News: Senate to vote on Iraq division plan - “The US Senate is expected to vote as early as Tuesday on a Bosnia-style plan to subdivide Iraq on ethnic lines, touted by backers as the sole hope of forging a federal state out of sectarian strife.”

What gives the United States the right to decide the fate of Iraq? It’s true that “Iraq was carved out of the Ottoman Empire by the French and British” and that “on 11 November 1920 it became a League of Nations mandate under British control with the name ‘State of Iraq’.” But that was almost a century ago and occurred when we were still gullible enough to believe in Empires. Is this how far we have come?

The British Empire created Pakistan and India by having its “Lords” draw arbitrary lines on a piece of paper. This partition was a brutal disaster for those living in the region, resulting in multiple wars, culminating into both countries acquiring nuclear weapons and almost using them on each other. All of this occurred at a time when wars were less brutal and obtaining nuclear weapons much more difficult.

Is this really what the future holds for the Middle East and the rest of the world? Unending wars caused by those who build empires?

One more question does come to mind however: when exactly did the United States decide that they wanted to divide Iraq into pieces? According to this map published in Armed Forces Journal in 2006, the US had already made plans to create not only a new Iraq but a New Middle East. Redrawing the maps of all of these countries will be a gargantuan task indeed resulting in millions, if not tens of millions, of deaths.

It appears that we have not evolved very far in the last century. One final question remains: considering how the occupation of Iraq is going for the occupying forces, do we actually believe that the natives of these lands will allow us, the White Man, to carve up their lands and exploit their resources along with their people?

We have much to learn.

Related Information

• The White Man's Burden - “’The White Man's Burden’ is a poem by the English poet Rudyard Kipling. It was originally published in the popular magazine McClure's in 1899, with the subtitle The United States and the Philippine Islands. ‘The White Man's Burden’ was written in regard to the U.S. conquest of the Philippines and other former Spanish colonies. Although Kipling's poem mixed exhortation to empire with sober warnings of the costs involved, imperialists within the United States latched onto the phrase ‘white man's burden’ as a characterization for imperialism that justified the policy as a noble enterprise.

  The poem was originally written for Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee, but exchanged for ‘Recessional’; Kipling changed the text of ‘Burden’ to reflect the subject of American colonization. The poem consists of seven stanzas, following a regular rhyme scheme. At face value it appears to be a rhetorical command to white men to colonize and rule people of other nations for their own benefit (both the people and the duty may be seen as representing the ‘burden’ of the title), and because of this has become symbolic of Eurocentric Racism. A century after its publication, the poem still rouses strong emotions, and can be analyzed from a variety of perspectives.”

  The poem is as follows:

  “Take up the White Man's burden--
  Send forth the best ye breed--
  Go bind your sons to exile
  To serve your captives' need;
  To wait in heavy harness,
  On fluttered folk and wild--
  Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
  Half-devil and half-child.

  Take up the White Man's burden--
  In patience to abide,
  To veil the threat of terror
  And check the show of pride;
  By open speech and simple,
  An hundred times made plain
  To seek another's profit,
  And work another's gain.

  Take up the White Man's burden--
  The savage wars of peace--
  Fill full the mouth of Famine
  And bid the sickness cease;
  And when your goal is nearest
  The end for others sought,
  Watch sloth and heathen Folly
  Bring all your hopes to nought.

  Take up the White Man's burden--
  No tawdry rule of kings,
  But toil of serf and sweeper--
  The tale of common things.
  The ports ye shall not enter,
  The roads ye shall not tread,
  Go make them with your living,
  And mark them with your dead.

  Take up the White Man's burden--
  And reap his old reward:
  The blame of those ye better,
  The hate of those ye guard--
  The cry of hosts ye humour
  (Ah, slowly!) toward the light:--
  "Why brought he us from bondage,
  Our loved Egyptian night?"

  Take up the White Man's burden--
  Ye dare not stoop to less--
  Nor call too loud on Freedom
  To cloke your weariness;
  By all ye cry or whisper,
  By all ye leave or do,
  The silent, sullen peoples
  Shall weigh your gods and you.

  Take up the White Man's burden--
  Have done with childish days--
  The lightly proferred laurel,
  The easy, ungrudged praise.
  Comes now, to search your manhood
  Through all the thankless years
  Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom,
  The judgment of your peers!”

Posted in Politics Submitted by chycho on Thu, 2007-09-27 15:16.
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