| August 27, 2008 at 09:30:39 Headlined on 8/27/08: by John Little Page 1 of 2 page(s) |
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From the very beginning, the United States had been a warrior nation. It had just defeated England to gain its independence. But at first, the original thirteen colonies had more out of common than in common. Therefore, it decided to look for a unifying force that would unite the various colonies into a cohesive force. The war against the motherland, England, was exactly what the doctor ordered. To unify such disparate viewpoints and future goals, the newly formed government knew that it needed as many uniting elements as possible. Fortunately, the then recent war of secession with England provided the necessary catalyst needed at that time. France also became an early enemy of the United States because of their involvement of sinking US merchant ships in the Mediterranean and elsewhere.
But these enemies lived far away from US soil and both had been allies at some previous point. Therefore, the US needed another enemy, one that was closer to home and easily vilified. The American Indians fulfilled those requirements and much more. Even though many of these same groups had often come to the aid of the first pioneers and European settlers to arrive in the new world, they were condemned at the same time by the ultra-religious groups who had first come over as heathens, people who did not believe in the God of these newcomers.
There was also a more useful and practical reason to fight the Native Indians in war after war. In order for America to expand, it needed new territories to conquer and although the Native Indian did not understand nor agree with the concept of possessing land, the colonialists were certain adherents who saw the current occupants of the lands west of the thirteen original colonies. The vilification of the American Indian provided the right ingredients to unite the colonists against a common enemy and for a common purpose. What was later termed as Manifest Destiny started out as a series of wars against those Indians who refused to leave their land and emigrate west past the Mississippi River.
Manifest Destiny was a phrase that expressed the belief that the United States was destined to expand from the Atlantic seaboard to the Pacific Ocean; it has also been used to advocate for or justify other territorial acquisitions. Advocates of Manifest Destiny believed that expansion was not only good, but that it was obvious ("manifest") and certain ("destiny"). It was easy, therefore, for Americans to justify the slaughter of whole tribes and the deliberate infection of others with Small Pox and other diseases against which the American Indian had no immunity.
The only major country to stand in the way of America's march to the Pacific Ocean was Mexico. It is not surprising, therefore, to find Mexicans vilified in the American media and the largest of these wars, the Mexican-American War which lasted from 1846 to 1848 was the first major conflict driven by the idea of "Manifest Destiny"; the belief that America had a God-given right, or destiny, to expand the country's borders from 'sea to shining sea'. This belief would eventually cause a great deal of suffering for many Mexicans, Native Americans and United States citizens. Following the earlier Texas War of Independence from Mexico, tensions between the two largest independent nations on the North American continent grew as Texas eventually became a U.S. state. Disputes over the border lines sparked military confrontation, helped by the fact that President Polk eagerly sought a war in order to seize large tracts of land from Mexico.
But having achieved the grand illusion of a United States whose borders went from sea to shining sea, the US found itself in a particular dilemma. After the great cessations of territory by the Mexican government allowed the United States to link both the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, it became obvious that the necessary bogeyman, the longed-for major enemy of the US that could galvanize its people into one common cause, was no longer available.
Not having any external nemeses to speak of, the US decided to turn its bellicose desires inward. For years, northern states had professed a virtual slave-free social lifestyle much to the chagrin of the southern states. To be sure, the African hostage who was dragged to the US through unspeakably horrible conditions did not lead a marvelous life in the northern states even though that person could no longer be bought and sold like a sack of potatoes or a bale of hay. The African-American employment opportunities were relegated to the lowest and hardest tasks of all, often with very little in the way of accommodations and wages. The existence of racism was just as bad in the northern states as it was in the southern states, but the outward manifestation of it was certainly not as readily available.
By 1861, there had been enough erosion of commonality between the two factions that a Civil War inevitably followed. Then, as is often the case now, Americans started off looking at the first battles as a sort of gigantic theatrical play in which the two sides were to enact an ad hoc combat scene for the amusement and pleasure of the crowd in attendance. People would gather on hilltops and sloping ravines in an effort to get as close-up a view of the battle as was humanly possible. Today we have continued this morbid curiosity of ours by demanding that news reporters be present where the military is in action and document and film the action as close to real-time as possible. Of course, this same American population refuses to witness the blood, gore and mutilation which accompany war and the media has actively complied. The US media, while showing with great enthusiasm US soldiers firing machine guns, tank shells and smart bombs at its targets, this same media will refuse to show the end result of such excessive use of force. Therefore, there is practically no footage on US TVs showing the wounded civilians screaming in pain and agony, the understaffed and overcrowded hospitals which lack even the most basic of care, or the morgues and cemeteries where daily hundreds of innocent and dead civilians are taken. As the American Civil War progressed, more and more odium was heaped on the opposing faction by newspapers from both sides.
Throughout the rest of the 19th Century, the conquering of the Old West along with the continued vilification of the Native Indian proceeded with abandon. Indians are considered complete idiots with little redeeming value and are often brutalized for no particular reason. In the South, a new "enemy"- has arisen. Following the defeat of Confederate forces at Appomattox by General Ulysses S. Grant, the seething undercurrent of disgust shared by many Southerners is slowly transformed into organizations like the Ku Klux Klan. These racist groups actively pursue African-Americans across the South. Many innocent Blacks are beaten, mutilated and lynched as a result.
By the end of the 19th Century, however, the US found itself again without a major enemy with which the government could galvanize support from the American people and pursue their hidden agendas beneath the radar of public opinion. With the advent of yellow journalism by Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst in the mid-1890s, the US and its media finally found a convenient source for its ire. Spain had once been the mother country of nearly every nation in the Americas excepting Canada and the United States and a few smaller nations. By the end of the 19th Century, Spain still held various small territories here, most notably Cuba.
When a boiler room aboard the USS Maine exploded in Havana Harbor, Cuba, on February 15, 1898, Hearst quickly launched his New York newspaper to declare that Spain had deliberately attacked the Maine while it was anchored there. Pulitzer's New York newspaper quickly followed suit and soon the battle cry, "Remember the Maine,"- was being evoked in all areas of the United States. By April 21, 1898, the US was at war with Spain. It is interesting to note that while Spain was being vilified as an imperial nation that enslaved poor countries around the world, most people forgot to acknowledge that the US was also in possession of various territories, including Hawaii and Puerto Rico. By the end of the Spanish-American War, the US would add Cuba and the Philippines to its growing list of overseas territories.
Up to this point the US had stayed out of the many conflicts that had engulfed the European continent over the centuries. While Europe set about destroying itself in countless battles of territorial possession and retribution, the US immersed itself in its Manifest Destiny genocidal attacks on Native Americans and brutal conflicts with Mexico. With the defeat of former world power Spain, the US made its debut on the world stage. But it obviously meant that the sacred bogeyman needed to rise in stature as well. During its formative years the US contented itself with small and local enemies, ones that could be easily spotted, singled out and acted upon. The American Indians and later the Mexicans easily filled this role. When the US became a world power, these fear tactics needed to be revised.
There needed to be a new enemy to bring the American people together. They were to get it in an unusual place and an unusual way. Karl Marx had written about a more equitable political solution to the industrial era more than three decades prior, but when Russia was finally taken over by the Bolsheviks in October, 1917, the US government found its golden bogeyman goose. Even though Lenin was far from incorporating most of Marx's suggested reforms, the American government found an "anti-American" bogeyman that they could lay their hat on and which would allow them a virtual carte blanche in any of their global affairs. As long as the US government could state that another country had Communist leanings, the American public gave them a virtual blank check to carry out whatever the government felt was necessary to thwart the "menace du jour."
Thus, in the guise of stopping the spread of Communism, the coming 75 years saw the US overthrowing country after country across the globe. In 1920 and 1922, the US overthrew the Guatemalan government. The American public was told that this was to curb the growth of Communism, but in reality, it was at the behest of the United Fruit Company, an American company located there. This scene was to be repeated time and again in Nicaragua, China, Cuba, Panama, Iran and elsewhere.
Even with the advent of WWI and WWII, the US did not end its portrayal of the Soviet Union as the evil empire. Certainly this thought was put on the back burner as another enemy took over the spotlight. In 1917, the US had allowed the cruise ship the USS Lusitania to embark on its voyage to England. On board were hundreds of passengers, and with them, thousands of tons of armament destined for the British government to be used against Germany. The German government did everything it could to warn people that the ship would be seen as a warship due to its cargo, and that it would be attacked if it left. They even took out a one-page ad in the New York newspapers. Nevertheless, when the U-boats sank her, the US government pointed the finger at Germany and rallied Americans against this new enemy.
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53 year old Californian male - I've lived in three different countries, USA, Switzerland, Mesico - speak three languages fluently, English, French, Spanish - parttime journalist for Empower-Sport Magazine
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