Future years will never know the seething hell and the black infernal background.....Walt Whitman
The countless minor scenes and interiors of the Iraq war; and it is the worst for us that they should not. The real war will never get in the books for it is covered up by the old people who started it.
The countless minor scenes and interiors of the Iraq war; and it is the worst for us that they should not. The real war will never get in the books for it is covered up by the old people who started it.
Percieved Similarities of The Iraq and Philippine Invasions
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There was a forgotten war, that is seldom written in history books. The similarities and the mood of the period in this war at the turn of the century were congruent to this Iraq war at the present times. The popular writer Mark Twain was a voice of bitter dissent to the patriotic expansionist mood in 1898–1902. In this essay, originally published in February 1901, Twain lashes out at the double standards and deceit of European-style imperialism, which claimed to bring civilization to non-Western peoples "sitting in darkness" (in a paraphrase of a Rudyard Kipling poem). He condemns what he considers to be the United States playing the European-imperialist game in the Philippines.
Mark Twain's quote, “What has been the practical statesmanship which comes from your ideals and sentimentalities? You have wasted six hundred millions of treasure. You have sacrificed nearly ten thousand American lives, the flower of our youth. You have devastated provinces. You have slain uncounted thousands of the people you desire to benefit.”
Here’s the box score:
American military deaths: 4,324. Coalition Casualties in Iraq
American soldiers wounded: 2,818
Philippine military deaths: 20,000 (est.)
Philippine civilian deaths: 250,000 to 1,000,000.
250,000 – 1,000,000. Nobody bothered to count.
Twain refused to see the colonization of the Philippines as some kind of noble effort. In 1901, his growing disgust with imperial ambitions led to his decision to publish, “To The Person Sitting in Darkness.” Later, he would serve as Vice-President of the Anti-Imperialist League. In this passage, Twain slays all the dragons: There have been lies; yes, but they were told in good cause. We have been treacherous; but that was only in order that real good might come out of apparent evil. True, we have crushed a deceived and confiding people; we have turned against the weak and friendless who trusted us; we have stamped out a just and intelligent and well ordered republic; we have stabbed an ally in the back and slapped the face of a guest; we have bought a shadow from an enemy that hadn’t it to sell; we have robbed a trusting friend of his land and liberty; we have invited our clean young men to shoulder a discredited musket and do bandits’ work under a flag which bandits have been accustomed to fear, not to follow; we have debauched America’s honor and blackened her face before the world; but each detail was for the best. We know this.
Here’s the box score:
American military deaths: 4,324. Coalition Casualties in Iraq
American soldiers wounded: 2,818
Philippine military deaths: 20,000 (est.)
Philippine civilian deaths: 250,000 to 1,000,000.
250,000 – 1,000,000. Nobody bothered to count.
Twain refused to see the colonization of the Philippines as some kind of noble effort. In 1901, his growing disgust with imperial ambitions led to his decision to publish, “To The Person Sitting in Darkness.” Later, he would serve as Vice-President of the Anti-Imperialist League. In this passage, Twain slays all the dragons: There have been lies; yes, but they were told in good cause. We have been treacherous; but that was only in order that real good might come out of apparent evil. True, we have crushed a deceived and confiding people; we have turned against the weak and friendless who trusted us; we have stamped out a just and intelligent and well ordered republic; we have stabbed an ally in the back and slapped the face of a guest; we have bought a shadow from an enemy that hadn’t it to sell; we have robbed a trusting friend of his land and liberty; we have invited our clean young men to shoulder a discredited musket and do bandits’ work under a flag which bandits have been accustomed to fear, not to follow; we have debauched America’s honor and blackened her face before the world; but each detail was for the best. We know this.
3/27/2006 Iraq Project updated
The Iraq timeline has been updated to include additional details regarding the Bush administration’s aluminum tubes allegation, the case of the forged Niger documents, Curveball and the alleged mobile biological weapons labs, and the Pentagon’s recently exposed propaganda program in Iraq. You can view a timeline consisting of only the most recently …
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