves.
But I have thought some more, since then, and I have read carefully the treaty of Paris, and I have seen that we do not intend to free, but to subjugate the people of the Philippines. We have gone there to conquer, not to redeem.
Later Mark Twain signed a statement that read in part:
" steps be taken at once to stop … the killing of prisoners, the shooting without trial of suspected persons, the use of torture, … the wanton destruction of private property, and everywhere the barbarous methods of waging war, which this nation from its infancy has ever condemned.”
doesn't that statement sound so contemporary?
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Tom Joad
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Wed Jul-18-07 10:01 PM
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"Somoza may be a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch."
Somoza, brutal dictator of Nicaragua, was supported be every US president (including Jimmy Carter) until his ouster by revolutionaries in '79.
I think the "our" or the us FDR was referring to is the US elite who profit with suppression of democracy around the world.
all i can say is read Noam Chomsky, he explains it all for you.
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DU
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Wed May 08th 2024, 05:15 PM
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