We are often told (by Barack Obama among others) that our ancestors sought a "more perfect union" in the creation of the United States. The implication is that they sought a worldly and more or less secular utopia. They did not. The contemporary meaning in those words from the constitution of the United States was that the framers sought a more efficient and effective government than that which had existed under the Articles of Confederation. The framers were solely concerned with the practicalities of government in their new country. The "more perfect union" phrase is one of a number of goals listed and is clearly not intended as the governing theme of the Constitution.
Having chosen to misunderstand the preamble to the constitution, and therefore the "purpose" of America, much of our ruling class now profess to believe that it is the purpose of the country to "reform" our society to their taste and to inflict the same norms on the rest of the world. To that end it is held to be more or less self-evident that ancient motivations for international policy are at an end and that all, all of mankind should re-organize itself to our taste.
In pursuit of that belief the United States in the 21st Century seeks revolutionary change everywhere and to accomplish that has been willing and continues to be willing to pay very high prices in blood and treasure even unto the risk of nuclear war with those with whom we can truly commit mutual suicide.
The United States was born in political and social revolution. In the Civil War the victors confirmed that destiny and were open in calling their vision divinely purposeful. If you think my assertions untrue, read the words of the Declaration of Independence and the Gettysburg Address.
In the course of the daunting task of self creation throughout the late 19th and all of the 20th Centuries that vision of the country's place in history was often submerged beneath a desire for wealth and economic growth that would make the common man a comfortable man.
After World War Two America was for a time a status quo state. Triumph over the USSR and an international stability that would assist in that became its goals, but the zeitgeist of the Cold War is gone now, washed away in the renewal of a collective yearning to lead revolutionary change, change that bolsters self image as secular savior of mankind.
Across the world the US is fostering the notion that history as mankind has known it has died and that humanity has emerged into a broad well lit upland where a socially evolved species will live in a utopian state of grace that has nothing to do with any god that is not called Humanism.
This understanding of self was hatched in hundreds of graduate schools and fostered by academics with little actual knowledge of life "in the hard lane." This understanding calls for a world run on the basis of leveling and "social justice." Almost without notice those twin ideals infiltrated government and the media and along that way an alliance emerged between the political idealists and a virtual army of backwoodsmen, emerged from faith based communities, who have steadily grown in numbers until they dominate elected office in much of the country. These modern devotees of the puritan idea of perfection in all things easily agree with an intelligentsia that seeks its own vision of perfection in life. The details of what utopia may mean in reality grow messy at times but the broad outline of absolute goodness as a goal can be seen in the politically correct discourse that increasingly is the only discourse tolerated by the new America.
In pursuit of our new/old post modern goals we have spread havoc across the world while fostering the revolutionary change that we imagine all mankind eagerly awaits.
- Russia/Ukraine. The NED and the doyenne of neocon missionary work have actively sought regime change in Ukraine and Russia and have not felt the need to disguise their intentions. Can we doubt that POTUS is an active backer of this policy? If he were not, then Nuland would be returned to hanging out with her husband at one or another of their lobbies or think tanks.
- Tunisia, place of martyrdom of the poor green grocer man, the western style democracy sought there hangs by a thread.
- Egypt, sanctified by the hysteria of the mob and western press; that went well did it not? Now Sisi, who owes Saudi Arabia and the other Gulfies a lot, makes menacing noises about intervention in Yemen. Has the Egyptian Army forgotten what happened to them in Yemen fifty years ago? Nasser called it his" Vietnam."
- Libya, I thought that one was a good idea. I was wrong.
- Iraq, she of the two rivers, what a place of sorrows we have made you, a piece of bone wrapped in rags and fought over by pariah dogs.
- Iran, our "leaders" seek desperately for a chance to bomb you rather than make a "grand bargain." Heavens! Not that! You have succeeded to the mantle of villainy in the American mind and so it must be believed that you are guilty of all sins.
- Syria, Assad pleads for a chance to negotiate an end that will not kill him and his own people. Heavens! Not that!
- Saudi Arabia. The Saudi ruling class fears two things; Iran and the Yemenis. We are encouraging the Saudis with their toy ground forces to massively bomb Yemeni cities in a Douhet style effort intended to intimidate people who are not easily intimidated. Nothing could be done that would more closely unite Yemeni factions that have never been united in history.
- Yemen, the fight has not yet begun.
In pursuit of perfection in human society, we are making deserts so that we can call them Peace. pl
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiva
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preamble_to_the_United_States_Constitution
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Declaration_of_Independence
The word pagan comes from the latin pagus, meaning country district. A pagan was a country person.
A heathen was someone who lives on the heath (the scrubland outside or on the edges of the Roman empire).
Posted by: C Webb | 30 March 2015 at 06:57 PM
Tyler
Somehow I missed the policies crafted by Cheney, Rumsfeld and the Shrub for bringing "democracy" to Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Do you think they consider these places "secret democracies"? Or, were they deterred by the battle-tested forces of these two states? Somehow the ziocon agitprop apparatus also avoids discussing these countries, unmindful of the proscribed treatment for homosexuals. Seems like a complicated issue.
Ishmael Zechariah
Posted by: Ishmael Zechariah | 30 March 2015 at 07:07 PM
Patrick Bahzad,
We are going to have to agree to disagree on some facts. In my view the place had devolved to "warlords" long before we got there. The civilian effort had been deliberately stopped by Adid's men in an effort to wipe the lands along the Jubba river of a different tribe of people (whose idea was "Somalia" anyway? They, and even their grand parents should be slapped for such stupidity! But I digress...) for whatever reason, probably wanted the "breadbasket" for his own people.
Then the UN effort to end his practice of stopping all aid food from going to those areas (when the warehouses were full he had it dumped in the desert) was ended by his use of military force against them, who were mostly Pakistani soldiers who were woefully unprepared for that kind of action and had pretty much barricaded themselves in the stadium. So much for the "blue helmets". Furthermore he sent men into the "breadbasket" to burn any fields and destroy any food they could find which they did not care to steal.
It had to be a military operation. Period. The UN plan for civilian only had been tried and had been deliberately stopped. IMO there is no counter-factual theorizing to be done on that point whatsoever and there is simply nothing which could ever convince me differently on that point.
What was in the minds of George HW and his people is another matter. It's difficult for me to say for sure, and I feel you certainly would have a better view of that than I did at the time, but I tend to believe it was the man simply unable to stand by and watch that kind of horror being inflicted upon anyone when it was such a puny force inflicting it, and mission creep did the rest.
Posted by: Mark Logan | 30 March 2015 at 09:26 PM
Tyler
The Colonel would have to change the name of his website.
Posted by: optimax | 30 March 2015 at 11:09 PM
I'm not sure what exactly the disagreement is about but I don't think saying "it had to be a military operation - period" is gonna cut it.
we lost men there because some fools thought this was the right thing the do. Well, sometimes the right thing to do is not to do anything, at least when it involves armed forces. Not gonna say more about this, other than such an operation was never attempted again which speaks volumes as to its record among participating nations.
Posted by: Patrick Bahzad | 31 March 2015 at 04:27 AM
"Rummy and Cheney were true believers in Democracy Fairy Dust . . ."
Seems a stretch to me, Tyler. Like Jack and Ishmael, I think for these guys it was more about reinvigorating America's belief in itself, flying the flag, a pure demonstration of power. And an interesting experiment. Whatever other benefits might flow from it were secondary. "Shake it up, something good will come of it."
Posted by: Ingolf | 31 March 2015 at 07:42 AM
Patrick Bahzad,
Clarification: The disagreement is about "if the UN had opted for a more civilian approach". The UN did and then reacted to the calls from the civilians involved in that effort for military help. First with a UN force and when they got overwhelmed Restore Hope was initiated. When the UN force was subjected to an organized military campaign it became undeniable it had not been simply bandits who stopping the flow of food up-country. Thus, it had to be a military operation period. ML
Posted by: Mark Logan | 31 March 2015 at 10:56 AM
Right. I sort of got that after your first "period" ...
My take on it, based on a few years experience in that sort of thing is that relief operations are not meant to be lead like military interventions overseas, even if they need to have security component.
As far as the military is concerned, this topic is done and dusted: UNOSOM II was a total F* UP from start to finish, especially for the US, which had no prior experience in operations of that sort, particularly not in Africa.
I recommend the US forces AAR on the subject, quite a sobering read. And lots of people, including US servicemen I knew personally, died for no good reason. Period !
Posted by: Patrick Bahzad | 31 March 2015 at 01:06 PM
Ishmael/Ingolf
Y'all are proving my point about grasping at straws to try and insist that the neocons are nothing like the insane progressives. The only difference is who is running the show.
Iraq was maybe a year of invasion, the next seven or whatever it was turned out to be all about DEMOCRACY and purple thumbs and how awesome elections went and Friedman units. The entire MSM gave a full court press and salivated not over how much oil we were getting, but how AWESOME the democracy was. KBR made money, but that was incidental to spreading the Gospel of Western Secular Democracy. Optempo wasn't determined by things like how many oil derricks to build, but elections and other make believe nonsense. I know because I was there.
Saudi Arabia? Kuwait? They're playing the same game the Israelis play as far as buying influence. Pity the poor Arab nation that can't. Compare the histrionics over Europe trying to enforce immigration laws versus what Israel gets to do. One rule for me, another for thee doesn't invalidate anything I've said.
Posted by: Tyler | 31 March 2015 at 07:07 PM
LeaNder,
the universal declaration of human rights - it is through universal acceptance by now ius cogens. But notably, it still recognises nation state sovereignty.
What I think is that, unless we're talking about mass murder and intense repression on the scale of Rwanda, Cambodia or ISIS Einsatzgruppen-like barbarism, human rights are neither a legitimate cause for war nor for intervention in the internal affairs of another country.
That is to say, these criteria have not been met by the recent acts of watr in which human rights have been invoked as ajustification.
So to speak, I fully accept the unpopular flipside of national sovereignty - the prohibition for outside powers to meddle in internal affairs of other countries.
It is a long way from recognising the rights the universal declaration enshrines (the lowest common denominator) to sponsoring opposition groups (and training them and handing them smartphones, money, printers and cookies) through something like NED in order to actively effect regime change.
It is an even longer way from there to R2P and the invasion of Libya in the name of Human rights. R2P is a speific response to the troublesome flipside of national sovereignty. I reject that.
Posted by: confusedponderer | 01 April 2015 at 02:25 AM
Patrick Bahzad,
I imagine that is an epic read. As I previously mentioned "don't get me started". I've seen more intelligence displayed at an alligator f-g contest. I can only speak for the first two and a half months but the silly reached truly sublime levels. As long as you do not try to tell me that the food didn't flow from then on to the people up-country, the ridiculously brave civilian volunteers who refused to abandon them, and it did not save 10's of thousands of lives we are not in conflict.
All respect. I appreciate your writings about the ME cultures very much and frankly you could spin circles around me in any academic exercise I can imagine. I am fully aware what I have told you deeply conflicts with the now fully accepted narrative about Restore Hope.
People can't differentiate between the original mission and the movie is my guess. There was nothing sexy about the early days and hardly a single reporter ventured past even Biadoa during that time, and none stayed any longer than they absolutely had to even there.
Posted by: Mark Logan | 01 April 2015 at 03:06 AM