- NEW YORK -- It was autumn,
electoral campaigns were in full swing, and U.S. intervention abroad represented
a crucial issue separating the political candidates. Amid the excitement,
one of America's foremost literary personalities made a homecoming that
was both celebrated and politically charged.
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- The writer was Mark Twain and the year was 1900. We were
engaged in an intense debate over our military action in the Philippines,
which we had recently bought for $20 million dollars at the conclusion
of the Spanish-American War. Twain, who had been living abroad for nearly
a decade, provided a prescient analysis of the situation.
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- Initially, he had supported the war. "I said to
myself, here are a people who have suffered," Twain explained, echoing
the White House's rationale for action. "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... start a brand new republic to take
its place among the free nations of the world."
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- "But I have thought some more, since then,"
he said. After reading the 1898 Treaty of Paris, Twain questioned the official
motives for war and concluded, "We have gone there to conquer, not
to redeem. And so I am an anti-imperialist. I am opposed to having the
eagle put its talons on any other land."
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- By the turn of the century, Mark Twain, born Samuel Clemens,
had already established his place among America's most revered authors.
He had never hesitated to weigh in about politics. ("Suppose you were
an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress," he famously quipped.
"But I repeat myself.") As Twain Scholar Jim Zwick has documented,
anti-imperialism became a cause to which he made one of the most serious
political commitments of his life.
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- Twain's skepticism about U.S. involvement in the Pacific
grew throughout the first decade of the new century. President Theodore
Roosevelt declared an official end to war in the Philippines on July 4,
1902, but we maintained a controlling military presence for decades, facing
frequent skirmishes. As Twain had warned, "We have got into a mess,
a quagmire from which each fresh step renders the difficulty of extrication
immensely greater."
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- Twain was offended that an ostensible fight for independence
ended with a close American guard over Filipino assets, charging that "Uncle
Sam paid that $20 million for his entrance fee into society -- the Society
of Sceptred Thieves."
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- When apologists for the White House, like General Frederick
Funston, argued that anti-imperialist critics should be "hanged for
treason," Twain retorted that he was "quite willing to be called
a traitor -- quite willing to wear that honorable badge -- and not willing
to be affronted with the title of Patriot and classed with the Funstons
when, so help me God, I have not done anything to deserve it."
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- Needless to say, if Mark Twain were alive today, he would
not be surprised to see that George W. Bush professes his admiration for
"Theodore Rex," or that the president recently pointed to the
Philippines as a model for Iraqi "liberation."
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- While Bush declared "mission accomplished"
with top-gun bravado nearly six months ago, our military continues to be
drawn ever-deeper into the occupation of Iraq. The official "peace
toll" of U.S. soldiers killed reached 100 in mid-October. And with
the administration resisting European demands for timely elections, there
is no exit in sight.
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- Few have been more enthusiastic about the U.S. occupation
than firms with close ties to the White House, such as Halliburton and
Bechtel, which have received billions of dollars in well-publicized no-bid
contracts.
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- Remarkably reminiscent, the Bush administration has also
cultivated a "with us or against us" culture that labels dissenters
as unpatriotic or worse. Recently, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld suggested
that criticism of the war in Iraq helps terrorists.
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- Twain was not alone in challenging U.S. militarism. He
was backed by the Anti-Imperialist League, an organization that said Roosevelt's
brand of expansionism violated the nation's core beliefs in freedom and
liberty. Today more than ever, we do well to honor the tradition of Americans
who oppose the creation of empires -- ours or anyone else's.
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- And as for Iraq, we should remember Mark Twain's thoughts
about the people of the Philippines: "I thought it would be a great
thing to give [them] a whole lot of freedom," he said, "but I
guess now that it's better to let them give it to themselves."
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- - Mark Engler, a writer based in New York City, is an
analyst for Foreign Policy in Focus.
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- © 2000 New York University. All Rights Reserved.
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- http://www.nyu.edu/globalbeat/syndicate/engler102803.html
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