ECUADOR WANTS A MILITARY BASE IN MIAMI.! REASONABLE? I DO THINK SO!
ElParedon
Mon Oct 22, 2007 3:38pm BST
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By Phil Stewart
NAPLES (Reuters) - Ecuador's leftist President Rafael Correa said Washington
must let him open a military base in Miami if the United States wants to
keep using an air base on Ecuador's Pacific coast.
Correa has refused to renew Washington's lease on the Manta air base, set to
expire in 2009. U.S. officials say it is vital for counter-narcotics
surveillance operations on Pacific drug-running routes.
"We'll renew the base on one condition: that they let us put a base in
Miami -- an Ecuadorean base," Correa said in an interview during a trip to
Italy.
"If there's no problem having foreign soldiers on a country's soil, surely
they'll let us have an Ecuadorean base in the United States."
The U.S. embassy to Ecuador says on its Web site that anti-narcotics flights
from Manta gathered information behind more than 60 percent of illegal drug
seizures on the high seas of the Eastern Pacific last year.
It offers a fact-sheet on the base at:
http://ecuador.usembassy.gov/topics_of_interest/manta-fol.html
Correa, a popular leftist economist, had promised to cut off his arm before
extending the lease that ends in 2009 and has called U.S. President George
W. Bush a "dimwit".
But Correa, an ally of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, told Reuters he
believed relations with the United States were "excellent" despite the base
closing. Continued...
Avenger
"ElParedon" <ser...@bellsouth.net> wrote in message
news:8v9Ti.2035$8G5....@bignews4.bellsouth.net...
flores...@hotmail.com
> Ecuador wants military base in Miami
> Mon Oct 22, 2007 3:38pm BST
>
> Email This Article | Print This Article | Digg | Single Page
> [-] Text [+]
> By Phil Stewart
>
> NAPLES (Reuters) - Ecuador's leftist President Rafael Correa said Washington
> must let him open a military base in Miami if the United States wants to
> keep using an air base on Ecuador's Pacific coast.
>
> Correa has refused to renew Washington's lease on the Manta air base, set to
> expire in 2009. U.S. officials say it is vital for counter-narcotics
> surveillance operations on Pacific drug-running routes.
>
> "We'll renew the base on one condition: that they let us put a base in
> Miami -- an Ecuadorean base," Correa said in an interview during a trip to
> Italy.
>
> "If there's no problem having foreign soldiers on a country's soil, surely
> they'll let us have an Ecuadorean base in the United States."
He's asking for an invasion---on suspicion of WMD and harboring
terrorists
who want to take our freedom from us.
> Correa, a popular leftist economist, had promised to cut off his arm before
> extending the lease that ends in 2009 and has called U.S. President George
> W. Bush a "dimwit".
Who says Ecuadoreans are dumb?
Mirelle
NefeshBarYochai
>
> - Show quoted text -
Mirelle go wash your snatch you ugly bitch hog body.
Avenger
ath:
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Subject: Re: ECUADOR WANTS A MILITARY BASE IN MIAMI.! REASONABLE? I DO THINK
SO!
Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 18:48:09 -0400
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"Avenger" <hellt...@nowhere.com> wrote in message
news:DeSdnXFQc5R9uIDa...@comcast.com...
Mirelle
> some jew in Florida wrote that
That is what war mongers are doing on Usenet.
Forging identities and e-mail addresses.
They are desperate.
www.costofwar.com
Mirelle
> ath:
> nwrddc02.gnilink.net!cyclone2.gnilink.net!cyclone1.gnilink.net!gnilink.net! news.glorb.com!border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!local01.nntp .dca.giganews.com!nntp.comcast.com!news.comcast.com.POSTED!not-for-mail
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> Subject: Re: ECUADOR WANTS A MILITARY BASE IN MIAMI.! REASONABLE? I DO THINK
> SO!
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> "Avenger" <helltoc...@nowhere.com> wrote in message
ElParedon
In her brand-new book Let's Have a Dog Party!, PETA President Ingrid Newkirk
talks about this fun fiesta for Fido:
I was once invited to a "Bark Mitzvah," or Jewish coming of age party, for
a dog who was about to turn two, which is roughly equivalent to thirteen
years for a human boy. It turned out not to be the last such event.
Lisa Katz, who writes on www.judaism.about.com, said, "I almost fell off
my chair when I first heard the latest craze among American Jews." She found
out that "some people do Bark Mitzvahs for Purim entertainment, some do it
to raise money for charity, and others do it simply for the fun of it."
The Miami Herald reported on a Bark Mitzvah held by Edie and Ed Rudy for
their thirteen-year-old poodle, Columbo, which won praise and raised
eyebrows, particularly at Columbo's get-up: a gold yarmulke and a prayer
shawl! And he was presented with a certificate of congratulations signed by
Rabbi Rex Doberman of Congregation Beth Poodle.
According to The Miami Herald story, Edie, whose children are all grown
up, said, "He is like a child." Edie goes on to say, "With so much going on
in the world, it's nice to come together and celebrate something positive."
The paper reported that Rabbi Gary Glickstein of Temple Beth Sholom, a
Reform synagogue in Miami Beach, appreciates the different ways people find
to express their Judaism. "It is easy to make fun of something here," the
paper quoted him. "But I think there is a motivation here that is positive
in some way."
You can find all you need for a Bark Mitzvah on the Internet. Bark Mitzvah
packages can include Star of David treats and Bark Mitzvah certificates to
commemorate the special occasion. For about $50, www.placeseveryone.com
offers a seating kit for your Bark Mitzvah celebration, as well as a Bark
Mitzvah certificate.
posted by heebnvegan @ 10/17/2007 07:57:00 AM 0 comments
9.28.2007
Kapparot Recap
As I noted in my kapparot preview on September 9, I've blogged about
kapparot quite a few times since I started heebnvegan. I thought it was
important to follow up on all the goings on since the preview.
Israel
Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the prominent and controversial Israeli ulta-Orthodox
rabbi, criticized mistreatment of chickens in kapparot ceremonies. According
to a Haaretz article:
Speaking Saturday at his Jerusalem synagogue, Hayazdim, Yosef warned that
overworked ritual slaughterers wind up using flawed blades that are not
deemed "perfectly sharp."
"If it is not perfectly sharp, it is not only non-kosher but nevela," he
said, using the term for the carcass of a kosher animal not killed in
accordance with Jewish law and therefore forbidden for consumption.
An Israeli court found that the kapparot ritual violates animal slaughter
laws. According to a different Haaretz article:
A Petach Tikvah court on Tuesday ruled that the ritual slaughter of
chickens for the Yom Kippur "kapparot" ritual is a violation of state
regulations on animal slaughter.
The court adopted the matter after a resident of Ramat Modiin was caught
by agriculture ministry officials with dozens of slaughtered chickens in his
possession without the required permits for animal slaughter.
The man refused to pay the fine police gave him, and demanded a trial to
clear his name.
During his trial, the court ruled against the defendant, and issued a
penalty of NIS 2,700 or 17 days imprisonment.
YNet ran an article about Israeli animal rights activists' criticism of
kapparot. It quoted Let the Animals Live chairwoman Etti Altman as saying,
"Thousands of chickens are cramped together, with no food or water, for days
before kaparot . they are abused and then they are slaughtered. People ask
for their sins to be forgiven? They should be asking for the chicken's
forgiveness."
U.S.
Failed Messiah posted disturbing photos here from the parking lot of a
Chabad synagogue in Long Beach, California, prior to a kapparot ritual. You
can see the conditions referred to by Altman pretty clearly. The chickens
have no space to move around, and their excrement is all over the place.
Some interesting discussion popped up in response to that post and a
follow-up.
The VeggieJews Yahoo group has been a fantastic source of information about
this topic and is how I found the three Israeli articles. It's also been a
great forum for people's comments about kapparot, and there have been some
really wonderful ideas. Here are just a couple of them:
a.. Jim Sinclair of Syracuse, New York, wrote: "Last year in response to
Kapparot, I signed up to sponsor a Farm Sanctuary chicken for one year. This
year I'm already signed up to sponsor another chicken. I could just make my
$10/month donation indefinite, but I like the symbolism of 'sponsoring' a
different individual chicken every year."
b.. Yaakov Perry of Andover, New Hampshire, wrote: "I am a Chabadnik (or
Lubavitcher as some call us). The ritual of Kapparot bugs me a great deal so
instead of partaking, I take a look at the stock market and find what 18 (18
= Chai = Life) ounces of silver are worth, use the money to buy vegetarian
food, swing it over my head, and then donate it to the local food pantry."
As Jim and Yaakov demonstrate, using money instead of chickens for kapparot
is a perfectly acceptable alternative. I gave tzedakah to American Jewish
World Service last week (after waving it above my head and praying), and it
felt great to consciously think that I was doing so as an alternative to
mistreating a chicken.
hopiakuta
If we, United States of America, want
to command the actions of other nations,
then, maybe some of that influence should
reverse-flow as well:
I have only read a little of this;
but, it is important to comapre
France & Egypt to the United
States of America {Also, note the
English experience in Iraq} [Thank You.]:
< http://groups.google.it/group/World_Politics/browse_thread/thread/d79f0376b94e7f27
>:
USA: Tomgram: Juan Cole, The Republic Militant at War, Then and Now
[Note for Tomdispatch readers: With this post, I will "vacate"
Tomdispatch
until Tuesday September 4th. Expect a new post that day. For readers
in
Washington DC, after checking out the following post by the
incomparable
Juan Cole, if you have a spare summer moment, rush to the New America
Foundation and hear
<http://www.newamerica.net/events/2007/
napoleons_egypt_invading_middle...>
him speak on Friday the 24th at noon.]
USA... ARGOS: AGOSTO 29 DE 2007...
It was the highest-tech military of its moment and its invasion of the
Arab
land was overwhelming. Enemy forces were smashed, the oppressive
ruling
regime overthrown, the enemy capital occupied, and the country
declared
liberated... then the first acts of insurgency began...
George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq in 2003? No, Napoleon Bonaparte's
invasion
of Egypt in June 1798. There are times when the resonances of history
are
positively eerie. This happens to be one of them. We all deserve a
history
lesson about the Napoleonic beginnings of our present catastrophe.
(Too bad
you-know-who didn't get one before ordering that March 2003 invasion.)
I got
mine from a man whose blog, Informed Comment <http://
www.juancole.com> , I
read every morning without fail and whose flow of commentary on Bush's
war
in Iraq has been invaluable. I'm talking, of course, about Juan Cole
who
(evidently in his spare moments) has completed a history of the
Napoleonic
moment of "spreading democracy" to Arab lands, just published as
Napoleon's
<http://www.amazon.com/dp/1403964319/ref=nosim/?tag=nationbooks08-20>
Egypt: Invading the Middle East.
Some of the parallels are enough to make you jump out of your chair
(if not
your skin). For instance, Napoleon wrote a letter to one of his
generals,
well into the occupation, forbidding the beating of insurgents to
extract
information: "It has been recognized at all times that this manner of
interrogating human beings, of putting them under torture, produces
nothing
good." Okay, at least Napoleon could learn from experience, an ability
our
President seems to lack, but the issue, put that way, rings a terrible
bell
200 years later.
Napoleon's Egyptian moment lasted a mere three years. We are already
into
our fifth year in devolving Iraq with no obvious end in sight. Last
Sunday,
the New York Times printed
<http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/08/19/3270/> a remarkable
op-ed
by an Army specialist, four sergeants, and two staff sergeants of the
82nd
Airborne Division, now on duty in Iraq (one of whom was shot in the
head
while the piece was being prepared). In it, they wrote, "Viewed from
Iraq at
the tail end of a 15-month deployment, the political debate in
Washington is
indeed surreal... [W]e are skeptical of recent press coverage portraying
the
conflict as increasingly manageable and feel it has neglected the
mounting
civil, political and social unrest we see every day." Of the military
mission of which they are a part they wrote: "In the end, we need to
recognize that our presence may have released Iraqis from the grip of
a
tyrant, but that it has also robbed them of their self-respect. They
will
soon realize that the best way to regain dignity is to call us what we
are
-- an army of occupation -- and force our withdrawal."
Whether these soldiers know the history of Bonaparte in Egypt or not,
they
have grasped the essence of what lurks behind the fine liberatory
words of
the leaders of the republic militant. Let's hope it's not too late to
learn
the lesson of Napoleon and slip out of "Egypt," while it's still
possible.
Though it hardly scatches the surface of his new book, here is a
little
taste from the Napoleonic lesson plan of Juan Cole. Tom
Pitching the Imperial Republic
Bonaparte and Bush on Deck
By Juan Cole*
French Egypt and American Iraq can be considered bookends on the
history of
modern imperialism in the Middle East. The Bush administration's
already
failed version of the conquest of Iraq is, of course, on everyone's
mind;
while the French conquest of Egypt, now more than two centuries past,
is all
too little remembered, despite having been led by Napoleon Bonaparte,
whose
career has otherwise hardly languished in obscurity. There are many
eerily
familiar resonances between the two misadventures, not least among
them that
both began with supreme arrogance and ended as fiascoes. Above all,
the
leaders of both occupations employed the same basic political
vocabulary and
rhetorical flimflammery, invoking the spirit of liberty, security,
and
democracy while largely ignoring the substance of these concepts.
The French general and the American president do not much resemble
one
another -- except perhaps in the way the prospect of conquest in the
Middle
East appears to have put fire in their veins and in their unappealing
tendency to believe their own propaganda (or at least to keep
repeating it
long after it became completely implausible). Both leaders invaded
and
occupied a major Arabic-speaking Muslim country; both harbored dreams
of a
"Greater Middle East"; both were surprised to find themselves enmeshed
in
long, bitter, debilitating guerrilla wars. Neither genuinely cared
about
grassroots democracy, but both found its symbols easy to invoke for
gullible
domestic publics. Substantial numbers of their new subjects quickly
saw,
however, that they faced occupations, not liberations.
My own work on Bonaparte's lost year in Egypt began in the mid-1990s,
and I
had completed about half of Napoleon's
<http://www.amazon.com/dp/1403964319/ref=nosim/?tag=nationbooks08-20>
Egypt: Invading the Middle East before September 11, 2001. I had no
way of
knowing then that a book on such a distant, scholarly subject would
prove an
allegory for Bush's Iraq War. Nor did I guess that the United States
would
give old-style colonialism in the Middle East one last try, despite
clear
signs that the formerly colonized would no longer put up with such
acts and
had, in the years since World War II, gained the means to resist
them.
The Republic Militant Goes to War
In June of 1798, as his enormous flotilla -- 36,000 soldiers,
thousands of
sailors, and hundreds of scientists on 12 ships of the line -- swept
inexorably toward the Egyptian coast, the young General Napoleon
Bonaparte
issued a grandiose communiqué to the bewildered and seasick troops he
was
about to march into the desert without canteens or reasonable supplies
of
water. He declared, "Soldiers! You are about to undertake a conquest,
the
effects of which on civilization and commerce are incalculable."
The prediction was as tragically inaccurate in its own way as the
pronouncement George W. Bush issued some two centuries later, on May
1,
2003, also from the deck of a great ship of the line, the aircraft
carrier
the USS Abraham Lincoln. "Today," he said, "we have the greater power
to
free a nation by breaking a dangerous and aggressive regime. With new
tactics and precision weapons, we can achieve military objectives
without
directing violence against civilians."
Both men were convinced that their invasions were announcing new
epochs in
human history. Of the military vassals of the Ottoman Empire who then
ruled
Egypt, Bonaparte predicted: "The Mameluke Beys who favor exclusively
English
commerce, whose extortions oppress our merchants, and who tyrannize
over the
unfortunate inhabitants of the Nile, a few days after our arrival will
no
longer exist."
Bonaparte's laundry list of grievances about them consisted of three
charges. First, the beys were, in essence, enablers of France's
primary
enemy at that time, the British monarchy which sought to strangle the
young
French republic in its cradle. Second, the rulers of Egypt were
damaging
France's own commerce by extorting taxes and bribes from its merchants
in
Cairo and Alexandria. Third, the Mamluks ruled tyrannically, having
never
been elected, and oppressed their subjects whom Bonaparte intended to
liberate.
This holy trinity of justifications for imperialism -- that the
targeted
state is collaborating with an enemy of the republic, is endangering
the
positive interests of the nation, and lacks legitimacy because its
rule is
despotic -- would all be trotted out over the subsequent two centuries
by a
succession of European and American leaders whenever they wanted to go
on
the attack. One implication of these familiar rhetorical turns of
phrase has
all along been that democracies have a license to invade any country
they
please, assuming it has the misfortune to have an authoritarian
regime.
George W. Bush, of course, hit the same highlights in his "mission
accomplished" speech, while announcing on the Abraham Lincoln that
"major
combat operations" in Iraq "had ended." "The liberation of Iraq," he
proclaimed, "is a crucial advance in the campaign against terror.
We've
removed an ally of al Qaeda, and cut off a source of terrorist
funding." He
put Saddam Hussein's secular, Arab nationalist Baath regime and the
radical
Muslim terrorists of al-Qaeda under the sign of September 11th,
insinuating
that Iraq was allied with the primary enemy of the United States and
so
posed an urgent menace to its security. (In fact, captured Baath
Party
documents show that Saddam's fretting security forces, on hearing that
Abu
Musab al-Zarqawi had entered Iraq, put out an all points bulletin on
him,
imagining -- not entirely correctly -- that he had al-Qaeda links.)
Likewise, Bush promised that Iraq's alleged "weapons of mass
destruction"
(which existed only in his own fevered imagination) would be tracked
down,
again implying that Iraq posed a threat to the interests and security
of the
U.S., just as Bonaparte had claimed that the Mamluks menaced France.
According to the president, Saddam's overthrown government had lacked
legitimacy, while the new Iraqi government, to be established by a
foreign
power, would truly represent the conquered population. "We're helping
to
rebuild Iraq, where the dictator built palaces for himself, instead
of
hospitals and schools. And we will stand with the new leaders of
Iraq," Bush
pledged, "as they establish a government of, by, and for the Iraqi
people."
Bonaparte, too, established governing councils at the provincial and
national level, staffing them primarily with Sunni clergymen,
declaring them
more representative of the Egyptian people than the beys and emirs of
the
slave soldiery who had formerly ruled that province of the Ottoman
Empire.
Liberty as Tyranny
For a democracy to conduct a brutal military occupation against
another
country in the name of liberty seems, on the face of it, too
contradictory
to elicit more than hoots of derision at the hypocrisy of it all. Yet,
the
militant republic, ready to launch aggressive war in the name of
"democracy," is everywhere in modern history, despite the myth that
democracies do not typically wage wars of aggression. Ironically,
some
absolutist regimes, like those of modern Iran, were remarkably
peaceable, if
left alone by their neighbors. In contrast, republican France invaded
Belgium, Holland, Spain, Germany, Italy, and Egypt in its first
decade
(though it went on the offensive in part in response to Austrian and
Prussian moves to invade France). The United States attacked Mexico,
the
Seminoles and other Native polities, Hawaii, the Spanish Empire, the
Philippines, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic in just the seven-plus
decades from 1845 to the eve of the U.S. entry into World War I.
Freedom and authoritarianism are nowadays taken to be stark antonyms,
the
provinces of heroes and monsters. Those closer to the birth of modern
republics were comforted by no such moral clarity. In Danton's Death,
the
young Romantic playwright Georg Büchner depicted the radical French
revolutionary and proponent of executing enemies of the Republic,
Maximilien
Robespierre, whipping up a Parisian crowd with the phrase, "The
revolutionary regime is the despotism of liberty against tyranny."
And
nowhere has liberty proved more oppressive than when deployed against
a
dictatorship abroad; for, as Büchner also had that famed
"incorruptible"
devotee of state terror observe, "In a Republic only republicans are
citizens; Royalists and foreigners are enemies."
That sunlit May afternoon on the USS Abraham Lincoln, President Bush
seconded Büchner's Robespierre. "Because of you," he exhorted the
listening
sailors of an aircraft carrier whose planes had just dropped 1.6
million
pounds of ordnance on Iraq, "our nation is more secure. Because of
you, the
tyrant has fallen, and Iraq is free."
Security for the republic had already proved ample justification to
launch a
war the previous March, even though Iraq was a poor, weak, ramshackle
Third
World country, debilitated by a decade of sanctions imposed by the
United
Nations and the United States, without so much as potable drinking
water or
an air force. Similarly, the Mamluks of Egypt -- despite the sky-high
taxes
and bribes they demanded of some French merchants -- hardly
constituted a
threat to French security.
The overthrow of a tyrannical regime and the liberation of an
oppressed
people were constant refrains in the shipboard addresses of both the
general
and the president, who felt that the liberated owed them a debt of
gratitude. Bonaparte lamented that the beys "tyrannize over the
unfortunate
inhabitants of the Nile"; or, as one of his officers, Captain Horace
Say,
opined, "The people of Egypt were most wretched. How will they not
cherish
the liberty we are bringing them?" Similarly, Bush insisted, "Men and
women
in every culture need liberty like they need food and water and air.
Everywhere that freedom arrives, humanity rejoices; and everywhere
that
freedom stirs, let tyrants fear."
Not surprisingly, expectations that the newly conquered would exhibit
gratitude to their foreign occupiers cropped up repeatedly in the
dispatches
and letters of men on the spot who advocated a colonial forward
policy.
President Bush put this
<http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/01/14/bush.60.minutes/>
dramatically in
2007, long after matters had not proceeded as expected: "We liberated
that
country from a tyrant. I think the Iraqi people owe the American
people a
huge debt of gratitude. That's the problem here in America: They
wonder
whether or not there is a gratitude level that's significant enough
in
Iraq."
Liberty in this two-century old rhetorical tradition, moreover, was
more
than just a matter of rights and the rule of law. Proponents of
various
forms of liberal imperialism saw tyranny as a source of poverty,
since
arbitrary rulers could just usurp property at will and so make
economic
activity risky, as well as opening the public to crushing and
arbitrary
taxes that held back commerce. The French quartermaster Francois
Bernoyer
wrote of the Egyptian peasantry: "Their dwellings are adobe huts,
which
prosperity, the daughter of liberty, will now allow them to abandon."
Bush
took up the same theme on the Abraham Lincoln: "Where freedom takes
hold,
hatred gives way to hope. When freedom takes hold, men and women turn
to the
peaceful pursuit of a better life."
"Heads Must Roll"
In both eighteenth century Egypt and twenty-first century Iraq, the
dreary
reality on the ground stood as a reproach to, if not a wicked satire
upon,
these high-minded pronouncements. The French landed at the port of
Alexandria on July 1, 1798. Two and a half weeks later, as the French
army
advanced along the Nile toward Cairo, a unit of Gen. Jean Reynier's
division
met opposition from 1,800 villagers, many armed with muskets. Sgt.
Charles
Francois recalled a typical scene. After scaling the village walls
and
"firing into those crowds," killing "about 900 men," the French
confiscated
the villagers' livestock -- "camels, donkeys, horses, eggs, cows,
sheep" --
then "finished burning the rest of the houses, or rather the huts, so
as to
provide a terrible object lesson to these half-savage and barbarous
people."
On July 24, Bonaparte's Army of the Orient entered Cairo and he began
reorganizing his new subjects. He grandiosely established an Egyptian
Institute for the advancement of science and gave thought to
reforming
police, courts, and law. But terror lurked behind everything he did.
He
wrote Gen. Jacques Menou, who commanded the garrison at the
Mediterranean
port of Rosetta, saying, "The Turks [Egyptians] can only be led by
the
greatest severity. Every day I cut off five or six heads in the
streets of
Cairo.... [T]o obey, for them, is to fear." (Mounting severed heads on
poles
for viewing by terrified passers-by was another method the French used
in
Egypt...)
That August, the Delta city of Mansura rose up against a small French
garrison of about 120 men, chasing them into the countryside, tracking
the
blue coats down, and methodically killing all but two of them. In
early
September, the Delta village of Sonbat, inhabited in part by Bedouin
of the
western Dirn tribe, also rose up against the Europeans. Bonaparte
instructed
one of his generals, "Burn that village! Make a terrifying example of
it."
After the French army had indeed crushed the rebellious peasants and
chased
away the Bedouin, Gen. Jean-Antoine Verdier reported back to Bonaparte
with
regard to Sonbat, "You ordered me to destroy this lair. Very well, it
no
longer exists."
The most dangerous uprisings confronting the French were, however, in
Cairo.
In October, much of the city mobilized to attack the more than 20,000
French
troops occupying the capital. The revolt was especially fierce in the
al-Husayn district, where the ancient al-Azhar madrassa (or seminary)
trained 14,000 students, where the city's most sacred mosque stood,
and
where wealth was concentrated in the merchants and guilds of the Khan
al-Khalili bazaar. At the same time, the peasants and Bedouin of the
countryside around Cairo rose in rebellion, attacking the small
garrisons
that had been deployed to pacify them.
Bonaparte put down this Egyptian "revolution" with the utmost
brutality,
subjecting urban crowds to artillery barrages. He may have had as
many
rebels executed in the aftermath as were killed in the fighting. In
the
countryside, his officers' launched concerted campaigns to decimate
insurgent villages. At one point, the French are said to have brought
900
heads of slain insurgents to Cairo in bags and ostentatiously dumped
them
out before a crowd in one of that city's major squares to instill
Cairenes
with terror. (Two centuries later, the American public would come to
associate decapitations by Muslim terrorists in Iraq with the ultimate
in
barbarism, but even then hundreds such beheadings were not carried out
at
once.)
The American deployment of terror against the Iraqi population has,
of
course, dwarfed anything the French accomplished in Egypt by orders
of
magnitude. After four mercenaries, one a South African, were killed
in
Falluja in March of 2004 and their bodies desecrated, President Bush
is
alleged to have said "heads must roll" in retribution.
An initial attack on the city faltered when much of the Iraqi
government
threatened to resign and it was clear major civilian casualties would
result. The crushing of the city was, however, simply put off until
after
the American presidential election in November. When the assault,
involving
air power and artillery, came, it was devastating, damaging two-thirds
of
the city's buildings and turning much of its population into refugees.
(As a
result, thousands of Fallujans still live in the desert in tent
villages
with no access to clean water.)
Bush must have been satisfied. Heads had rolled. More often, faced
with
opposition, the U.S. Air Force simply bombed already-occupied cities,
a
technology Bonaparte (mercifully) lacked. The strategy of ruling by
terror
and swift, draconian punishment for acts of resistance was, however,
the
same in both cases.
The British sank much of the French fleet on August 1, 1798,
marooning
Bonaparte and his troops in their newly conquered land. In the spring
of
1799, the French army tried -- and failed -- to break out through
Syria;
after which Bonaparte himself chose the better part of valor. He
slipped out
of Egypt late that summer, returning to France. There, he would
swiftly
stage a coup and come to power as First Consul, giving him the
opportunity
to hone his practice of bringing freedom to other countries -- this
time in
Europe. By 1801, joint British-Ottoman forces had defeated the French
in
Egypt, who were transported back to their country on British vessels.
This
first Western invasion of the Middle East in modern times had ended
in
serial disasters that Bonaparte would misrepresent to the French
public as a
series of glorious triumphs.
Ending the Era of Liberal Imperialism
Between 1801 and 2003 stretched endless decades in which colonialism
proved
a plausible strategy for European powers in the Middle East, including
the
French enterprise in Algeria (1830-1962) and the British veiled
protectorate
over Egypt (1882-1922). In these years, European militaries and their
weaponry were so advanced, and the means of resistance to which Arab
peasants had access so limited, that colonial governments could be
imposed.
That imperial moment passed with celerity after World War II, in part
because the masses of the Third World joined political parties,
learned to
read, and -- with how-to-do-it examples all around them -- began to
mount
political resistance to foreign occupations of every sort. While the
twenty-first century American arsenal has many fancy, exceedingly
destructive toys in it, nothing has changed with regard to the ability
of
colonized peoples to network socially and, sooner or later, push any
foreign
occupying force out.
Bonaparte and Bush failed because both launched their operations at
moments
when Western military and technological superiority was not assured.
While
Bonaparte's army had better artillery and muskets, the Egyptians had
a
superb cavalry and their old muskets were serviceable enough for
purposes of
sniping at the enemy. They also had an ally with advanced weaponry and
the
desire to use it -- the British Navy.
In 2007, the high-tech U.S. military -- as had been true in Vietnam in
the
1960s and 1970s, as was true for the Soviets in Afghanistan in the
1980s --
is still vulnerable to guerrilla tactics and effective low-tech
weapons of
resistance such as roadside bombs. Even more effective has been the
guerrillas' social warfare, their success in making Iraq ungovernable
through the promotion of clan and sectarian feuds, through targeted
bombings
and other attacks, and through sabotage of the Iraqi infrastructure.
>From the time of Bonaparte to that of Bush, the use of the rhetoric
of
liberty versus tyranny, of uplift versus decadence, appears to have
been a
constant among imperialists from republics -- and has remained
domestically
effective in rallying support for colonial wars. The despotism (but
also the
weakness) of the Mamluks and of Saddam Hussein proved sirens
practically
calling out for Western interventions. According to the rhetoric of
liberal
imperialism, tyrannical regimes are always at least potentially
threats to
the Republic, and so can always be fruitfully overthrown in favor of
rule by
a Western military. After all, that military is invariably imagined
as
closer to liberty since it serves an elected government. (Intervention
is
even easier to justify if the despots can be portrayed, however
implausibly,
as allied with an enemy of the republic.)
For both Bush and Bonaparte, the genteel diction of liberation,
rights, and
prosperity served to obscure or justify a major invasion and
occupation of a
Middle Eastern land, involving the unleashing of slaughter and terror
against its people. Military action would leave towns destroyed,
families
displaced, and countless dead. Given the ongoing carnage in Iraq,
President
Bush's boast that, with "new tactics and precision weapons, we can
achieve
military objectives without directing violence against civilians," now
seems
not just hollow but macabre. The equation of a foreign military
occupation
with liberty and prosperity is, in the cold light of day, no less
bizarre
than the promise of war with virtually no civilian casualties.
It is no accident that many of the rhetorical strategies employed by
George
W. Bush originated with Napoleon Bonaparte, a notorious spinmeister
and
confidence man. At least Bonaparte looked to the future, seeing
clearly the
coming breakup of the Ottoman Empire and the likelihood that European
Powers
would be able to colonize its provinces. Bonaparte's failure in Egypt
did
not forestall decades of French colonial success in Algeria and
Indochina,
even if that era of imperial triumph could not, in the end, be
sustained in
the face of the political and social awakening of the colonized.
Bush's
neocolonialism, on the other hand, swam against the tide of history,
and its
failure is all the more criminal for having been so predictable.
*Juan Cole teaches Middle Eastern and South Asian history at the
University
of Michigan. His most recent book Napoleon's
<http://www.amazon.com/dp/1403964319/ref=nosim/?tag=nationbooks08-20>
Egypt: Invading the Middle East (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007)
has
just been published. He has appeared widely on television, radio and
on
op-ed pages as a commentator on Middle East affairs, and has a
regular
column at Salon.com. <http://www.salon.com/> He has written, edited,
or
translated 14 books and has authored 60 journal articles. His weblog
on the
contemporary Middle East is Informed <http://www.juancole.com>
Comment
Zuckerschmuck
"Fartass Jewad" <fartas...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:iY-dne_ve75744Da...@comcast.com...
> Before you convert, here's how Islam looks like.
>
> http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/
>
>
> Islam in a nutshell:
>
> 1. Islam is the religion of Muslims. Mohammed is their prophet.
>
> 2. Muslims are stupid, ignorant, rude, violent and backward thinkers.
> They are full of hatred and envy.
>
> 3. Muslims are airplane hijackers, suicide bombers, kidnappers,
> beheaders,
> honor
> killers, murderers, and executioners.
>
> 4. They are car bombers, stupid protesters, arsonists, liars, daydreamers,
> thieves.
>
> 5. They are pedophiles, rapists, child molesters.and goat fuckers.
>
> 6. All terrorists are Muslims. They are hunted down like criminals all
> over
> the world.
>
> 7. Muslims have not contributed anything good to civilization.
>
> 8. Islam has not one class university that matches Stanford, Harvard,
> Princeton and Oxford.
>
> 9. There is no real freedom in Islam.
>
> 10. Muslims breed diseases like Aids, TB, Herpes, Gonorhea and Syphilis.
>
> NOW,WHO WANTS TO CONVERT TO ISLAM ??????
>
> http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/
>
