Nathan Richter: Iraq ... Is It All the Indians' Fault?
... The period before the United States’ first major move as an imperial nation — the 1898 Spanish-American War — saw the growth of the propagandist “yellow press” of William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer. Many Americans were supremely confident of success in the war — though the country had not fought another European power since the War of 1812.
Future U.S. President Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt, then assistant secretary of the Navy, was one of the biggest agitators for the war.
Roosevelt had achieved recognition as a serious historian of the time, and in the years preceding the war with Spain, he published The Winning of the West, a four-volume history of the frontier and defense of the fight against the American Indians.
“It was all-important that it should be won, for the benefit of civilization and in the interests of mankind,” he wrote. “It is indeed a warped, perverse and silly morality which would forbid a course of conquest that has turned whole continents into the sears of mighty and flourishing civilized nations.”
The man now primarily known — and cherished — as the first champion of the U.S. national parks, Roosevelt argued further that “the conquest and settlement by the whites of the Indian lands was necessary to the greatness of the race and to the well-being of civilized mankind.”
Teddy Roosevelt, Blow by Blow:
Any doubters may want to explore whether there is a strangely familiar — and contemporary — ring to Roosevelt’s rather bellicose language:
For example, does the following provide a reference to the war against Indians, or today’s War on Terror:
“The most ultimately righteous of all wars is a war with savages, though it is apt to be also the most terrible and inhuman.”
And what about this statement:
“The very causes which render this struggle between savagery and the rough front rank of civilization so vast and elemental in its consequence to the future of the world, also tend to render it in certain ways peculiarly revolting and barbarous.
"It is primeval warfare, and it is waged as war was waged in the ages of bronze and of iron. All the merciful humanity that even war has gained during the last two thousand years is lost. It is a warfare where no pity is shown to non-combatants, where the weak are harried without ruth, and the vanquished maltreated with merciless ferocity.”...
Read entire article at Globalist
Future U.S. President Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt, then assistant secretary of the Navy, was one of the biggest agitators for the war.
Roosevelt had achieved recognition as a serious historian of the time, and in the years preceding the war with Spain, he published The Winning of the West, a four-volume history of the frontier and defense of the fight against the American Indians.
“It was all-important that it should be won, for the benefit of civilization and in the interests of mankind,” he wrote. “It is indeed a warped, perverse and silly morality which would forbid a course of conquest that has turned whole continents into the sears of mighty and flourishing civilized nations.”
The man now primarily known — and cherished — as the first champion of the U.S. national parks, Roosevelt argued further that “the conquest and settlement by the whites of the Indian lands was necessary to the greatness of the race and to the well-being of civilized mankind.”
Teddy Roosevelt, Blow by Blow:
Any doubters may want to explore whether there is a strangely familiar — and contemporary — ring to Roosevelt’s rather bellicose language:
For example, does the following provide a reference to the war against Indians, or today’s War on Terror:
“The most ultimately righteous of all wars is a war with savages, though it is apt to be also the most terrible and inhuman.”
And what about this statement:
“The very causes which render this struggle between savagery and the rough front rank of civilization so vast and elemental in its consequence to the future of the world, also tend to render it in certain ways peculiarly revolting and barbarous.
"It is primeval warfare, and it is waged as war was waged in the ages of bronze and of iron. All the merciful humanity that even war has gained during the last two thousand years is lost. It is a warfare where no pity is shown to non-combatants, where the weak are harried without ruth, and the vanquished maltreated with merciless ferocity.”...