June 27, 2006
FIRST WE CAME FOR HAWAII...:
Overthrow, Over and Over (Laura S. Washington, June 27, 2006, In These Times)
The old saw goes, "the trend is your friend." Let's try that one again.Stephen Kinzer's new book, Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq (Times Books) puts the kibosh on that notion. Kinzer, a former New York Times foreign correspondent, deconstructs America's disturbingly counterproductive foreign policy through competing critiques of the country's imperialism and its incompetence. His chronicle of America's role in interventions into 14 sovereign nations posits failure and avarice as our lasting progeny. It is a history lesson we can't afford to forget.
Surfers, slackers, grass skirts and sunsets -- that's what Hawaii is all about, right? Think again. Think regime change. The 1893 overthrow of Hawaii's monarch, Queen Liluokalani, launched 110 years of American-led regime changes around the globe. Hawaii's monarch was overthrown by a group of haole (the Hawaiian term for white Americans). These wealthy sugar planters teamed up with John L. Stevens, the American ambassador to Hawaii.
The "convenient" presence of the American gunboat Boston and 200 marines in Honolulu Harbor allowed the haole to lay Queen Liluokalani low. Minister Stevens, in classic American diplomatese, offered a "request" to Boston Captain Gilbert Wiltse: "In view of the existing critical circumstances in Honolulu, indicating an inadequate legal force, I request you to land marines and sailors from the ship under your command for the protection of the United States legation and the United States Consulate and to secure the safety of American life and property."
Hawaii was the first domino to fall. There have been 13 more, and we're still counting: Cuba, Nicaragua, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Guatemala, Honduras, Vietnam, Chile, Iran, Grenada, Panama, Afghanistan and Iraq. The circumstances are familiar, the parallels eerie.
What kind of monsters are we, that we want to turn Saddam's gulag into a vacation paradise? Posted by Orrin Judd at June 27, 2006 4:43 PM
Yet about 96% voted for statehood when they had the opportunity, go figure....
Posted by: Sandy P at June 27, 2006 4:54 PMAnyone who thinks that we were wrong to intervene in Panama is too stupid to bother with.
Posted by: b at June 27, 2006 4:55 PMEven the folk-enemy/culture-traitor author of the linked article recognizes it. No draft, no "resistance" to wars of policy.
No more Vietnams.
Posted by: Lou Gots at June 27, 2006 5:23 PMI haven't read the book, but I'm certain the fact that Hawaii would have become a British colony, or even a Japanese one, in the realities of the 19th century world, rates maybe half a sentence, if that.
Typical idealistic lefty crap. The world is frustratingly imperfect, and when the US acknowledges that and acts accordingly, it is a cause for outrage and condemnation. When others (non White-Euro-Christian, etc) do so, let us turn our heads, no bury them in sand, as 'South Park' so elequently portrayed.
Yap yap yap.
Posted by: Andrew X at June 27, 2006 6:10 PMThe Philippines was a Spanish colony. Without us, they would have gone down the same drain as other Spanish colonies. The first thing we did was to prepare the locals to become independent. Puerto Rico refuses to become independent. They receive US aids, but do not have to pay federal taxes. They are US citizens who can come and go whenever they want. Win-win for them. The problem with Cuba: if Kennedy has not chickened out, causing the deaths of tens of thousands of Cubans, we would have a rich Caribbean resort in our backyard. I don't see anything wrong with American imperialists.
Posted by: ic at June 27, 2006 7:05 PMWhat about that bout of regime change we engaged in during the 1940s? Or don't Germany, Italy and Japan count for anything any more?
This post reminds me of a book I recently came across in my local library:
The Untied States of America : Polarization, Fracturing, and Our Future (Hardcover)
by Juan Enriquez
Anyone here came across it?
[Among many interesting things]there's this place where the author places the Filipino, Panamanian, and Cuban flags side by side, and below the illustrations asks, "Care to guess why each of these flags are red, white, and blue and contain a star or two?"
Not far from there, he makes a remarkable observation:
"There has yet to be a US president buried under the same flag he was born under.As generals, astrologers, astronomers, and politicians might say... Stars Happen. And sometimes unhappen."
Anyway, just thought to share this with you folks.
Make of it whatever you will...
How much a paradise is it for the native Hawaiians and the Asians brought in as labor during the days of the Republic and Territory?
Come to think of it, has it improved all that much with statehood (which the local Republicans, mainly decendants from the yankee planters, opposed)?
Look oup thinks like the Insular Acts before waxing rhapsodic about the wonders of American Rule... or better yet point out Japan and the FRG as what we are shooting for.
HTG
Posted by: H. Torrance Griffin at June 28, 2006 2:30 AMTheir living standareds, life expectancies, and relkationships with God have improved astronomically.
Posted by: oj at June 28, 2006 7:56 AM