The West Bank’s last Christian village under settler attack

The Israeli settlers always come at sunset, their approach sending the inhabitants of the remote farmsteads into a quiet panic.

They arrive on noisy off-road vehicles, on foot, sometimes on horseback. They throw stones, break windows, set fires and occasionally, residents end up in hospital from their savage beatings, or worse.

In Taybeh, the last entirely Christian town in the West Bank, The Telegraph witnessed an attack in which a local Bedouin family were pinned down for more than an hour last week.

The town, which is close to Ramallah, has been declared a “closed military zone” by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) after months of settler attacks. The Telegraph previously reported that the settlers had used leaf blowers to fan the flames they had set to intimidate the town’s Christian inhabitants.

Despite this IDF order, attacks continue unabated and the town is increasingly surrounded by illegal outposts built by Israeli settlers.

Read the rest here.

The Commander in Thief

With each passing month of his presidency, Donald Trump behaves more like America’s commander in thief than its commander in chief.

How so? Let me count the ways. We are a nation at war today, with tens of thousands of troops deployed near Iran. Generally, when our nation has been at war, the commander in chief’s top domestic priority is to keep the country united. Because there is nothing more demoralizing for U.S. troops fighting abroad than to look back and see our country ripping itself apart at home. And there is nothing that encourages an enemy to hold out for better terms for ending a war with America than seeing America at war with itself.

And how has Trump risen to that commander-in-chief unifying duty? He has not lifted a finger to bring Democrats behind the war. Instead, he’s prioritized acting like a commander in thief. At the same moment Trump is asking our men and women in uniform to make the ultimate sacrifice, he has engaged in a brazen, in-your-face attempted heist of the U.S. Treasury to benefit himself, his family and his political allies, which could include those who attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. It’s so outrageous that even some of his most reliable Republican Party sycophants couldn’t accept it.

Trump conspired with his own Justice Department, headed by his former personal lawyer, to use taxpayer money to create a $1.776 billion political slush fund, supposedly to compensate those Trump supporters who “suffered weaponization and lawfare” at the hands of his predecessor. In fact, as this paper’s editorial board noted, it would “reward loyalists willing to defy the law and commit violence on behalf of the president.”

Read the rest here.

Meanwhile...

Trump threatens to cut off HIV medication to Zambia unless they cede mineral rights to the US

Trump says he thinks he will have the ‘honor’ of ‘taking Cuba’

The Decline of Liberal Policing in Britain and its Former Empire

The concept of classical liberal policing (henceforth “liberal policing”) has taken a beating in recent years, nowhere more so than in Britain and its former dominions. When Sir Robert Peel established the London Metropolitan Police in 1829, the flagship of Britain’s modern police forces, he envisioned it as a people’s police. Officers would defend British liberties on behalf of the public, not because the common people were incapable, but because it was more efficient to delegate the task to full-time professionals. To reduce undue political influence, officers swore an oath of allegiance to the Crown and to the law, not to the government of the day. They were unarmed and dressed in blue, as opposed to military scarlet, to emphasize their civilian status. The liberal image of British “bobbies,” as they were affectionately nicknamed, was immortalized in the television show Dixon of Dock Green (1955–1976). The main character, Police Constable George Dixon, lived among the community he served and upheld the law through routine foot patrols. His knack for subduing wrongdoers through words of wisdom meant that he rarely used violence.

Even as this television show was being aired, however, British police forces were discarding the liberal policing model. Constables have become increasingly militarized, politicized, and distant from the citizens they are supposed to serve. Nowadays, they appear more likely to violate civil liberties than to safeguard them. Two examples will suffice to show this fact. In 2002, the police arrested Harry Hammond, a British evangelical Christian, for exercising his right to protest. Hammond held up a placard in public criticizing homosexuality. When offended hecklers began verbally and physically harassing Hammond, the police were called. In the old days, they would have protected Hammond because freedom of speech is a central pillar of British justice. Instead, an officer arrested Hammond for hate speech. Even influential figures find themselves targeted. In September 2025, counter-terrorism police detained George Galloway and his wife. Galloway is a former member of parliament who leads the far-left Workers Party of Britain. Many of Galloway’s political opinions are anathema to liberalism. Nevertheless, he has a right to freedom of speech, and he is a brave critic of British imperialism. Counter terrorism officers informed Galloway and his wife that they were being detained without charge and that they had no right to silence. The elderly couple were grilled for several hours about their views on Palestine, Russia, China, and other areas of the world. Their devices and documents were confiscated. Galloway, who is in his seventies, says the stress of the ordeal has left him with heart problems.

How could the British police have degenerated so quickly from Dixon of Dock Green into an overbearing state gendarmerie? This article argues that there was always an illiberal streak in Peel’s model of policing. Like many British liberals, Peel supported the British Empire, which used repression to keep subject peoples in check. From the outset, this concession to imperialism left the door open to police authoritarianism. This threshold was crossed irrevocably in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as colonialism reached its apex and the First World War militarized the country. This tendency compromised the British police by the 1920s, though it preserved some liberal aspects until the 1960s, and one could find a liberal-minded remnant well into the early 2000s.

Read the rest here.

William Graham Sumner: The Conquest of the US by Spain (1898)

...The Americans have been committed from the outset to the doctrine that all men are equal. We have elevated it into an absolute doctrine as a part of the theory of our social and political fabric. It has always been a domestic dogma in spite of its absolute form, and as a domestic dogma it has always stood in glaring contradiction to the facts about Indians and negroes and to our legislation about Chinamen. In its absolute form it must, of course, apply to Kanakas, Malays, Tagals, and Chinese just as much as to Yankees, Germans, and Irish. It is an astonishing event that we have lived to see American arms carry this domestic dogma out where it must be tested in its application to uncivilized and half-civilized peoples. At the first touch of the test we throw the doctrine away and adopt the Spanish doctrine...

...The doctrine that we are to take away from other nations any possessions of theirs which we think that we could manage better than they are managing them, or that we are to take in hand any countries which we do not think capable of self-government, is one which will lead us very far. With that doctrine in the background, our politicians will have no trouble to find a war ready for us the next time that they come around to the point where they think that it is time for us to have another...  It will be established as a rule that, whenever political ascendency is threatened, it can be established again by a little war, filling the minds of the people with glory and diverting their attention from their own interests. Hard-headed old Benjamin Franklin hit the point when, referring back to the days of Marlborough, he talked about the “pest of glory.” The thirst for glory is an epidemic which robs a people of their judgment, seduces their vanity, cheats them of their interests, and corrupts their consciences. 

-W.G. Sumner on imperialism.

Read the rest here.

Cf: War and Other Essays

HT: Dr. Tighe

Some Thoughts on Greenland, Don-Roe and Trump's New Imperium

Today, Vice-President Vance is meeting with representatives of Denmark about Greenland. That's not encouraging as Vance has gone out of his way to assume to role of Donald Trump's attack dog. Some thoughts on where we are and the implications of Trump's revival of great power imperialism...

An armed attack by the United States on Denmark (which Greenland is a part of) would have earthquake level ramifications. It would instantly turn the United States into an international pariah, on the same level as Russia. It would effect not just trade and commerce, but also security. Europe would be forced to treat the US as an unfriendly, or even hostile foreign power. It would shatter the transatlantic relationship that has existed since World War II. NATO in its current form would effectively be dead. Most likely the Europeans would cease sharing intelligence with us. It is entirely possible that they would politely tell us to remove our troops from their soil. Beyond Europe, it is likely that pretty much the entire democratic world would look at America as just another predatory great power, not to be trusted, and against which  they need to guard themselves. 

For the moment, we are still living in a one superpower world. This is in large part because, unlike Russia and China, the US has a global military presence. We have bases all over the world that allow us to project power where and when we need to. This is almost entirely because the countries that are hosting our bases like and trust us. This is something unique in history. In the past, great powers with overseas bases almost always were colonial empires. The locals had no real choice about hosting their overlords' troops or ships. As far as I am aware, America is the first global superpower whose power is based on goodwill and a deep trust in our honor and benevolent intentions. The loss of that trust and good will would be catastrophic for global peace and security. But it would also have a devastating effect on our own ability to project military power. Imagine what would happen if the Europeans decide to evict us from the massive bases we operate there. That's the logistical nexus for our capabilities to operate in the Middle East, Africa and of course Europe. The Sixth Fleet is able to dominate the Mediterranean because of the bases we have in Italy and Spain and friendly port facilities in France, Greece and Turkey.  What if Japan, S. Korea and Australia suddenly started rethinking their relationship with us? Yes, we have Hawaii and Guam, but they can't replace the loss of of forward deployed troops and ships near potential hot spots. Guam can't absorb even a fraction of what we have in Japan and S. Korea. China would be able to swallow Taiwan at its leisure. The strategically vital base on Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean could also be lost. 

In the course of a single year, Donald Trump has taken 80 years worth of good will that this country has accumulated, put it all in a big pile, pored gasoline on it and struck a match. It now remains to be seen if he is actually going to throw the match. All in the name of his ego and desire to put his name on a new American Empire. 

Trump Threatens to Take Greenland ‘the Hard Way’

President Trump again threatened on Friday to forcibly annex Greenland, saying that he was “going to do something on Greenland, whether they like it or not.”

In a White House event discussing his plans to have American companies exploit Venezuela’s vast oil reserves under the threat of a military blockade, Mr. Trump advanced an imperialist vision of American foreign policy, where the U.S. must dominate strategically important neighboring countries because of the perceived possibility that rival powers might do so first.

“If we don’t do it, Russia or China will take over Greenland,” Mr. Trump said, falsely suggesting that Greenland, a semiautonomous territory of Denmark, was surrounded by Chinese and Russian warships. Russia and China are active in the Arctic Circle, but Greenland is not ringed by their ships, and the United States has a military base on Greenland.

Mr. Trump delivered an ominous warning to Danish and Greenlandic officials, who have consistently opposed the president’s plans to take the island: “I would like to make a deal the easy way, but if we don’t do it the easy way we’re going to do it the hard way.”

The United States’ taking Greenland by force would rip apart the central agreement that underpins the NATO military alliance, of which Denmark and the United States are both founding members.  Under that treaty, an attack on any member is treated as an attack on all members.

But Mr. Trump dismissed that central principle of the alliance as he explained why he wanted to annex Greenland, suggesting that he would defend the island only if the United States were to govern the territory directly.

“When we own it, we defend it,” Mr. Trump said. “You don’t defend leases the same way. You have to own it.”

Read the rest here.

Is the far right embracing imperialism?

The U.S. administration’s capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and President Donald Trump’s plans to open that country’s oil reserves to major energy companies has sparked a resurgence of pro-colonialist sentiment among some prominent figures inside the White House and the broader MAGA political movement.

“Not long after World War II the West dissolved its empires and colonies and began sending colossal sums of taxpayer-funded aid to these former territories (despite have already made them far wealthier and more successful),” White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, one of the aides Trump has tasked with overseeing the Venezuelan government, wrote on X the day after American forces raided Maduro’s compound and brought him to the U.S. for trial on a series of charges.

“The West opened its borders, a kind of reverse colonization, providing welfare and thus remittances, while extending to these newcomers and their families not only the full franchise but preferential legal and financial treatment over the native citizenry,” Miller wrote. “The neoliberal experiment, at its core, has been a long self-punishment of the places and peoples that built the modern world.”

The ode to colonialism, delivered by an aide who has been described as Trump’s id, comes as Venezuela’s stability is in question and Trump has cast his eyes on Colombia, Cuba and Greenland — two independent nations and one large territory that has long belonged to Denmark.

Miller’s take is at odds with most mainstream scholarship on the topic of colonialism, not to mention the ethos of political self-determination and economic independence that fueled the American revolution. In the journal Philosophy and Public Affairs, University of Arizona professors Ritwik Agrawal and Allen Buchanan wrote in February that the “fundamental wrong” at the heart of the “immorality of colonialism” is “colonizers regarded the colonized as incapable of managing their own affairs, in effect relegating them to the status of minors or mentally incompetent adults.”

Read the ret here.

Trump and Clausewitz vs Thomas Aquinas and the Post 1945 World Order

“War,” the Prussian military thinker Carl von Clausewitz wrote, “is a mere continuation of policy by other means.” If there is one line that virtually every Army officer learns from Clausewitz’s posthumously published 1832 book, “On War,” it’s that description of the purpose of armed conflict.

Those words were among the first that popped into my head when I woke up Saturday morning to the news that the American military had attacked Venezuela; seized its dictator, Nicolás Maduro; and brought him to the United States to face criminal charges.

The reason those words occurred to me was simple: The attack on Venezuela harks back to a different time, before the 19th-century world order unraveled, before two catastrophic world wars and before the creation of international legal and diplomatic structures designed to stop nations from doing exactly what the United States just did.

One of the most important questions any nation must decide is when — and how — to wage war. It’s a mistake, incidentally, to view Clausewitz as an amoral warmonger. He wasn’t inventing the notion he describes; he was describing the world as it was. His statement is a pithy explanation of how sovereign states have viewed warfare for much of human history.

When a strong state operates under the principle that war is just another extension of policy, it is tempted to operate a bit like a mob boss. Every interaction with a weaker nation is tinged in some way with the threat of force: Nice little country you have there — shame if something happened to it.

This is not fanciful. In a telephone conversation with The Atlantic’s Michael Scherer, President Trump threatened Venezuela’s new leader, Delcy Rodríguez, who served as Maduro’s vice president. “If she doesn’t do what’s right,” Trump said, “she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro.”

Diplomacy and economic pressure are almost always still a first resort for powerful nations, but if they fail to achieve the intended results, well, you can watch footage from the American strike in Venezuela to know what can happen next.

But the Clausewitzian view isn’t the only option for nations and their leaders. There is a better model for international affairs, one that acknowledges the existence of evil and the reality of national interests but also draws lines designed to preserve peace and human life.

Carl von Clausewitz, meet Thomas Aquinas.

Read the rest here.

Greenland Next?

Donald Trump has set his sights on a US takeover of Greenland after capturing Nicolas Maduro and saying he would run Venezuela.

“We do need Greenland, absolutely,” the US president told The Atlantic magazine, adding that the Danish territory was “surrounded by Russian and Chinese ships”.

He said officials in his administration would decide what happened to Greenland, which Mr Trump has claimed the US must annex for its security.

“We need it for defence,” he said of Greenland.

Mette Frederiksen, the Danish prime minister, urged Mr Trump to “stop the threats”, adding that Greenland is “not for sale”.

“The US has no right to annex any of the three nations in the Danish kingdom,” she said, pointing out that Denmark already has a defence agreement with America, which gives it access to Greenland, and that Copenhagen had boosted its investment in the Arctic region’s security.

“I would therefore strongly urge the United States to stop the threats against a historically close ally and against another country and another people who have very clearly said that they are not for sale,” she added.

Jens-Frederik Nielsen, the prime minister of Greenland, earlier on Sunday rebuked the Trump administration, calling it “disrespectful” and saying that the territory was “not for sale”.

He was referring to an image posted on social media by Katie Miller, the wife of Mr Trump’s deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, showing the map of Greenland painted with the US flag and captioned “SOON”.

Ulf Kirtsersson, the prime minister of Sweden, said on X: “It’s only Denmark and Greenland that have the right to decide on matters concerning Denmark and Greenland. Sweden fully stands up for our neighbouring country.” 

The mission to capture Mr Maduro has triggered concerns about further US military operations in the Western hemisphere, which the Trump administration views as part of America’s sphere of influence.

A US invasion of Greenland is deemed unlikely by analysts who point out that the Danish territory is a part of the Nato alliance along with the United States.

However, the renewed threats are likely to alarm European leaders as the American split with the continent grows.

Read the rest here.

After Venezuela, Trump hints the entire hemisphere is in play

As President Donald Trump announced Saturday that the U.S. would “run” Venezuela for now, he and top aides made clear that the U.S. may not stop there — and demanded that the rest of the world take note.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said Venezuela’s long-time dictator, Nicolas Maduro, captured in an overnight raid and extradited to New York on Saturday to be indicted on narco-conspiracy charges, “had a chance” to leave on his own before becoming the latest example of a leader paying a high price for not responding to Trump’s pressure.

“He effed around and he found out,” Hegseth said of Maduro.

The menacing comments were interwoven with specific threats toward three other countries that could soon be in the administration’s sights: Colombia, Cuba and Mexico.

The rest of the hemisphere is paying attention, and attempting to push back on Trump through condemnations of the strike itself and warnings of what could come next.

“All nations of the region must remain alert, as the threat hangs over all,” the Cuban government said in a statement.

The administration’s warnings, meanwhile, are getting bolder and more definitive. Trump again accused Colombia’s president of “making cocaine” and reaffirmed his past threats that he “does need to watch his ass.” He predicted “we will be talking about Cuba.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio offered a more sinister threat of future American action.

“Look, if I lived in Havana and I worked in the government, I’d be concerned,” Rubio said.

Earlier during a phone interview with Fox News, Trump warned that “something will have to be done about Mexico,” stating that he’s asked President Claudia Sheinbaum if she wants the U.S. military’s “help” in rooting out drug cartels.

“American dominance in the Western hemisphere will never be questioned again,” Trump said.

Read the rest here.

Trump says US will ‘run’ Venezuela, control oil production

President Trump said Saturday that the U.S. will “run” Venezuela until a transition takes place following the capture of the country’s President Nicholas Maduro. 

“We’re going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper, and judicious transition,” Trump said during a news conference from his Mar-a-Lago resort.

“We don’t want to be involved with having somebody get in and we have the same situation that we had for the last long period of years,” he added.

When asked to clarify specifically who will run Venezuela, Trump said the U.S. will be running it with a team...

...The president went on to note that the U.S. would also take control of its oil production.

“As everyone knows, the oil business in Venezuela has been a bust, a total bust for a long period of time,” Trump said. “We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country.” 

His remarks come hours after the U.S. arrested Maduro and his wife on narco-terrorism charges amid a strike on Venezuela overnight. The capture took place just days after the Venezuelan strongman said he was open to conducting negotiations with the U.S. regarding drug trafficking and oil. 

Read the rest here.

On Foreign Affairs

The ‘Free World’ Is Gone and There’s No Turning Back

Canada, May I Introduce You to Ukraine?

Trump’s Lust for Canada Echoes Putin’s Lust for Ukraine

Trump’s expansionism threatens the rules-based order in place since second world war

The strong will do what they will, and the weak will suffer what they must (reposted)

Trump Wants Ukraine as a US Colony

Donald Trump’s demand for a $500bn (£400bn) “payback” from Ukraine goes far beyond US control over the country’s critical minerals. It covers everything from ports and infrastructure to oil and gas, and the larger resource base of the country.

The terms of the contract that landed at Volodymyr Zelensky’s office a week ago amount to the US economic colonisation of Ukraine, in legal perpetuity. It implies a burden of reparations that cannot possibly be achieved. The document has caused consternation and panic in Kyiv.

The Telegraph has obtained a draft of the pre-decisional contract, marked “Privileged & Confidential’ and dated Feb 7 2025. It states that the US and Ukraine should form a joint investment fund to ensure that “hostile parties to the conflict do not benefit from the reconstruction of Ukraine”.

The agreement covers the “economic value associated with resources of Ukraine”, including “mineral resources, oil and gas resources, ports, other infrastructure (as agreed)”, leaving it unclear what else might be encompassed. “This agreement shall be governed by New York law, without regard to conflict of laws principles,” it states.

The US will take 50pc of recurring revenues received by Ukraine from extraction of resources, and 50pc of the financial value of “all new licences issued to third parties” for the future monetisation of resources. There will be “a lien on such revenues” in favour of the US. “That clause means ‘pay us first, and then feed your children’,” said one source close to the negotiations.

It states that “for all future licences, the US will have a right of first refusal for the purchase of exportable minerals”. Washington will have sovereign immunity and acquire near total control over most of Ukraine’s commodity and resource economy. The fund “shall have the exclusive right to establish the method, selection criteria, terms, and conditions” of all future licences and projects. And so forth, in this vein. It seems to have been written by private lawyers, not the US departments of state or commerce.

Read the rest here.

I think we now what Trump's "peace plan" is. It is the partitioning of Ukraine between Russia and the US. Reminds me of the Hitler-Stalin Pact in 1939.

Trump's American Empire

Over the past two days, President-elect Donald J. Trump has made clear that he has designs for American territorial expansion, declaring that the United States has both security concerns and commercial interests that can best be addressed by bringing the Panama Canal and Greenland under American control or outright ownership.

Mr. Trump’s tone has had none of the trolling jocularity that surrounded his repeated suggestions in recent weeks that Canada should become America’s “51st state,” including his social media references to the country’s beleaguered prime minister as “Governor Justin Trudeau.”

Instead, while naming a new ambassador to Denmark — which controls Greenland’s foreign and defense affairs — Mr. Trump made clear on Sunday that his first-term offer to buy the landmass could, in the coming term, become a deal the Danes cannot refuse.

He appears to covet Greenland both for its strategic location at a time when the melting of Arctic ice is opening new commercial and naval competition and for its reserves of rare earth minerals needed for advanced technology.

“For purposes of National Security and Freedom throughout the World,” Mr. Trump wrote on social media, “the United States of America feels that the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity.”

On Saturday evening, he had accused Panama of price-gouging American ships traversing the canal, and suggested that unless that changed, he would abandon the Jimmy Carter-era treaty that returned all control of the canal zone to Panama.

“The fees being charged by Panama are ridiculous,” he wrote, just ahead of an increase in the charges scheduled for Jan. 1. “This complete ‘rip-off’ of our country will immediately stop.”

He went on to express worry that the canal could fall into the “wrong hands,” an apparent reference to China, the second-largest user of the canal. A Hong Kong-based firm controls two ports near the canal, but China has no control over the canal itself.

Not surprisingly, the government of Greenland immediately rejected Mr. Trump’s demands, as it did in 2019, when he first floated the idea. “Greenland is ours,” Prime Minister Mute B. Egede said in a statement. “We are not for sale and will never be for sale. We must not lose our long struggle for freedom.”

Read the rest here.

The Opium Wars (Part I)

For those interested in some quality history on a topic rarely discussed in most history courses.

Reflecting on the Treaty of Westphalia and Modern American Foreign Policy

When a crisis in the 17th-century Holy Roman Empire about princely authority and autonomy spiraled into sectarian warfare, Central Europe was plunged into the Thirty Years War. It was to be a conflict so debilitating and deadly that it would prove more proportionally costly in casualties for what is now Germany than even the Second World War. When the Peace of Westphalia finally brought the nightmare to a close in 1648, it was clear that domestic politics had to be separated from diplomacy for any stability to return to Europe. So came an emphasis on the sovereignty of states to police their own affairs while retaining a standardized system for dealing with each other as (ostensible) equals in the international realm. 

While no system can guarantee peace free from geopolitical upset, The Westphalian Peace was nonetheless an improvement over the religious wars of the past. Something like it would also be an improvement over the rampant, American-led liberal hegemony of today. The ideologies of permanent war have had disproportionate influence over the ruling cliques in Washington, D.C., from the Clintonite neoliberals to the Dick Cheney neoconservatives. There are very real material reasons for this, of course, such as defense contracting and the powerful lobbying behind it. But it was on purely ideological terms that America’s dangerous imperial overstretch was sold to a domestic audience. 

Those like former U.N. ambassador Samantha Power would have us believe that there are teeming masses of people abroad just yearning to have American bombs rained down upon them as a solution for their domestic woes. Yet for most of American history, this was not so. The early and rising United States was a nation of diplomats who had taken the lessons of Westphalia to heart. From George Washington and John Quincy Adams up through the start of the 20th century, the importance of keeping domestic ideological arrangements out of sober realist diplomacy was usually understood. It was Woodrow Wilson who departed from this arrangement with his commitment to establishing the United States as guarantor not only of the rights of its own citizens but also the people of foreign nations abroad. His unrealistic vision was rejected by both Congress and most of the world’s other great powers. Still, Britain and America were influenced enough by his thinking to stand aghast when first Japan and then Italy and Germany went about sabotaging the fragile postwar order. It would take a second, more destructive war, with the United States and the U.S.S.R. creating a peace out of their victorious power, to undo the damage that had been done. Two countries that could not have been more internally different became the crux of the most important wartime alliance of the 20th century. Largely forgotten was that the top crime pursued by the allies during the Germans’ postwar trial was that of “waging aggressive war.”

Since the end of the Cold War, and with the checks on America’s ambitions largely removed, we have seen this Wilsonian messianism return, and stronger than before. America’s cultural history of puritanism and faith in its own (culturally and historically specific) institutions has merged with an unchecked hubris. Interventions unrelated to the interests of the average American came in the Balkans and Somalia, and then expanded to nearly the entire Middle East and large swathes of Africa. The justification is always the 9/11 terror attacks. The Bush administration in particular merged all of these trends by marrying the images of apocalyptic religious struggle to the Wilsonian quest for a world order founded on a universal conception of rights. When weapons of mass destruction, the ostensible reason for the invasion of Iraq, failed to turn up, Bush quickly pivoted to another argument: that we would build a new and better Iraq Americanized through our concept of civil society. What we got was the rise of ISIS, sectarian strife, and an empowered Iran greatly expanding its influence throughout that region. It was an outcome abundantly obvious to the many experts who were opposed to the war from the outset.

Read the rest here.

And now for something a bit more serious

Dan Carlin discusses the background of one of the  most important, and largely forgotten, chapters in American history. The pivotal moment when the United States decided to step into the world of Great Power politics and conflicts, and began its transformation into the imperial power it is has become.

Quote of the day...

The White Man’s Burden
The United States in the Middle East – 2010

Give up the White Man’s burden–
It isn’t worth the game.
You’ll lose your sons and daughters;
The world will be the same.
You cannot save the heathen
Or civilize the wild.
Your gritty foes survive you
And breed another child.

Give up the White Man’s burden—
And turn the other way
When generals speak of glory
And politicians pray.
When duty calls, or danger,
For solid men and true,
The one to bear the burden
Will not be them, but you.

Give up the White Man’s burden—
The City on a Hill
Is yours to build and cherish,
But not the others’ will.
A world of bloody prophets,
Where fathers slay their own,
Will wear you down and kill you.
It’s better left alone.

Give up the White Man’s burden—
And save your time and breath:
You cannot reach the hearts of men
Who stone young girls to death.
They do not want your justice;
They love their cruel laws.
Your shining dreams of freedom
Will never be their cause.

Read the rest here. It's comment 18 by Winston.

France wants to get back in the Empire business

PARIS — As Western powers pressed the Syrian authorities to permit United Nations inspectors to examine the site of a claimed poison gas attack outside the capital, Damascus, France said on Thursday that outside powers should respond “with force” if the use of chemical weapons was confirmed.

At the same time, Israel said its intelligence assessments pointed to the use of chemical weapons.

“According to our intelligence assessments there was use of chemical weapons,” the Israeli minister of strategic and intelligence affairs and international relations, Yuval Steinitz, told Israel Radio, “and this of course was not for the first time.” 

Read the rest here.

For the record, I have no reason to doubt that Assad used lethal gas. The man has repeatedly demonstrated that he is a barbarian. But while I feel deeply for the suffering people of that country, including and especially the suffering Christian minority who are always the first casualties in any civil unrest, the fact is that it is none of our business. If France wants to take a trip down memory lane and send the Foreign Legion for a romp in her former colonies, good for them. I think they are nuts. But they will find that out in short order.

Syria is a country being ripped by a bloody civil war between a sociopathic dictator backed by Russia, Iran and Hezbollah (Iran's mercenary terrorist surrogates) on the one side and rebels mostly consisting of, and heavily backed by, Islamic religious extremists including Al Qaida who are fanatically anti-Western and anti-Christian on the other side.

What exactly do the French hope to gain from this? The problem with interventionists and enlightened imperialists like the French (and far too many Americans) is that they never grasp that some wars have no good guys involved. The supreme irony is that it was the French who warned Eisenhower to stay out of Vietnam.