- At Versailles, 1919, Lloyd George, having seized oil-rich
Iraq for the empire, offered Woodrow Wilson mandates over Armenia and Constantinople.
ìWhen you cease to be President we will make you Grand Turk,î
laughed Clemenceau.
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- As there were 'no oil fields there,' writes historian
Thomas Bailey, 'it was assumed that rich Uncle Sam would play the role
of Good Samaritan." Though unamused, Wilson accepted the mandates.
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- Fortunately, Harding won in 1920 and reneged on the deal.
Lloyd George and Churchill were left to face the Turks all by their imperial
selves. Had we accepted Constantinople, Americans would have ended up fighting
Ataturkís armies to hold todayís Istanbul.
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- After 9/11, however, our neoconservatives, who had been
prattling on about 'global hegemony' and a ìcrusade for democracyî
since the end of the Cold War, sold President Bush on their imperial scheme:
a MacArthur Regency in Baghdad.
-
- And so it is that we have arrived at this crossroads.
-
- What Fallujah and the Shiíite uprisings are telling
us is this: if we mean to make Iraq a pro-Western democracy, the price
in blood and treasure has gone up. Shall we pay it is the question of the
hour. For there are signs Americans today are no more willing to sacrifice
for empire than was Harding to send his nationís sons off to police
and run provinces carved out of the Ottoman Empire.
-
- In bringing Bush's 'world democratic revolution' to Iraq,
we suffer today from four deficiencies: men, money, will, and stamina.
-
- First, we do not have the troops in country to pacify
Iraq. Some 70 percent of our combat units are committed in Afghanistan,
Iraq, and South Korea already. If we are going to put more men into Iraq,
U.S. military forces must expand.
-
- Those who speak of democratizing Iraq as we did Germany
tend to forget: in 1945, we had 12 million men under arms and four million
soldiers in Europe. German resistance disappeared in 1945 with the death
of Hitler. There was no guerrilla war against us. Today, our army is only
480,000 strong and scattered across 100 countries. And we have 129,000
troops in an Iraq that is as large as California and an escalating war
against urban guerrillas.
-
- Second, we are running out of money. The U.S. deficit
is $500 billion and rising. The merchandise trade deficit is headed toward
$600 billion, putting downward pressure on a dollar that has been falling
for three years. Nations with declining currencies do not create empires,
they give them up.
-
- Then there is the deficit in imperial will. President
Bush sold the war on Iraq on the grounds that Saddam was a man of unique
evil who could not be trusted with a weapon of mass destruction. Today,
whatever threat Saddam posed is gone.
-
- While America supported the president in going to war,
we have not bought into the idea that we must democratize the Islamic world
or we are unsafe in our own country. Polls show that nearly half the nation
believes we should start coming home.
-
- Which brings us to our fourth deficiency, stamina. Empire
requires an unshakeable belief in the superiority of oneís own race,
religion, and civilization and an iron resolve to fight to impose that
faith and civilization upon other peoples.
-
- We are not that kind of people. Never have been. Americans,
who preach the equality of all races, creeds, and cultures, are, de facto,
poor imperialists. When we attempt an imperial role as in the Philippines
or Iraq, we invariably fall into squabbling over whether a republic should
be imposing its ideology on another nation. A crusade for democracy is
a contradiction in terms.
-
- While it would be nice if Brazil, Bangladesh, and Burundi
all embraced democracy, why should we fight them if they donít,
and why should our soldiers die to restore democracy should they lose it?
Why is that our problem, if they are not threatening us?
-
- What Iraq demonstrates is that once the cost in blood
starts to rise, Americans tend to tell their government that enough is
enough, put the Wilsonian idealism back on the shelf, and letís
get out.
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- If attacked, Americans fight ferociously. Unwise nations
discover that. Threatened, as in the Cold War, we will persevere. But if
our vital interests are not threatened, or our honor is not impugned, most
of us are for staying out of wars.
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- That is our history and oldest tradition. It may be ridiculed
as selfish old American isolationism, but that is who we are and that is
how we came to be the last world power left standing on the bloodstained
world stage after the horrific 20th century.
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- Americans will cheer globaloney. They just won't fight
and die for it. Nor should they. http://www.amconmag.com/2004_05_10/buchanan.html
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