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5. The notion that Western nations need to “nation-build” or secure “failed-states” is only a modern incarnation of the “White Man’s Burden.”
What is the “white man’s burden?” The term was coined in British Poet, Rudyard Kipling’s infamous poem, “The White Man’s Burden”
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;
"White Man's Burden" | Photo: Detroit Journal
Ironically, this poem was published on the same day as US navy ships landed in the Philippines, in February 1899. This poem was written in open encouragement of this colonization, part of the Spanish-American war, launched by McKinley. This war was America’s entrance onto the Imperial scene, capturing Cuba, the Philippines, Guam, Hawaii and Puerto Rico, which remains a colony to this day. Some historians estimate over 600,000 were killed in this war of expansion.
Such notions, that the white race, or more recently, “western civilization” has not only the right, but the duty to civilize the people’s of the world were repeated throughout the 20th century and are part of the justification for the War on Iraq, the War on terror and the War on Afghanistan.
We don’t need to just quote Bush here; you can find this “civilizing” mission in the words of those currently in power. In a time magazine article in 2001, now Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton wrote:
“Thanks to the courage and bravery of America’s military and our allies, hope is being restored to many women and families in much of Afghanistan. As we continue the hard work of rooting out the vestiges of Taliban control and al-Qaeda terrorism, we must begin the hard work of nurturing that newfound hope and planting the seeds of a governing system that will respect human rights and allow all the people of that nation to dream of a better life for their children—girls and boys alike.”
She concludes the article,
“America can do more than rid the world of an international terrorist network. It can promote the kind of values that will act like antibodies against the virus of evil that exists in too many hearts around the planet.” (Read the full article here)
Obama, the first non-white commander-in-chief has taken up this justification just as earnestly as his predecessors. In a speech announcing the escalation in Afghanistan at West Point this past fall, Obama talked about “special burden” in Afghanistan.
“Since the days of Franklin Roosevelt, and the service and sacrifice of our grandparents, our country has borne a special burden [my emphasis] in global affairs. We have spilled American blood in many countries on multiple continents. We have spent our revenue to help others rebuild from rubble and develop their own economies. We have joined with others to develop an architecture of institutions – from the United Nations to NATO to the World Bank – that provide for the common security and prosperity of human beings.” (read the whole speech here)
Our “special burden” is only a modern version of the “White Man’s Burden” of old.
In the race to conquer the Americas, Spain, Portugal, France, and Britain all justified their conquest under the guise of “taming the savages” and “Christianizing the barbarians.”
This trend was not broken over time, only strengthened and modified in more benign sounding language. When Western capitalism finally reached deep into the Middle East, it continued. A different justification, which was subsequently branded “Orientalism” by the late Professor and Palestinian Activist, Edward Said, was used to explain why the people of the middle east must be subjugated.
Rafael Patai published a Seminole work in this field in 1973 “The Arab Mind.” In it, he says, among other things:
“For the Western mind, the strangest and most fascinating of all these contrasts is undoubtedly that between self-control and uncontrolled outbursts of emotionalism, or the related opposites of lethargy and upsurges of activity. …. If, in exceptional circumstances, a Westerner is provoked to doing something that is contrary to his usually controlled behavior, he is excused, or excuses himself, with having momentarily lost his head; and he usually makes a firm resolve never to let such a damaging thing happen to him again.
In the Arab world, no such onus attaches to loss of self-control or out burst of temper. Quite the contrary: such seizures are expected to happen from time to time, because is the Arab view of human nature no person is supposed to be able to maintain incessant, uninterrupted control over himself. Any event that is outside routine everyday occurrence can trigger such a loss of control and turn the docile, friendly, and courteous Jekyll into a raging, dangerous, and maniacal Hyde, who will return to his former self as soon as the temper passes.”
These ideas might seem outlandish and outright racist, but they are sadly not a dead letter. Patai’s book was reprinted by Hatherleigh Press in 2002 in time for the Iraq war with an enthusiastic introduction by Norwell “Tex” De Atkine, a former army colonel and head of Middle East Studies at Fort Bragg who called it “essential reading” and claimed that at Fort Bragg it “formed the basis of my cultural instruction.” (link to Patai’s book)
The point of bringing Patai up is that, in this authors opinion, the notion more liberal notion that we need to “save” these people has its roots in some old fashioned racism. How else has the west earned the right to come to their rescue other than our inherent goodness? It reveals hubris and an ethnocentrism about how “good” western civilization is vis-à-vis “Arab” or “Muslim” civilization.
This is not to deny the horrific treatment of women in Afghanistan (as I detail in my previous post), nor is it to deny the horrible legacy of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda types (which I also detail in a previous post).
I am rejecting the narrative Obama puts forward precisely because it will not end this state of affairs. Rather, it will perpetuate them just with different names, and different faces.
In fact, as my next post will illustrate, the West has a long, bloody history that allowed for such forces to prosper in Afghanistan, and it is the removal of US and UN troops (the real “foreign fighters”) that will begin the healing process necessary for Afghani’s THEMSELVES to build a just society.
The only “burden” we have is getting the hell out of their country and figuring out how to translate our apology for screwing up their country into the various dialects spoken in Afghanistan.
Its called “Self-Determination.” Google it.
And it might do the folks who are running this war some good to read another passage from Rudyard Kipling:
Now, it is not good for the Christian’s health to hustle the Aryan brown,
For the Christian riles, and the Aryan smiles, and he weareth the Christian down;
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white, with the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear: ‘A fool lies here who tried to hustle the East.’
- Solo from Libretto of “The Naulahka – A Story Of West And East”
Tags: afghani, Afghanistan, anti-war, Antiwar, Bush, Democrats, escalation, Iraq Veterans Against the War, obama, oppose, Politics, protest, reasons to oppose, war, War on Terror
5:05 pm. Politics.
