Too tired to dive into this discussion much deeper right now, but Sun Tzu's comments on another threat should get your mind a-whirring here:
Message 20776864
I'll leave you with a poem from Rudyard Kipling, written in response to the American colonialization (by order of President Mckinley) of the Phillipines after the Spanish-American war.
Kipling, a Brit, lived in Vermont for a number of years where he wrote "The Jungle Books" and other works. An astute observer of colonialization (in fact Kipling was part of it) perpetrated by both his home country and his for a while adopted home, Kipling here speaks out:
Take up the White Man's burden--
Send forth the best ye breed--
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild--
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.
Take up the White Man's burden--
In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
An hundred times made plain
To seek another's profit,
And work another's gain.
Take up the White Man's burden--
The savage wars of peace--
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hopes to nought.
Take up the White Man's burden--
No tawdry rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper--
The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter,
The roads ye shall not tread,
Go mark them with your living,
And mark them with your dead.
Take up the White Man's burden--
And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better,
The hate of those ye guard--
The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah, slowly!) toward the light:--
"Why brought he us from bondage,
Our loved Egyptian night?"
Take up the White Man's burden--
Ye dare not stoop to less--
Nor call too loud on Freedom
To cloke your weariness;
By all ye cry or whisper,
By all ye leave or do,
The silent, sullen peoples
Shall weigh your gods and you.
Take up the White Man's burden--
Have done with childish days--
The lightly proferred laurel,
The easy, ungrudged praise.
Comes now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years
Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom,
The judgment of your peers!
Kipling would recognize the events past his time for what they were, up to and including Iraq.
The history of the Phillipines is quite interesting in the context of current affairs. The colonization of the Phillipines was hotly debated in the day; former president Cleveland fought against it and anti-imperialism activism within the US attempted to rally public support but to no avail.
The public re-elected Mckinley. Then, like now, they didn't know the full story. Then, like now, the media were used and abused. Then, like now, the people of the occupied territory fought back. Then, like now, those people were called "insurgents" but this is wrong - they were never at war with the US until the US "bought" the Phillipines from the retreating Spanish.
Very similar parallel now that I think about it... |
