Scottish poet Robert Burns observed:
"O would some power the giftie give us/ to see ourselves as others see us."
The view of those in the Middle East might be:
European settlers with a biblical ideology invaded the Americas and destroyed the indigenous civilizations that had prospered there for centuries or millennia. New Americans paid no attention to the rights of local people, who were wantonly slaughtered and driven from their lands, or who died en masse of the diseases brought from Europe to the Northern American continent by the Europeans. Besides being built on the graves of millions of Native peoples in the eastern and central part of the continent, America was built on the backs of millions of Africans, kidnapped and worked to death in the new world to build and benefit the white man's paradise. This dual crime of genocide and enslavement was soon supplemented by a third, the systematic depopulation of what was once greater Mexico, the area now known as the southwestern United States, of its original inhabitants. The American colonial machine soon occupied all of what is now called the United States, and legalized and normalized the fruits of its crimes.
Scottish poet Robert Burns observed:
"O would some power the giftie give us/ to see ourselves as others see us."
The view of those in the Middle East might be:
European settlers with a biblical ideology invaded the Americas and destroyed the indigenous civilizations that had prospered there for centuries or millennia. New Americans paid no attention to the rights of local people, who were wantonly slaughtered and driven from their lands, or who died en masse of the diseases brought from Europe to the Northern American continent by the Europeans. Besides being built on the graves of millions of Native peoples in the eastern and central part of the continent, America was built on the backs of millions of Africans, kidnapped and worked to death in the new world to build and benefit the white man's paradise. This dual crime of genocide and enslavement was soon supplemented by a third, the systematic depopulation of what was once greater Mexico, the area now known as the southwestern United States, of its original inhabitants. The American colonial machine soon occupied all of what is now called the United States, and legalized and normalized the fruits of its crimes.
In our high school history classes this was termed "Manifest Destiny" ... a policy, a `mission' if you will, to extend the 'boundaries of freedom' to others ...by imposing our idealism and belief in democratic institutions to those whom we deemed capable of self-rule. It excluded those whom we perceived as incapable of self-government, such as Native Americans and those of non-European origin.
Writing in the Guardian across the pond, George Monbiot tells us:
"The United States is no longer just a nation. It is now a religion. Its soldiers have entered Iraq to liberate its people not only from their dictator, their oil and their sovereignty, but also from their darkness. As George Bush told his troops on the day he announced victory: "Wherever you go, you carry a message of hope - a message that is ancient and ever new. In the words of the prophet Isaiah, 'To the captives, "come out," and to those in darkness, "be free".'"
"The dangers of national divinity scarcely require explanation. Japan went to war in the 1930s convinced, like George Bush, that it possessed a heaven-sent mission to "liberate" Asia and extend the realm of its divine imperium. It would, the fascist theoretician Kita Ikki predicted: "light the darkness of the entire world". Those who seek to drag heaven down to earth are destined only to engineer a hell."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1007741,00.html
It appears our shadow collective is manifesting itself to the entire world. Is this a `new image' -- or is it in fact, us?
Is our invasion of Iraq, our objective to `remake the Middle East' in our image... and what is that image... a continuation of our past?
There's much hope these days among democrats and progressives of winning back the White House and gaining some ground in Congress in an effort to change the direction the neocons are taking us. One hears comments about needing to clean up the economic mess, and then there is the ongoing debate about Iraq: whether to stay or go. Part of the neocon plan was to intensely divide us as a nation, and they seem to have succeeded. We are a House divided.... more so than in 2000, and possibly as much so as during the Civil War. [How can a `war' be civil?]
If indeed Kerry is elected, there is the task of assuming power in late January and setting the correct course for change. What will that direction be, and how will we get there?